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11 November 2010
[movies] Roger Ebert on the 1978 Superman Movie … ‘Donner pulls off a balancing act involving satire, action, romcom clichés and of course a full serving of clichés from hard-boiled newspaper movies. What’s admirable is that Salkind and Donner realized they had to make a comedy. The film came in an era of Disaster Movies that took themselves with dreadful earnestness, and they knew the essential element of Superman was fun. Superheroes who came later to big budget movies, notably Batman and Iron Man, would be burdened with angst. But Superman was above that sort of thing. Above it, or emotionally incapable of it, or whatever.’ [via Daring Fireball]
2 October 2010
[movies] Starring the Computer … a pretty comprehensive looking list of real computers shown in movies and TV … ‘NCIS – Season 6, Episode 13 (2009): McGee receives a parcel containing his old computers including a Mac Classic.’
14 September 2010
[comics] Superheroes Are Misunderstood … ‘Yes, Iron Man (in his film version, at least) and Batman articulate a glorious spectacle of dripping wealth and grey-area morality, but the narratives of their respective worlds already include layers of self-deception, personal uncertainty and the difficulty of every quest for higher ideals.’
25 August 2010
[movies] Kubrick … long, must-read profile of Stanley Kubrick by Michael Herr … ‘He went to the computer that he was using to write the script. He typed, marked, cut, pasted, while I faked interest. When he was finished with the routine, Christiane phoned to say that dinner was ready. As we left, I reminded him that he hadn’t turned the computers off.
“They like to be left on,” he said ironically, factually, tenderly.
24 August 2010
[kubrick] Don’t Open The Elevator … Metafilter discuss the trailer for The Shining … ‘Now I’m imagining the reverse shot, which would be the blood patiently sitting in the elevator, listening to Elevator music, until there’s a *ping* and the doors open and it rushes out.’
21 August 2010
[movies] Is Christopher Nolan the new Stanley Kubrick? … ‘Kubrick made films about paedophilia, military justice, atomic obliteration, urban violence and the Vietnam war; his emigration to England was partly fuelled by the desire to avoid controlling Hollywood types. Nolan is – at present, anyhow – a confirmed establishment figure; nothing he’s done has caused the smallest ripple of disquiet. This may change, but with another Batman film in the works I can’t see it happening just yet.’
16 August 2010
[kubrick] Photo of Stanley Kubrick on the set of A Clockwork Orange … ‘It’s unusual to have someone’s feet so prominent, but it doesn’t take away from his expression. He was the least lazy of men, but there’s something very relaxed about the pose.’
7 July 2010
[movies] A Religion for Toys … a movie review that describes the theology behind Toy Story 3 … ‘In the theology of Toy Story, Andy is God and Woody is his prophet. He is more Moses than Jesus. For one thing, he is orthodox. In the theology of toys, the ideal is to be owned and to be played with. Of these two, it is more important to be owned, and to be owned by one God only. Andy’s room is heaven…’
6 July 2010
[movies] The 100 Greatest Movie Insults of All Time … be warned: extreme swearing. NSFW … ‘Fuck you, fuckball!’
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21 June 2010
[kubrick] Scorsese on Kubrick … Martin Scorcese on Stanley Kubrick, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut and the Shining … ‘I also love the visions-the maze, the elevator, Nicholson bouncing a rubber ball across the vast expanses of the hotel lobby to kill time, the enormous golden ballroom, the red Formica bathroom in which Nicholson “meets” the butler. And, perhaps most frightening of all, the vision of an ordinary American family, beautifully acted, who’ve wandered into deep psychic waters.’
31 May 2010
[movies] Paul Verhoeven: ‘Robocop was a Jesus metaphor’ … ‘The point of Robocop, of course, it is a Christ story. It is about a guy who gets crucified in the first 50 minutes, and then is resurrected in the next 50 minutes, and then is like the supercop of the world, but is also a Jesus figure as he walks over water at the end.’
26 April 2010
[movies] My Lifelong Pursuit of the Perfect Blade Runner Gun … one man’s obessional pursuit of a perfect replica of Rick Deckard’s gun … ‘In 2006, the screen-used original surfaced after 25 some-odd years and sold at auction last year for $256,000.’
31 March 2010
[morris] New Details on Errol Morris’ Next Documentary, Tabloid … ‘His next film, Tabloid, is a considerable departure from his previous film, Standard Operating Procedure, and centers on the fascinating figure of former Miss Wyoming, convicted rapist, and dog-cloning supporter Joyce McKinney.’
18 February 2010
[movies] Kosmograd: Why 2010 wont be like ‘2010’ … why the imagery and portrayal of computers in the 1984 film 2010 doesn’t match up to the computers we use today … ‘Unlike the computers of 2010, the computers in ‘2010’ do not create space. The computers of the Leonov, and even HAL 9000 on the Discovery, are little more than tools or automatons, tactile and solid. Whereas HAL looked out into our world, today we look into the world created within the computer.’
12 February 2010
[movies] Is Great Cinema Ever The Work Of A Single Man? … how much does a great movie owe to it’s director? … ‘Theoretically, says Loader, it is Âentirely possible for a film to direct Âitself. A solid cast and crew can be Ârelied on to fill in the gaps left by a Âdirector who is either inept or awol. “Oh, it happens all the time,” he says.’
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2 February 2010
[movies] The Director of Downfall Speaks Out on All Those Angry YouTube Hitlers … ‘As for the idea of such a serious scene being used for laughs, Hirschbiegel thinks it actually fits with the theme of the movie. “The point of the film was to kick these terrible people off the throne that made them demons, making them real and their actions into reality,” he says.’
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30 January 2010
[comics] V for Vendetta in Kinetic Typography … ‘Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.’ (more…)
31 December 2009
[funny] The Perfect Billboard … ‘My God, it even has a watermark.’
23 December 2009
[movies] Great Overview Of The Best Of Asian Cinema … my friend Steve has been looking at Asian Cinema from some time now on his blog Things Fall Apart. His review of progress so far is a great jumping on point … ‘The blog has not run the way I thought it would. I started with a list of 15 movies. I still have to cover my favourite 7 (Oldboy, My Sassy Girl, Infernal Affairs, Uzamki, Battle Royale, Suicide Circle and Kairo). I have at least another 20 movies that I know I want to talk about.’
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22 December 2009
[comics] Mike Sterling On Watchmen: ‘…there’s a part of me that wishes the Watchmen film had been an enormous hit, enough so that a sequel would have been inevitable, and that even possibly new comic book follow-ups and tie-ins would have been published. Because really, the fanguish that would have caused would have been epically awesome.’
18 December 2009
[tv] Let’s Enhance Montage … ‘Lock On and enhance the Zee Axis…’ (more…)
11 November 2009
[movies] In Praise Of The Sci-Fi Corridor … On the corridors in Alien: ‘Ridley Scott knows that corridors matter in a horror (or ‘haunted house’) movie, but these marvellous sets are also being showcased to sell the gritty and grimy, commercial and industrial reality of the Nostromo as well. The upper sections related to the command deck were dirtied down with gold and black paint after a reshuffle of sections in order to convey the grittier world inhabited and Parker and Brett on the engineering level.’ [via Metafilter]
19 October 2009
[movies] Roger Ebert Reviews Alien … As the sequels (“Aliens,” “Alien 3,” “Alien Resurrection”) will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesn’t play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a “perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility,” and admits: “I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.”
29 September 2009
[movies] Philip K. Dick on Blade Runner … ‘As for my own role in the BLADE RUNNER project, I can only say that I did not know that a work of mine or a set of ideas of mine could be escalated into such stunning dimensions.’ [via @girlonetrack]
7 September 2009
[movies] Matt Haughey on Julie and Julia: ‘There was this one scene. Julie is in her cube and she’s ecstatic that a post got 53 comments and she high fives her coworker, and moments later her husband calls and says he just noticed she’s #3 on the most popular Salon blogs list and her arms shoot up out of her cube in victory and I began to cry tears of joy. I sat in the theater thinking about my little blog…’ [via Robot Wisdom]
26 August 2009
[timeline] Time Travel Timeline … Information is Beautiful provides a visual timeline of time travel movies showing where paradoxes might occur.
21 July 2009
[comics] After Watchmen, What’s ‘Unfilmable’? These Legendary Texts … Wired looks at some susposedly unfilmable comics and books … On Sandman: ‘Too long. Spanning 74 issues and more than a decade, if you count spinoffs and standalones, Neil Gaiman’s decorated mythopoetic fantasy starring Dream, Death and other revered, abstract personifications is stuck in film limbo. “There is talk of an HBO Sandman,” Gaiman told Wired.com in March, “because no one quite knows what to do with it. But the truth is, if anybody is going to make [it] a movie, it will probably be a kid in film school right now to whom The Sandman was the most important thing ever. It will take the amount of commitment, dedication and madness that Peter Jackson brought to Lord of the Rings to get it on the screen…”‘
27 June 2009
[movies] Michael Mann Interview … the director of Public Enemies interviewed in the Guardian … ‘Public Enemies is the first movie to attempt to disentangle the Dillinger myth from the facts – until now every other filmmaker has, so to speak, printed the legend – and one wonders, in retrospect, why it took Mann this long to get around to it, so well matched are the gangster’s story and the themes and concerns that have animated Mann throughout his career.’
4 June 2009
[funny] Han Solo, P.I. … Star Wars done in the style of Magnum P.I.’s opening credits. [via Waxy]
8 May 2009
[lists] 10 Best Head-Scratching Stories, Explained … ‘Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth: Jimmy relives his granddad’s life. He finally meets his father, who then dies. Superman can’t save him.’
6 May 2009
[movies] Top 13 Stupidest Decisions In The History Of Horror Films … ‘Building your house on top of that old cemetery.’
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27 April 2009
[funny] Ask Mefi: I would like a comprehensive list of each offense Ferris and his friends commit during the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” … ‘There are many cases of fraud in the movie. For example, when one kid is asked, “Do you know Ferris Bueller,” he responds, “Yeah, he’s getting me out of summer school.” [..]
Oh, and in theory, Cameron’s father could go after both Ferris and Cameron for grand theft auto of the Ferrari.’
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25 April 2009
[film] Go Watch: Carousel … I watched this and wondered… Where’s Batman? … ‘Tribal DDB, Amsterdam commissioned us to create a piece of filmed content that could hold its own with Hollywood’s best. Director Adam Berg responded with an idea for an epic ‘frozen moment’ cops and robbers shootout sequence that included clowns, explosions, a decimated hospital, and plenty of broken glass and bullet casings.’
15 April 2009
[funny] Uncomfortable Plot Summaries … from postmodernbarney.com … ‘DAREDEVIL: Blind man pisses off crime boss, gets all his girl-friends killed.’
25 March 2009
[comics] The 20 Best Movies Adapted from Comic Books … interesting list to ponder … ‘American Splendor (2003. USA) Welcome to the esoteric life and times of Harvey Pekar, a cranky file clerk from Cleveland whose cult-fave self-published comix used to get pimped back in the day on the David Letterman show. Paul Giamati does a fantastic job of portraying Pekar, and even more eerie is how dead-on some of the supporting cast are at channelling Robert Crumb and Tobey Radloff. Pretty much a perfect movie about one of the most important autobiographical comics to ever come out of the underground.’
18 March 2009
[watchmen] Charlie Brooker On Watchmen: ‘Fun as a massive great spectacle, but it surely can’t make any sense whatsoever to anyone who hasn’t read the comic; it was a bit like watching an impressive animated version of a collection of snatched memories of what the comic was like, if you see what I mean.’
6 March 2009
[comics] Who Makes The Watchmen? … A illustrated guide to the tortured history of the production of the Watchmen movie … ‘Hurm. Snyder and Tse seem to have faithful adaptation. Minus the squid. But keeping the violence. Fine with me.’
[comics] Review of the Watchmen Movie by Pádraig Ó Méalóid … a real Alan Moore fan reviews Watchmen … ‘There is a scene in the film where Doctor Manhattan is being interviewed in a television studio, just before he abruptly leaves the Earth to go to Mars. He describes something – I don’t recall what at this point – as being as useful as a photograph of Oxygen would be to a drowning man. And this is actually the most apt description I can think of for this film: It looks a lot like the original Watchmen book, but has none of its grace, or beauty, or subtlety, or sinuously beautiful timing.’
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