Category: movies/tv

The Year in Movies


For me, anyway. However, the caveat — movies I haven’t seen yet:

THE HURT LOCKER: the title kept me away, yeah. very undescriptive. or, maybe makes perfect sense afterward, but none before.
500 DAYS OF SUMMER: dug the trailer, did the actors, heard great stuff about it, but, being not-horror, it kept slipping down the list.
THE FANTASTIC MR FOX: I still trust Wes Anderson. will see this one before too long, here.
ANTICHRIST: man, the Green Goblin and some scene tha…

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The Word for World is Forest

AVATAR 3D in IMAX, wow. it’s SCANNER DARKLY and FERN GULLY and BRAVEHEART as percolated up through DANCES WITH WOLVES and POCAHONTAS. loved it in spite of those last two, even. and, though I can’t find it in his bibliography now, I was pretty sure I’d read a Samuel Delaney book/story about wearing bodies like suits to explore alien planets, and the explorers wearing those bodies of course just running off into this new place, never coming back. help? were th…

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A Sentimental Education: Saw 6

One of the big axioms of storytelling is that you know a character best by the decisions he or she makes under extreme circumstances. It’s why you push your characters out into the street, see how they react when traffic’s slamming in from all sides at once. Granted, you can rig your story so that it’s all kitchen sink drama, low-key enough that ‘extreme circumstances’ gets redefined as a standoff about who’s going to answer a ringing phone, but that kind of slow-ha…

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Paranormal Activity

Got an article/review/essay (‘response?’) up for it over at Popmatters. Kind of wanted to call it Geppetto mon Amour, but figured that might show my roots too much. Those being all in France, yes.

The LINK. Would slap some cool images up here, too, but the guys who do the art over at Popmatters have already got it all done and done, much better than I ever could have.…

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Harry Warden for President

My write-up for My Bloody Valentine‘s finally up. Links to a couple of other reviews in the post below this. Hitting Friday the 13th today, in Chicago. Even brought my mask.…

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Despereaux

Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’m a fool for an animated feature film. Cars, Wall*E, Bolt. Monsters, Inc, the Shreks, the Toy Storys. Flushed Away, Ratatouillie. Anxiously awaiting Aliens vs. Monsters. Have never quite gotten all the way over the brilliance of Hoodwinked. So, yeah, was expecting The Tale of Despereaux to be another sure thing. I mean, just look at the starpower: Sigourney Weaver, Dustin Hoffman, Matthew Broderick, Tracy Ullman, Emma Watson. Ev…

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Cinemuck, 2008

At least according to me. But, I don’t know, everywhere I click, people are pasting their best-of lists on-line. Feel all remiss if I don’t play along just a little. However, realizing that, now that I actually live close to a theatre, and to all kinds of opportunities in Denver, I’ve been somehow going to the movies less. Or, less compulsively. Not at all a statement on quality or anything. Maybe more that I’ve just feeling very guilty about how many u…

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Thus Spake Pumpkinhead

Don’t know if everybody’s been keeping up, but over at Popmatters Marco Lanzagorta (of the never uncool “Dread Reckoning“) has been doing a Night of the Living Dead fortieth anniversay essay collection the last five days. Some ridiculously cool stuff, including a little intro from Romero. Anyway, got a piece up there today, as a Happy Halloween trick. Title / link: “The Kind of Murder Happy Characters We Have Here.” About, um, you gu…

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Four Movies, Five Days

Which really isn’t that many, I know. I mean, I used to love cueing up the whole STAR TREK series, watching them back to back. Anyway, all over the spectrum here:

SYNECHDOCHE, NEW YORK. Free screening with Charlie Kaufman there for the Q&A. Which was great. Or, great if you like watching somebody writhe under a series of ridiculous questions. But he handles them well, seems like a good guy. And, as for SYNECHDOCHE, I don’t know. I mean, I was all over BEING JOHN M

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Hindsight: Appaloosa

The western may be one of the few if not only genres where character development is actually at crosspurposes with audience expectations. We don’t want the passing-through cowpoke/gunhand/lawman/whatever to actually change, do we? Isn’t it all better if they stay the same? Granted, maybe a more intense version of themselves, of the self they’re trying not to be anymore, as in Tombstone, or even a reversion to who they used to be, as in in Unforgiven, but …

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