Category: movies/tv

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…

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…

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…

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

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 …

So, the LOST writers claim not to be lost at all. They’re not just reeling the episodes out from nothing. It’s all going somewhere, somehow, some perfect way. Moreover (first time I’m using that word. cool, yeah?), they also guarantee that this crazy upside-down inside-out unfantasy island, it’s not some form of limbo or purgatory, where dead non-MILLENIUM (the Kristofferson one) plane passengers go, and I’m guessing they’ve pro…

FRINGE, yep. Best series opener I think I’ve seen. And that’s including the white bears in LOST, the aliens in X-FILES, the space jellyfish in STAR TREK NEXT GENERATION, the plummeting cheerleader in HEROES, the (if I’m remembering correctly) sewn-up mouths in MILLENIUM, the look on Tom Vail’s face when Alyson denies knowing him in NOWHERE MAN, and even the tomfoolery in BRISCO COUNTY, JR. Too, they’ve set the dynamic up well, it looks like…

I’m usually all in support of an artist making money doing whatever. Sure, I respect Springsteen and the U2 guys for not hawking anybody else’s wares, but I hardly begrudge Dylan pushing lingerie or BB King selling Whoppers¹. And it’s not the ‘wares,’ the inherent goodness of lingerie or Whoppers, that makes what they’re doing any less of a sell-out. It’s that the commodity that’s ‘them,’ I figure they can …

Man, came home Friday after watching Prom Night, just all conflicted and twitchy from it, and then the next morning woke early, slammed down an essay-thing about it, and then of course hit the wrong button, lost it all, so, when I finally had time (that night), I re-did what of it I could, and bam, now it’s up at PopMatters, one of the sites I respect the most:

Author Stephen Graham Jones looks into the disappointments of the Prom Night remake, finds pause to reflect back on th

Man, I got the year right for The Ruins anyway, back when. And this is another non-review, yeah. Specifically, one with spoilers. Anyway, yeah, Scott Smith pretty much proves that it’s not always a bad idea to let the author be the one to make that book-to-screen jump. He nails it, I mean. I guess there’s something to be said for knowing the material. Not here to say Good job though. Not only that anyway. Just because the end of the movie version of the The Ruins doesn&#…