February 19, 2008

February 14, 2008

November 6, 2007

August 5, 2007

July 24, 2007

July 11, 2007

June 27, 2007

May 23, 2007

May 18, 2007

May 7, 2007

April 24, 2007

March 18, 2007

February 1, 2007

January 26, 2007

January 22, 2007

January 5, 2007

December 21, 2006

October 14, 2006

October 3, 2006

September 25, 2006

August 10, 2006

August 3, 2006

July 14, 2006

June 27, 2006

June 20, 2006

Come On, Make Me Work

Encouraged by Matt's post, I saw Brick on Saturday night. Man oh man. What a perfect movie. Everything about it is great: the acting, the look, the mood, the style... even the shocking post-theater reminder that it was all done on a shoestring. The movie has a gravity and wholeness that suggests it will still be totally watchable in five years, or fifty.

But my favorite thing about Brick is the fact that it makes you work. Not work in a kind of loopy art-school way, but rather, you've simply got to keep your brain spinning as you watch it. No cinema-induced coma here. You've got to constantly process what's going on -- from the super-fast, super-stylized patter to the byzantine plotting -- to keep in step with the movie. Revelations don't thud into your lap; they sneak in the back door.

And the laughs are all so well-constructed and well-earned: There is not a single cheap one in this entire movie.

I think so many critics read it as a film-geek stunt (e.g.) because, well, they're film geeks. My non-film-geek verdict is A++ would watch again. In five years or fifty.

... Read more ....

May 24, 2006

May 22, 2006

April 8, 2006

April 4, 2006

April 3, 2006

Film Industry Enters Late 20th Century

Starting this week, we'll finally be able to purchase and immediately download (some) movies. The fact that we have not been able to do this until now is the best demonstration of the film industry's idiocy. We've long been able to easily acquire these movies online for free, but because Hollywood is a giant, dull-witted beast, we couldn't pay to do this legally even if we wanted to.

Before iTunes launched, I would have said selling music online was a lost cause. It was too easy to get songs for free. But the introduction of a good, comprehensive, well-organized music service which gave me fair-to-middling rights over what I purchased ended up completely winning me over. In 2005, by my count, I bought 465 songs through iTunes.

Of course, for me to start using Movielink or CinemaNow with anywhere near that fervor, they still have a looooong, long way to go:

• The sites will have to stop redirecting me from the home page to an error message because I'm using Firefox.
• They're going to have to get a much, much better selection. No, I don't want to see Transporter 2 or National Lampoon Presents Barely Legal, but thanks.
• They're going to have to get rid of the ultralame DRM that won't let me burn my files to DVD.
• They'll have to be acquired by NetFlix, to which my heart and movie tastes already belong.

March 23, 2006

March 14, 2006

March 8, 2006

March 7, 2006

February 15, 2006

February 13, 2006

Starring: The Sum of a Society's Dreams and Nightmares (Plus Some Puppets)

Man, I just saw the weirdest movie tonight. Luckily, I can describe it to you perfectly using Movie Math™:

	The Neverending Story
+	Dark Crystal
+	Spirited Away
	The Great Yokai War

From the SF Indie Fest description:

Only Tadashi the Kirin Rider and his sword can save the world from this menace, with some help from his Yokai friends!

What it doesn't quite tell you is that this movie is like a super-concentrated dose of pure Japanese-ness. Seriously, if this were, say, a British movie, it would be about King Arthur and Robin Hood on a quest to save Queen Elizabeth from fairies. And Oliver Cromwell. And America.

Unfortunately, the plot and characters of The Great Yokai War are a little below the standard set by its classic DNA. But even so, it's worth seeing if it comes to your neck of woods, or to DVD -- if only to appreciate the way the director (apparently all his other movies are total gross-out horror flicks!) combines actors, puppets, and computer graphics in a way that is, if not seamless, then at least shameless. It's a gung-ho effort.

And seriously: SO JAPANESE.

February 1, 2006

January 19, 2006

January 13, 2006

December 14, 2005

December 11, 2005

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe... But Especially the Witch

I saw the new Narnia movie this weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Of course this is no "Lord of the Rings." But big deal. The Chronicles of Narnia have always been a different sort of thing entirely. Tolkien is high fantasy; Lewis is fairy tale. Tolkien weaves a mock history; Lewis tells a bedtime story.

And there's something appealing about that. In contrast to Tolkien's fastidiously-kept Middle Earth, there is a large-hearted looseness to Narnia. It's got centaurs, phoenixes, wolves, talking beavers, knights, witch-queens... you know, whatever. And the entire place seems to be about the size of San Francisco -- a perfectly fine size for an adventure.

The best part of the movie is Tilda Swinton, who plays the White Witch. Her performance in the big battle scene -- from her fell arrival in a war-chariot drawn by polar bears (!) to her icy duel with young Peter -- is raw martial cool. Also, toned arms are the new hotness.

Anthony Lane actually gets it right (but wrong) in his dismissive New Yorker review:

If the movie has to forgo Lewis's narrative tone, with its grimly Oxonian blend of the bluff and the twee ("And now we come to one of the nastiest things in this story"), that is fine by me.

I don't know that the movie does forgo it. Overall, it is a weird -- enjoyably weird -- mix of the big and the small, the high prophecy and the comic aside. The battle scene is thrilling, and the White Witch truly threatening -- but at the same time it does look a lot like a bunch of creatures playing war in the park. I didn't mind.

(Oh yes, and sorry, but the magical Turkish delight in this movie still manages to look gross.)

December 8, 2005

November 1, 2005

Speaking Out of School

Although Bill Cosby delivered his notorious remarks about black society in front of a largely black crowd, the ruling complaint was that he'd aired our culture's dirty laundry in public. But could his speech have been effective in any other place? If he'd been speaking at a mid-sized black church with no reporters present, was there any chance his comments would have carried outside the room?

The charge of airing dirty laundry has been levelled many times at director Deepa Mehta, although not often as violently as with her latest film, Water. The film concerns the plight of Hindu widows in parts of India, who to this day are sometimes relegated to poverty after the deaths of their husbands, unable to work or remarry. When Mehta first tried to film Water, a group of Hindu fundamentalists trashed the set, destroying all prints. The director spent years raising the money to shoot the film again under heavy secrecy in Sri Lanka.

Now, Water is complete (trailer), and the charges of cultural treachery are circling, even among those who might agree with the moral particulars of Mehta's message. Read the comments on this Sepia Mutiny thread, and you will find some very valid criticisms of Mehta's message and the way she delivers it. "Mehta thus does not engage with feminist concerns around dominant conventions of beauty, colour and feminine roles; rather, she reinforces them," one commenter quotes from a review. "The shiny patina of exotica is what saves Mehta from being recognized as the mediocrity that she is," another commenter writes.

The root charge strongly resembles that levelled against Cosby -- Mehta's playing up the culture's dysfunction to curry favor with an audience outside of it. But put in this light, the charges have a potency the anti-Cosby remarks didn't to me. Suddenly I can sympathize with all those white journalists who scratched their heads at that story and wondered, "What do I do with this?"

Given that Mehta's Fire is one of my favorite pieces of LGBT cinema, I feel like I can defend that film from within my own cultural framework. But does any part of Water belong to me?

The film describes legitimate problems in India that demonstrably persist. The film is peddling the same tired, negative images of India that foreign reporters find when they drop in sniffing for a good story. Outside the cultural framework the film represents, do we have the right to cast judgment? And on whom do we cast it?

October 28, 2005

October 5, 2005

Joss Is My Co-Pilot

Odd taste thing with me: I love Gothic literature, but am mostly ambivalent about sci-fi*. The Handmaid's Tale drove me nuts (in a bad way). I'm the kid who had to start "Harrison Bergeron" about five times before I made it through all five pages. I enjoyed Blade Runner and Akira and The Matrix, but none of them added any shattering revelation to my life. Dune = yawn. I know this is painful for many of my friends to hear, but for the most part, I parted ways with science fiction when Lovecraft left us.

The only reason I can offer for this is pretty crude -- sci-fi often feels just too crowded with ideas for the story to work any magic on me. I find myself distractedly theorizing about the statement the fiction is making about our world, which tends to ruin my immersion in the world the fiction depicts. The stories work for me as essays, but not often as literature.

But of course, given that Joss Whedon's my hero, I had to give Firefly a try. The show's big sell for many fans was the way it played with the conventions of sci-fi, but of course, that didn't work on me. What interested me was how the show played with the conventions of Whedon, treating religion, to take one example, with a completely different approach than Buffy or Angel did. Unlike his earlier shows, Firefly dealt less with allegory and much more with pure story, plot and character. It imparted the sense that Joss wasn't driving towards one uber-climactic crowning moment, but had simply released these beloved figures into this space, as fascinated as we were with the narrative fractals their fictive lives produced.

I was sad to see it come to an end. But I was thrilled to hear Joss would be able to sink an enormous (compared to TV) amount of time and money into a two-hour masterwork.

Serenity didn't add any shattering revelation to my life either. I didn't expect it to; too many of its references went over my sci-fi-impoverished head. But I haven't felt as happy to slip into the world of a film since the Lord of the Rings trilogy ended. The movie feels otherworldly in an organic way much of science fiction doesn't. Aside from some pretty rudimentary politics, Joss seems not to be making much of a statement about our world, as much as he's just letting this wacky new one exist on its own terms.

And at the same time, he rarely ever falls into the sci-fi trap of gleefully pointing out all the wicked-looking little gizmos and organisms he's thought up (with the exception of the dialogue, which is beyond awesome for most of the film, but sometimes overdone). The best part about the world of Firefly is that although it feels so much like its own creation, it feels incredibly ordinary at the same time.

So that's my plug for Serenity. I'd love to revisit this world yet again. Go buy a ticket.

*Note: I understand I'm painting a big-ass genre with a very broad brush here. There are works of inarguable science fiction to which most of this post doesn't apply, like 2046. And folks could levy most of the same criticisms at the Gothic that I heap upon sci-fi in this post. A lot of Gothic works are pretty heavy-handed with their ideas as well. The difference for me is that the constant essay-like sense of precision that seems to characterize sci-fi just doesn't work in the Gothic. Gothic stories are almost always way too unruly to be constrained by any high-falutin' ideas their authors might have started out with (see, for example, Dracula). They get very, very out-of-hand in a way sci-fi stories never do, and I love that.

But of course, I live to be proven wrong. Give me some awesome, unruly sci-fi stories, and we'll revisit all this.

September 29, 2005

September 22, 2005

August 18, 2005

August 12, 2005

August 5, 2005

July 26, 2005

July 23, 2005

July 1, 2005

June 29, 2005

June 18, 2005

Batman's Back

Batman Begins is super, super good. It is both a good Batman movie (which would be enough to satisfy a comic book nerd) and a good movie (which should be enough to satisfy anybody).

It's not perfect. But the cast, from Christian Bale to Liam Neeson to Morgan Freeman to, of course, Michael Caine (who I think might be my favorite actor ever) is charismatic and convincing all around.

Worth noting: One thing that's been missing from previous movies, and even a lot of previous comics, is the sense that Batman is scary. That is ostensibly the whole point of his outfit, but it never quite gets realized: He's always more grim techno-ninja than terrible monster of the night.

There's plenty of techno-ninjitsu in this version, too. But thanks to the setup -- the Scarecrow, a classic Batman foe, plays a big role, along with his hallucinogenic fear gas -- we get the opportunity to see what Batman looks like when you're running scared in the streets of Gotham. And I -- a hard-core Batman fan -- actually felt like I "got it" for the first time.

Nerd extra: This movie's story draws from the plot of the first Batman comic I ever got, a thick Batman annual that had Ras Al Ghul poisoning Gotham's water supply. The key difference: In the comic, Ras was going to use a giant lens orbiting in space to filter the sun's rays and activate the poison. So Batman took a shuttle up to his space station to stop him. Um.

June 7, 2005

May 21, 2005

Long in the Tooth

For the moment, The New York Times has put up an archive of coverage of the Star Wars films, from the first Vincent Canby review of A New Hope (May 26, 1977) to now. My favorite moment comes in Janet Maslin's review of The Empire Strikes Back (written 25 years ago today!):

If George Lucas makes good on his promise to turn Star Wars into a parade of nine films and spend several years on the making of each of them, we may all be pretty long in the tooth before this story gets told.

Good Lord. Nine?! Sith was fun, but really ... we're quite sure Lucas is done with this now, right?

RELATED: The 1983 fan reactions to Return of the Jedi on USENET (via MeFi).

UPDATE: I clearly was not paying enough attention. The Washington Post has a much nicer archive. (Although they do need to do a better job of copy-editing the old articles.)

CAPSULE REVIEW: Everyone's pretty much agreed that it's a very fun film with awful dialogue, and I'm no different. Some would call it the apotheosis of epic; I'm going to stick with fun film. While I'm impressed by the scope of Lucas' story and how well it tied together, the writing and acting pretty much disqualifies this from the category of great cinema. It's a wonderful spectacle, though.

April 29, 2005

February 23, 2005

February 22, 2005

September 22, 2004

Two for Three Ain't Bad

It is the cruel luxury of unemployment that there is plenty of time to consume media.

So, I've already told you about this month's Foreign Policy mag.

Also notable are the three movies I've seen in the last two weeks, each very much the product of a single visionary. First up:

The Stylist. Napoleon Dynamite reminded me of Wes Anderson's movies: Meticulous production design; socially inept characters; thick retro vibe. Okay, it's more than a vibe: This movie is set in a kind of distilled hyper-80s. (Or maybe Aaron is right and that's just what small-town America looks like?)

It's a trip to watch, and it hits some cultural touchstones -- adolescent preoccupations with ninja skills, crude drawings on lined notebook paper, early Internet chat rooms -- that I haven't seen anywhere else. In those moments, Napoleon Dynamite feels fresh and fun and new.

In others, it feels too engineered -- the title character, Napoleon himself, is funny, but kinda empty, you know? Watching the movie, you can never figure out what's up with him. The climax is hilarious -- hilaaarious -- but not that triumphant, because you're not sure if you're on Napoleon's side or not.

For a real human connection, we need:

The Voice of a Generation. Garden State also articulates some ideas that are very real, very familiar, and very current. This movie felt modern to me, and I appreciate that a lot.

It's rougher around the edges than Napoleon Dynamite: Zach Braff's vision doesn't seem as meticulous as Jared Hess's. But that's fine. In fact, it's great. Garden State doesn't feel like the immaculate work of a genius auteur. Instead, it feels like the really cool movie your friend made.

If your friend was a dude with 1,000 Power Macs in his basement, then maybe he'd be:

The Technologist. I wanted Sky Captain to be good. I so wanted it to be good. It's remarkable, after all: The first non-Lucasian instance of a Garage Kubrick making an entirely synthetic feature film. (We discussed it before on Snarkmarket.)

But it's terrible.

This movie generates zero suspense and shockingly little wonder. Most special-effects movies succeed when you forget the computers and get into the story; Sky Captain, on the other hand, was only interesting when I stepped back to note its technical prowess. And man, the last thing you want to be thinking in a movie theater is: "Well, that mutant dinosaur certainly is a fine achievement."

The movie's director, Kerry Conran, nurtured his vision for years, and finally -- remarkably -- marshalled the resources to bring it to the big screen. But -- for what? So we could see old-fashioned robots through a gauzy haze?

If you want retro-chic adventure, go rent Iron Giant, an underrated movie with a more original vision and a more exciting story by far.

July 30, 2004

Spiraling into Mediocrity

How does one fall from the dizzying heights of the almost universally beloved Sixth Sense to make a film that scores a 39 on MetaCritic. M. Night, what happened to you?

A sampling of the criticism:

• A sense of humor might have helped "The Village." It couldn't have hurt. The truth is, nothing could have hurt. -- SFGate
• To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore. -- Roger Ebert
• If you long to hear dialogue like "You needn't be scared. We have the magic rocks. They will keep us safe," then M. Night Shyamalan's nubby woolen sock of a thriller "The Village" is the movie for you. -- Stephanie Zacharek
• The ubiquitous advertisements for "The Village," which opens today nationwide, promise that "nothing can prepare you." Nothing, that is, except M. Night Shyamalan's last three movies and a passing acquaintance with "The Twilight Zone." -- A.O. Scott

Nubby woolen sock, y'all.

July 25, 2004

Trinity

When I was seven, I saw "Transformers: The Movie" on the big screen and, it's true, I cried a little when Optimus Prime, brave leader of the Autobots, died.

Now The Hollywood Reporter says Spielberg is producing a live-action Transformers movie!

And look at this--also posted on hollywoodreporter.com the same day, news of a movie version of "Watchmen," the greatest graphic novel ever published.

And! "All the King's Men"! My god!

These are three of the seminal literary experiences of my life, Snarketeers: tales of a valiant robot, a fallible superhero, and a wayward journalist. I can't wait.

(Thanks to Kevin for the Transformers link.)

BTW: Required viewing for Transformers nerds.

June 7, 2004

Showdown

Maureen Dowd writes about Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and "High Noon" today:

[Clinton] said his editor, Bob Gottlieb, had left his Yeats references but cut his movie odes: "I wanted to write a whole page about 'High Noon,' my favorite movie, and why it's an important movie."

Many leaders see themselves reflected in the plight of Gary Cooper's Will Kane, the lonely, romantic Western hero, the retiring marshal who stays and fights the murderous Miller gang even though his Quaker bride (Grace Kelly) and all the townsfolk desert him. [...]

Let me tell you about "High Noon." It is one of two essential Westerns: Movies that embody the genre and, as an added bonus, articulate very specific, and very different, theories of life and the world.

"High Noon" says: You can't count on anyone. In the end, you face your destiny alone. Be resolute.

This philosophy is, of course, not unfamiliar. Dowd:

And the analogy has often been used by people writing and talking about the Bushes' facing down Saddam. Just as the movie was seen as a classic allegory for the cold war, when the virtuous American sheriff tried to police a paranoid world with enemies lurking everywhere, so it has been cited by some conservatives who like to see it as an allegory of Bush II's "heroic" unilateralism. In an alienated world, a friendless W. had to do the dirty work to get rid of Saddam all by himself, a lawman who refused to be shoved, ready to die all alone on some dusty street for a tin star. [...]

But she ends with this:

There was one powerful man who thought the film was the most un-American he'd ever seen: John Wayne. The Duke couldn't bear to see a hero begging for help.

I wonder if that's really the reason John Wayne didn't like "High Noon."

You see, John Wayne starred in the other essential Western -- a movie that articulates a very different theory of the universe.

That movie is "Rio Bravo."

In "Rio Bravo," John Wayne plays Sheriff John Chance. It's another tick-tock plot: This time, a gang of thugs is coming to break a murderer out of jail.

But in "Rio Bravo," John Wayne doesn't want any help; he shoos everybody away -- even though they all want to stay -- because he thinks they'll just get in the way. Because he thinks they're too weak.

But in the end, even John Chance can't beat the bad guys alone. Luckily, his rag-tag friends -- the aging deputy, the drunk, the dancer, the trail boss -- are with him whether he likes it or not, and they all have a role to play.

"Rio Bravo" says: No man is an island. You're never really alone. Help is on its way.

So which is more your speed -- the fatalism (or is it just realism?) of "High Noon" or the multilateralism (or is it just faith?) of "Rio Bravo"?

April 20, 2004

The Man in Black

Sometimes dorkdom conquers reason.

If I were a rational movie-goer, I wouldn't waste eight bucks on "Star Wars: Episode III" in May 2005, because Episodes I and II were boring and lame.

(Well, actually, if I were a rational movie-goer, I wouldn't be talking about movies that aren't coming out until 2005 at all. But, yeah.)

Clearly, some sort of Lucasian culture module was implanted in my brain early in life, because when I see a story about the first glimpses of Darth Vader, the disappointment of the first two movies evaporates and I am filled only with geeky anticipation.

Darth Vader. Of all the mythology-lite characters in Star Wars, he is the most archetypal. He's our Cronus, the deposer and the deposed. And, come on! "Darth Vader"! Dark Father! He might as well be named Primordial Ancestor of Power. Jeez.

(Thanks to Julie for the tip!)

April 8, 2004

Eternal Sunshine of Omar Sharif

Matt liked "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," and so did I, but I must note: Like one of the main character's memories, the movie has completely evaporated from my mind. No lingering ideas, no haunting images. Even the day after seeing it, I had only a faint impression of the flick -- which is what I expect from, you know, "Hellboy," but not from a movie that scored 92% on the Tomatometer!

Not so with "Monsieur Ibrahim" (clearly a dud at a mere 89%) which I just saw at the glittering Tampa Theatre. (You know it's high-class when they spell it 'theatre.') A day later, impressions abound: The back alleys of Paris... the whirling dervishes, Sufis that "spin around their hearts"... the whacked-out 60's rock 'n' roll in French... Ibrahim's kindness... and Omar Sharif's grizzled, gap-toothed grin.

March 27, 2004

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Or, Love in the Age of Alzheimers

Here's a superlative for you: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was the cleverest movie I've seen that didn't sacrifice any of its beauty or truth to be so. The movie just clicks together, equally satisfying as an intellectual exercise and an emotional trip. I will not mess with Charlie Kaufman, for he is clearly my master.

Michel Gondry does an excellent job with the material -- and what else would you expect? The man's brilliant! -- but there are a few things I'll fault him for. The headline of my critique reads "Gondry Shows Too Much Restraint." It's subtitled, "Jim Carrey Is Perfectly Serviceable, But Why Not Get An Actor?" Oh, and handheld camerawork needs to be seriously fined by the FCC, 'cause if I leave another frickin' movie with a dull headache, there will be problems.

Most of the restraint works exceptionally well. Where the movie could be flashy, it never is. The gimmicks of the script and camera never feel like gimmicks, or at least you never resent them for being gimmicks, because they serve real emotional purposes. And yet, those purposes are never explicit. Gondry never really pushes to make you laugh or cry or grit your teeth or whatever, and that seems rare. He just paints a picture, and lets Kaufman's story take you where it will. But that approach brings one drawback -- there's no catharsis. When I was finally ready to let go and really approach the movie's core in one big, perfect, emotional moment, Gondry let me down. Maybe this is a personal quibble, and it's pretty minor, but Gondry has the opportunity for one perfect searing moment that would have been so satisfying and affecting, but he doesn't take it. Instead, before the scene reaches any real pitch, Jim Carrey starts doing his "I-am-not-Jim-Carrey" bit, and says, "It's OK," and the scene kind of dribbles away lamely.

Really, though. Carrey did a fine job of not being Jim Carrey. Unfortunately, he clearly expended all his efforts on not being Jim Carrey, leaving very little energy left to act, or inhabit an actual recognizable or empathetic character, or any of that stuff that actual actors have to do. I submit, and Robin will quibble, but I submit that really any genuine dramatic talent could have done a better job in Carrey's role than Carrey, because he would have done something more with it than pretend he wasn't a manic comedian trying desperately to play against type.

OK, except Tobey Maguire, who I believe has genuine dramatic talent, which unfortunately is only good for playing one role. Which unfortunately people keep hiring him to play. And no, I didn't see Seabiscuit. Yes, I'm sure it was a good movie. But so was Wonder Boys and so was Cider House Rules and so was October Sky, and the fact remains that Tobey Maguire has played exactly one role in his overearnest and unassuming career.

Last point: DO NOT READ ANY OTHER REVIEWS OF THIS MOVIE. Seriously. I thought the film critics were revealing minor plot elements, but they were casually dropping endings and major plot twists. I would have enjoyed the movie even more without that foreknowledge.

March 25, 2004

Making a Case

Linda Greenhouse's NYT story about an atheist doctor's spellbinding performance before the Supreme Court makes me want to go rent a courtroom drama -- "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Inherit the Wind" or "Twelve Angry Men" or something.

Seriously, just imagine Gregory Peck as Dr. Newdow and Orson Welles as William H. Rehnquist in this scene:

Dr. Newdow, a nonpracticing lawyer who makes his living as an emergency room doctor, may not win his case. In fact, justices across the ideological spectrum appeared to be searching for reasons he should lose, either on jurisdictional grounds or on the merits. But no one who managed to get a seat in the courtroom is likely ever to forget his spell-binding performance.

That includes the justices, whom Dr. Newdow engaged in repartee that, while never disrespectful, bore a closer resemblance to dinner-table one-upmanship than to formal courtroom discourse. For example, when Dr. Newdow described "under God" as a divisive addition to the pledge, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist asked him what the vote in Congress had been 50 years ago when the phrase was inserted.

The vote was unanimous, Dr. Newdow said.

"Well, that doesn't sound divisive," the chief justice observed.

Dr. Newdow shot back, "That's only because no atheist can get elected to public office."

The courtroom audience broke into applause, an exceedingly rare event that left the chief justice temporarily nonplussed. He appeared to collect himself for a moment, and then sternly warned the audience that the courtroom would be cleared "if there's any more clapping."

Or, if we must use living actors... then... shoot, who's the modern Gregory Peck?

March 22, 2004

Zombie Jamboree

Here's what's good about "Dawn of the Dead," George Romero's remake of his own 1978 movie:

• The instantly-familiar suburban mall setting
• The movie's first and only rule of zombie engagement: Shoot 'em in the head
• The stylish "media covers the end of the world" sequence, with requisite super-grainy video (apparently only Playskool My First Cameras function during the Apocalypse)
• The satisfying A-Team-style "let's build an armored truck using snow shovels and chicken wire" sequence
• The fact that Ty Burrell looks way too much like Bruce Campbell (classic low-budget horror actor), which led me to believe it was Bruce Campbell, but no, it's this other dude, and somehow the entire situation seems zombie-riffic
• Fast zombies = scariest ever

And I could come up with some things that are bad, too, but come on. This movie is about undead hordes, not character development.

... Read more ....

March 13, 2004

Amorphous Blob of Nothing Makes Good

If you'd written off the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow after seeing the trailer, dust off your interest and read this preview, from the NYT Magazine. Not only does the movie sound excellent, the article's a blast, too:

For [Kerry Conran, creator of Sky Captain], the question, as he put it, was ''Could you be ambitious and make a film of some scope without ever leaving your room?'' And so 10 years ago, Kerry Conran went into a room in his apartment to make a movie. In some ways, he is just now beginning to come out of it.

At first, he was a mystery. Word of ''Sky Captain'' began to spread around the Internet only after Conran finished primary shooting in London last spring -- extraordinarily late for the Internet, which often seems invented specifically to track movies with giant robots in them. Even then, no one knew who Kerry Conran was. Google couldn't touch him. He was so undocumented in the world of Hollywood that I briefly wondered, when I began pursuing him, if perhaps he was just a front for his producer and partner and mentor Jon Avnet, who is well known for producing ''Risky Business'' and directing ''Fried Green Tomatoes'' but who is not so well known for retro-science-fiction summertime blockbusters, and who unlike Conran seems to have been photographed at least once in his life. I don't think Conran would mind that I doubted his existence. In fact, for a long time, that was the plan.

Conran created the entire universe of the movie using computers. I mean, I guess it's not that rare in the age of Pixar, but the live actors involved (including Gwyneth, Jude, and Angelina) worked in front of blue screens the entire time. That seems big, somehow.

They can do anything here. When one of Paltrow's arms was cut out from a shot, they copied the other one, flipped it and pasted it back in. Since all the lighting was being done on the computer, they could paint the frame with light and noirish shadows, erase it all and then start again.

March 7, 2004

Divine Inspiration

Wow. Johnny Depp as Jesus. That's brilliant!! I already feel ministered to.

Who else would make a good Jesus?

• Viggo Mortensen ... I mean, he basically just played Jesus three times already, right?


• Sean Penn ... This would be interesting. Crazy psycho supermasculine Jesus with an astonishing soft side.


• Julianne Moore ... She can play anything.

February 28, 2004

Pure Cinema

Story -- who needs it?

I submit: The trailer for this Japanese movie "Casshern" (pictured above). Here's the site. Do I have any idea what this movie is about? No. Does it matter? Nooo!

Then there's this Boing Boing entry linking to a series of Flash animations built with old 8-bit Mario graphics. The whole thing is pretty funny, but check out part two in particular -- the way it uses music, motion, and cinematic tricks is astounding. It doesn't matter at all than the actual images are blocky NES icons and the plot is even lower-rez. There is some serious movie magic in effect.

I want an Oscar awarded for "Best Use of the Medium" or something like that. This year, I think "Big Fish" would have fared well in that category.

February 23, 2004

February 22, 2004

Girl With a Bad Script

Forget the hype. The movie is just annoying.

It's one of those movies that makes you resent art-house cinema. It should have had a honking red "For Your Consideration" subtitle superimposed onto every other frame in loopy script. It had a predictable yet nonexistent plot. It featured a cast of 1-ply characters, played by actors who masterfully conveyed suggestions of intense inner lives that unfortunately did not exist. It was pretty. It was empty. It was boring. It was an art appreciation lesson thinly disguised as a film.

There were some great ideas in it. I believe Peter Webber, the director, really was fascinated by the painting, the period, Vermeer's technique, etc. And if you're going to steal from anyone, why not rip off Ingmar Bergman, as Webber does -- a lot?

Still. Want my money back.

January 13, 2004

December 21, 2003

The Lion, the Witch, and New Zealand

Nzoom.com, the homepage for New Zealanders, reports:

Hard on the heels of the success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, it has been confirmed that another epic fantasy will be filmed in New Zealand.

New Zealand director Andrew Adamson, the man behind Shrek, will bring to life the C.S Lewis classic The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe with a budget of more than $150 million.

My thoughts:

• Huzzah! The Chronicles of Narnia on the big screen! (Yes, I know there have been movies, and yes, they delighted me in my youth, but please. They were made for television.)
• The man behind... "Shrek"? Well, we'll see.
• Funny how New Zealand is basically the Shared Vision of Our Heroic Past now. From "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" to "The Return of the King," if it's not New Zealand, it must not be epic!
• A mountaineer friend remarked, after seeing the stunning mountain vistas in ROTK: "I don't know... some of them looked awfully Himalayan."
• I take it back. There's nothing inherently heroic about New Zealand. It's just the landscape that's easiest to digitally augment with mountains, towers, samurai, talking lions, etc.
• Actually, no. I was right the first time. There is something inherently heroic about New Zealand.
• And it's not just the mountains. New Zealand subsidizes film like crazy.

December 16, 2003

Rivendell Raunch

Elves have their sexual needs, like all of us, apparently (completely safe for work). Only Tolkien suggests they were much more chaste than us humans. Unfortunately...

To disappoint slash writers everywhere, there were no clear statements of elf homosexuality. There weren’t even any unclear ones. The most suggestive elf/elf pair are Fingon* and Maedhros, rescuing each other and sending each other presents just because. (Narn i Hîn Húrin, UF) But even they have less eyebrow-raising stuff going on in 500 years than Sam and Frodo managed to pack into one day.

That's what I'm talking about. Except, eww, feet. And, eww, Elijah Wood. But what inquiring minds everywhere really want to know is were there gay Rangers?? (Via Fleshbot via MetaFilter)

Ringwraith Review

Gah! The Newark Star-Ledger's movie critic gave Return of the King its first rotten tomato.

Clearly, an agent of Mordor.

Lord of the Haiku

The Seattle Times is running a Lord of the Rings haiku contest. Example:

Frodo, hear my cry
My heart lies in Middle-earth
Don't call me a dork

-- Kathryn Spillman, Palm Desert, CA

Best. Ever.

'You shall not pass!'

As a colleague pointed out, these pictures of Saddam's medical examination make Iraq's former dictator look like, well, the Balrog.

Which raises the question: Why have we not sent Gandalf to Iraq???

The only reason I can think of is that a pair of hobbits are slowly making their way towards Baghdad, and we wish to keep the Enemy's great fiery gaze turned elsewhere...

Um, yes, so December 17 is one day away.

December 15, 2003

The Fellowship of the Oscar

Take a look at that universal acclaim, baby.

The score will drop as more reviews come in, I'm sure. But will 11 reviews so far, that's still pretty damn impressive.

Robin and I already have our tickets. How about you?

November 23, 2003

The Fabulist

Is it possible to make a movie out of someone like Stephen Glass and not glorify him?

My strongest reaction to seeing "Shattered Glass" yesterday is the desire to read all of his fabricated stories from The New Republic. Seeing as how the magazine has removed those articles from its web archives, and my curiosity isn't strong enough to fuel a visit to an actual library to read the articles, I have to satisfy myself with reading the transcript of his 60 Minutes interview, a few of his former associates' takes on his new novel and movie, and his [partially? completely?] fabricated work for Harper's.

"Shattered Glass" anticipates these impulses, and spends its second half punishing me for having them. For thinking that Peter Sarsgaard's two-dimensional Chuck Lane really is humorless and self-righteous. And that even if Hayden Christensen's Stephen Glass is a conniving psychopath, he's also a clever, self-deprecating wunderkind whose imagination only outstripped his conscience. (And besides, the chap had the decency to provide us with a name divinely outfitted for plays-on-words — "Through a Glass Darkly," "Glass Houses," "Stained Glass," etc.)

... Read more ....

Like a Bright Light

It's hard not to look away.

At talent shows and open mic nights, when the performer isn't very good, I always look away. I used to do the same thing in college when a classmate was getting grilled by a prof. Or when a guest is floundering on a late-night talk show -- I do it then, too.

Tell me if this is familiar:

You turn your head to the side, maybe squint a little. The response is mostly involuntary, and it's probably rooted in vicarious shame. Somehow another person's embarrassment hurts to look at, like a bright light, whether it's in person, on TV, or in a movie.

I saw "Shattered Glass" (IMDB listing, Rotten Tomatoes page) tonight, and I spent most of the second half of the movie looking away. Whenever Hayden Christensen squirmed across the screen as Stephen Glass, I'd pull my baseball cap down over my eyes in the darkness.

But then I'd think, Wait, I paid six bucks for this. I ought to actually watch it.

... Read more ....