Review: Beowulf
Don’t be an idiot. Go see Beowulf. See it on the biggest flippin’ 3D screen you can find. For those of you fortunate enough to live in the center of the universe, that means the Lowes IMAX at 68th and Broadway.
You have to see this move in the theater. It’s that simple.
Robert Zemeckis, a graduate of the Steven Spielberg School of Showmanship, has put together a rather enticing reason NOT to wait for the DVD. In the end, that’s all that this film amounts to, but still, that’s quite a feat. It has the thrills for both the action/fantasy fan and the cinéaste trying to follow modern progressions in filmmaking. This is the film of the future, but we’re not quite there yet. The technology is in its infancy, and it is exciting to see the possibilities of it, even if the intended effect falls flat on its face right now.
As for story, writers Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman have put together a solid, if foolish, script. They’re a good match: Mr. Gaiman being a modern representative of fantasy intellectualism, himself turning into the 21st Century J.R.R. Tolkien; and Mr. Avary having become Hollywood’s goto man for pulpy comic-booky stories, specifically in the realm of video game adaptations. The narrative is tight enough, and the tone matches with cartoonish form of the film rather nicely. In another director’s hands, perhaps pure gold could have been spun out. Read on...
Review: No Country For Old Men
In critical circles it is often mentioned that foreigners often have the best perspective to make films about American life and history. This argument will cite Polanski’s Chinatown; Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly; Wenders’s Paris, Texas; and countless others as proof of the notion that American-ness is something best considered from afar. However, there are two boys from Minneapolis who throw a little kink into that tried and true theory.
With No Country For Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen have further developed their tireless effort to understand what it is to be a citizen of this qcountry and, duly, of the world. In the most basic sense, the film is about chasing the American dream, represented here, as a bag full of money. There are three men going after a piece of the pie: the everyman, the lawman, and the (not so) dark other. How about we rewind and do that again with more semi-colons: Llewelyn Moss, played with indomitable timbre by Josh Brolin; Ed Tom Bell, the once-and-future narrator offered up by Tommy Lee Jones and the deep pockets beneath his weary eyes; and Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem, who will get his own paragraph should you care to read on. Read on...
Best Slogans and Blogsplosion!
While trying to gather my thoughts on No Country For Old Men, I couldn’t help but update myself on the latest and greatest from the WGA strike. A quick googling will find a number of critics, Jamie Lee Curtis chief among them, who are unimpressed by the writers’ slogans on the picket line. Well, I have certainly found the best one out there, as well as a few others that are enjoyable. No surprise the winner came from the WGAe. Drumroll please:
The Winter of our DISSED CONTENT
(It’s nothing against those LA writers, but I am yet to notice Shakespearean puns coming from their throngs of rallyers)
Some other decent fare:
Don’t Write Til it’s Right
More Money, More Funny
I Wrote This (I promise it seems more clever scrawled on posterboard)
Nick Counter Hates Puppies and Babies
Ellen Is No Friend of Mine, Because She Crossed My Picket Line
BLOGSPLOSION!!!
Also for your viewing pleasure…The WGA strike rules are incredibly strict for both members and non-members. But hey, writing is just one of those things you can do by accident sometimes, and writers don’t know what to do with all this free time. So they have turned to about the only format they can work on, the internet. Writers are offering up some pretty great blogs, for both news and getting some jokes off their chest. Get it while it’s hot folks.
United Hollywood
Late Show Writers On Strike
Scribe Vibe @ Variety
Each of those sites will lead to a ton of other writer-centric blogs. Also check out a new blog devoted to the real victims of the strike, non-union film and tv employees whose jobs are either in jeopardy or have already gotten the axe. Hopefully we can all stay off that list.
It’s a sensitive time, but hilarity will get us through it much easier. Below, an hilarious video that shows how desperate the writers are to get some of that creativity out. Watch closely for the best picket sign around.
Review: Michael Clayton
“I am Shiva, the god of death.”
Michael Clayton is immediately recognizable as a film made by a writer. It is a perfectly crafted narrative, with all the beats and reversals happening in the right places. Each character is endowed with a panoply of quirks and relationships which we learn at a pace that seems almost scientifically measured and applied. It is a formulaic thriller in every sense of the word, and it is all the better for it.
Tony Gilroy, the film’s first-time director, slipped into his new role at the top with ease. Having spent nearly his whole professional career as a scribbler, he seems to have approached the onus of his new role with two fistfuls of both trepidation and confidence. By surrounding himself with some of the most talented people working in Hollywood today, he managed to create a film that proves to be highly original, wonderfully familiar, and downright entertaining. Read on...
What is Animation, Zemeckis?
Outside, the writers’ strike rages on. Going into its second day, it has now become clear that the battle between the WGA and the AMPTP is unquestionably an uphill one. And I cannot write about film without mentioning it. But now that I’ve done that, let’s put our thinking caps on.
As many of you may know, Robert Zemeckis has been on a mission for most of his film career. A student of Spielberg’s (read P.T. Barnum’s) school of larger-than-life-cinema thought, Mr. Zemeckis has made a point of utilizing cutting edge technology in nearly all of his films. In this sense, among others, he has left a prolific footprint in the annals of film history.
His Back to the Future series pushed our imaginations to a new limit, while his Who Framed Roger Rabbit? changed the possibilities of live actors mixed with animated characters. (Remember that last film, it’ll be important shortly.) Toning down the kid in him, he earned an Oscar for his American opus, Forrest Gump, the first film to take advantage of the more realistic possibilities of digital technology. When you sit and think about it, the scope of his contributions is far-reaching. Read on...
