Somewhere between the Oscar-winning geneses of 1980’s Fame and its 2009 remake, technology changed fame’s definition. Once the reward for hard work and craft refinement, fame has become the reward for cheaply hawking the three B’s (belly, breasts and butt). Where fame and the title of “celebrity” (IE- an individual worthy of celebration) were once purchased in the currency of dedicated sweat, it’s now easily traded via the narcissistically shallow efforts to amass a legion of social network followers with …
Author: Dan
Michael Caine. The guy’s thespianized in both dreck (Jaws 3) and tentpole (Batman) and everything in between (The Cider House Rules), but he’s got that je ne sais quoi that keeps everyone coming back for more. Most recently, he’s become the lovable Grampa Caine personae of the Miss Congeniality and Children of Men variety, but before all that he was a gun-totin’ hard case in 1971’s Get Carter. Three cheers for the upcoming Harry Brown, then– it looks like we’re getting …
Unexpectedly pleasant movies are always a nice surprise. After Cloudy With a Chance of Meatball‘s lackluster marketing efforts and a string of mediocre trailers, I’d all but written it off. Oops. Totally unfamiliar with the children’s book of the same name, I went in to Sony Animation’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs with an unattached blank slate– a slate quickly loaded with a congenial array of off-center comedy and LOL zing. Who knew? Cloudy barrels forward with a technicolor …
Jennifer’s Body arrives not as simply a tongue-through-cheek horror film aimed at enticing the teen crowd, but also loaded with a hat-trick of questions: 1) Is Diablo Cody (writer of Juno and Showtime’s United States of Tara) a 2-hit wonder? 2) Does Megan Fox have an acting career beyond Transformers? and 3) Is the movie any good? The answer: probably not, kind of and not really. In move-geek circles, a lot’s been made of the fact Oscar Winning screenwriter Diablo …
Not long ago, we shared the trailer for the quirky, funny, golden-cast The Men Who Stare at Goats. It’s pure sell, magic and win-win… and I haven’t even seen it yet. So what’s up with all the premature prognosticating? This poster. Sure, it may be a liiiiittle too Burn After Reading-esque, but those hairy new age faces, peacefully smiling at the honor of serving both country and The Age of Aquarius, are sublime.
I’ve gone on record stating Band of Brothers is one of the best epic films never to have been shown at an art house or Megaplex. Since its debut way back in 2001 (yes, 8 years ago), there’s been a steady march toward a similar Spielberg/Hanks produced mini-series based on the conflict in the Pacific Theater– IE: where the US and Japan fought savage and nightmarish battles across specks of Pacific islands to, in many cases, Japan’s last man. The …
For an issue that’s dominated U.S. foreign policy and the world stage for more than half a century and counting, the Israeli-Arab conflicts of the Middle East receive virtually no cinematic attention. Luckily, the last few years has seen an Israeli/Palestinian film renaissance in addressing various components of this conflict, ranging from Kippur‘s insight on the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Paradise Now‘s tense profile of a pair of suicide bombers and Waltz With Bashir‘s hazy pastiche of the Lebanon War. …
Last night’s viewing of 9 was a pleasurable one from a theater-going perspective. Loud-mouthed jokers kept their traps shut, cell phones were kept silent and dark and the only loud whispering was when I told Andy to get his hand off my thigh. Buuuut… as my “assault and battery with dirty words and glances” record can attest, that’s not always the case. Especially when attending movies locally– and for a second there, I thought I might be overstating unfair aspersions, …
Shane Acker, director of 9*, has a problem. While his student film and Oscar-nominated short of the same name is mysterious, unconventional and wondrously imaginative, it’s also very narrow-cast—an avante guard project appealing to Acker’s sensibilities and a niche handful of others who enjoy dark, fantastical settings and Hot Topic shopping sprees. The theatrical release exudes the same vibe: too dark and mature for kids, too bleak and somber for mass audience appeal and too short to build an audience …
Aaaaand I’m one of them. I don’t have much to say, beyond once again, we have a live action commercial showing why Halo would make, at the very least, a fantastic war movie. As a commercial for the upcoming expansion to Halo 3: ODST, this trailer is nothing less than a quick shot of adrenaline. I don’t have much more to say than Andy’s said here and here, but I’ll be watching this in HD over and over and over …