Spoilers on the Radio

Baby daddy. (Shhh.)

The New Hampshire Public Radio Word of Mouth show talked to me earlier this week for a short segment on my Four Types of Spoilers essay for The Village Voice. 

You can listen to that here and read the essay here.

What Gravity Should've Learned from ALIENS

Sigourney Weaver and Carrie Henn in ALIENS. 

Sandra Bullock in Gravity. 

Admittedly, ALIENS is a film I've loved unconditionally since I was a kid. I need very little prompting to think about it, and only a little more prompting than that to write about it. But a deleted scene from that 27-year-old movie highlights what is, to me, the sole flaw in Alfonso Curaon's still-fantastic new space movie Gravity, and how audience expectations have changed in the generation since ALIENS. This is the subject of my first piece for Slate, which you can read here.

When Iron Man Ate Superman's Lunch: Summer movies, autopsied.

My summer movie autopsy is up on the Village Voice site today. Please enjoy at your leisure, now that Labor Day is past and you don't have to look out overhead for the computer-generated debris from collapsing skyscrapers.

I also have a couple of short film reviews up on the Voice today, of the documentary Herb & Dorothy 50 x 50 and the the romantic drama And While We Were Here.

Shane Black Like Me, or Fear of a Shane Black Planet

Naturally you'll be rushing out to see Iron Man 3 this weekend. I'm afraid that film won't make one lick of goddamn sense to you if you do not study up by reading my Village Voice rewatch of the filmography of Iron Man 3 cowriter/director Shane Black.​

Where There's a Willis, There's a Way, or They Still Call Me John McClane: Being a die hard's guide to the Die Hard Galaxy

Hey, I didn't ask to annotate the Die Hard films for NPR Monkey See.  I'm just a good man, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

No, I did ask. I was just delighted they were willing to run it at the obsessive, possibly excessive -- but by no means exhaustive! -- length at which I filed it.  It's here.

I didn't have any Nirvana posters on my bedroom wall in high school. I had this one.

I wrote it in a fit of anticipation for A Good Day to Die Hard, a film that, after reading a dozen or so reviews, I've decided I won't be seeing -- not in the cinema, anyway, where movies live. "This is a Die Hard movie where no one is trying and nobody cares, which is depressing," wrote Deadspin's Will Leitch. I haven't been able to bring myself to watch Amour yet, so if I'm in a mood for depression-inducing viewing, I'm not gonna waste that on a movie that by all accounts debases a franchise and a character I've loved since I was a kid.

I know a lot of people in my demographic felt that way about, say, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (a film I think is better than its reputation), but it's clear that movie was doing its durndest to be a quality popcorn experience that left the Indiana Jones franchise intact. The new Die Hard does not seem to have been made with anything approaching that kind of goodwill, or indeed by anyone with any prior connection to the series -- except of course for Bruce Willis, who should know he'll bank more in the long run by holding out for a good script and a competent director.  Watching this film could only upset me.

When Johnny McTiernan Comes Marching Home

As I was getting this post together I was Tweeting with Mike Katzif, whom I know from when he was the producer of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast.  We were talking about what a fun bit of casting it was to have the singer/songwriter Sam Phillips play a mute, knife-wielding assassin in Die Hard with a Vengeance, the Die Hard sequel I prefer. When I mentioned my memory from director John McTiernan's DVD commentary track (which I heard years ago; I didn't revisit it while writing this piece) of McTiernan saying he'd asked Phillips to sing a version of the Civil War-era folk song "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" for the film, Ms. Phillips herself weighed in to set the record straight.

Cool! This potential for personal contact more than makes up for the Internet's abject failure to have a YouTube clip of the part in ...with a Vengeance wherein Ms. Phillips spectacularly fillets a terrified bank security guard with a very large knife. Thank you, Sam Phillips, for helping to make my Die Hard history that much more obsessive/excessive/exhaustive/DEFINITIVE.

...although this one is also pretty good:

Judgment: Judgment Day

Edward Furlong and Arnold Schwarzenegger get close in 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Over in today's Criticwire survey, I make a Sophie's choice and present my surprisingly concise rationale for why Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the superior of James Cameron's two Terminator joints. And I begin flogging my imminent Village Voice piece about Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempt at a comeback in The Last Stand. That should be online Wednesday or Thursday.  Rest assured I will let you know.

Skyfall-In: The Education of Sam Mendes

Thunderball (1965)

I wrote about Skyfall, the new James Bond movie, over at NPR Monkey See. The piece is basically my apology to director Sam Mendes for having expected him to screw this thing up. Gently Mendes-dissing line I wish I'd written: In his Skyfall review at Grantland, Zach Baron described Mendes as "taking a break from plastic-bagging the American Dream in Revolutionary Road and American Beauty to shred the enduring illusions of his native country instead."

Skyfall was partially shot in Istanbul, as was my favorite entry in the half-century-old 007 film series, 1963's From Russia with Love. I contributed some thoughts on why 007 No. 002 is still No. 001 in my book to critics' polls at Criticwire and DCist last week.