This Trailer May Seem Familiar…
They might be aiming at an easy target, but they really nail it:
They might be aiming at an easy target, but they really nail it:
While reading over some of my morning pages from about ten years ago, I encountered a reference to Evan Mather’s short films, and had no idea who he was, what the films were, or why I might have liked them. It turns out that I was referring to his Kenner action figure Star Wars shorts, which he has up, along with other interesting things, on www.evanmather.com. Godzilla Versus Disco Lando is still just as bizarre as it was back then…
Slate V came up with this clever clip about what the Super Bowl might look like if famous filmmakers directed it:
I found this architectural/sociological (sociospatial? psychospatial?) analysis of modern urban warfare, Die Hard, and cinematic portrayals of urban movement to be entirely fascinating. Tactics, psychology, Jason Bourne, parkour, and late-capitalist nonplaces—how can you go wrong with that?
I was tired and stuck in my seat and made the poor choice of watching this awful Liam Neeson action movie. I say “awful” but I don’t just mean bad, I mean its themes and messages were highly questionable and disturbing. Spoilers will follow, but a) it’s not worth seeing and b) I’m not sure they’re “spoilers” with a movie as predictable as this.
[more...]
I came across The Front Line while surfing Netflix for heist movies recently, and decided to watch it on the basis that it was Irish, relatively well-rated, and also that I’d never heard of it. I ended up being fairly impressed, with some reservations.
[more...]
Detailed in this excellent Ask MetaFilter thread. I’m not sure why I don’t own that movie.
Make sure it’s this one:
I don’t have much of a problem with film violence generally, and appreciate good fight scenes, but found myself disturbed by the Watchmen movie’s treatment of them.
[more...]
I am going to go see it. I’m kind of annoyed by this, right now. Because I feel like I have to go see it. They’ve made the trailers look appealing enough that I have to go see it just in case it’s actually good, even though I’m still extremely skeptical.
Wil Wheaton likes it. I don’t know if that means anything to you. I don’t know if that means anything to me, actually. But he does swear by the beard of Zeus that the movie feels like the book. On the other hand, he does wonder why ultra-purists (hi!) would bother to see it at all.
I don’t know. There are already some things I don’t like from the trailers (like Rorschach’s voice and some of the costume changes), but in order to find out whether or not they’re minor details or signs that Snyder’s vision of it is too alien to me, I have to go see it.
This was featured on BoingBoing recently, but I like it enough to put it up here anyway.
It’s a video for “Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free”, by Zombie-Zombie; the video is a reinterpretation of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Both are excellent, and prompted me to buy the album (A Land for Renegades) and a DVD of the John Carpenter classic. (I’ve never seen the other films in Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy, Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness, and should probably do so.)
I think that the music for this video would also work extremely well with the Metallica video I posted recently.
This one is apparently from 1977 or 1978, and I find it quite amazing that it was made in the Soviet Union at that time:
The second you’ve probably seen already (it’s the new Metallica video), but if you haven’t I think it’s definitely worth watching even if you’re not a Metallica fan (I’m not sure that I am, at this point, but the video is quite interesting):
slacktivist, author of a colossal serial annotation of the first novel in the Left Behind series (here’s the first entry), has begun a series of comments on the movie.
[more...]
I really like this short film:
It’s Irish from 2001, but I’d never heard of it before yesterday. Incidentally, it appears that there was a disproportionately high Irish presence in the 2001 Oscar nominees for animated shorts.
This movie was recommended to me back in August, and I think it looks quite interesting:
That doesn’t look like your typical treatment of vampires at all, so I think I’ll have to go see it to see what they’re doing.
Before reading this article by Dennis Perrin, I’d never heard of Billy Jack. But I think I might have to see this 1977 movie (contrary to what Perrin implies, it is available on DVD):
I went to see Bill Maher’s Religulous on Friday night. The SF Chronicle reviewed it and didn’t like it, characterizing it as completely unfair and one-sided. After reading that review, I thought I might not like it, myself, since I tend to prefer fair and reasonable debate/argument.
[more...]
These are some of the best YouTube clips I’ve ever seen… I’m not sure what it is that makes them quite so captivating.
[more...]
I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight this evening. I had mixed feelings about Batman Begins—I loved the first half of it and hated the second half. The Dark Knight was different: the parts I hated and the parts I loved were mixed together throughout the film.
[more...]
I’m usually pleased when I stumble across questions that it seems can only be answered by Freebase or a lot of work—even though I don’t see Freebase as being primarily for casual searching/browsing in the way that Wikipedia is, it’s always nice when I come up with a casual question (one that might come up in conversation, say) that suits the site very well.
[more...]
I just can’t resist linking to Glenn Beck lauding The Dark Knight as a film vindicating Bush’s policies. Somehow I missed Andrew Klavan doing the same in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago… and reading it now simply makes my head hurt.
[more...]
I haven’t seen The Dark Knight yet. I intend to see it, although my feeling about Batman Begins was that the first half was excellent and the second half execrable. I hope the second movie doesn’t continue the downward trend. I also have my doubts about the presence of Harvey Dent—I’ve never found that character compelling or believable, even in The Dark Knight Returns.
“I don’t believe in Harvey Dent” is a pretty good critique/rant about the recent superhero movies, including The Dark Knight, The Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man. John Pistelli also covers The Dark Knight, and Hellboy II (which I also intend to see).
[more...]
The trailer for the film adaptation of Watchmen is out. I’ve always been sceptical of what Hollywood would do to it, figuring they’d manage to mangle the masterpiece that is the graphic novel.
[more...]