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Filtering by Category: movies
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.
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.
One of my favorite warm-weather traditions is to take in a double or triple-feature at the Bengies Drive-In, which opens for the season tonight. The area's sole surviving specimen of a once-flourishing movie-exhibition format, Bengies offers the opportunity to see three current films, if your backside can go the distance, for the you-can't-afford-not-to-go admission price of $9 per person. Or roughly 75 percent of what you would pay to see Oblivion, and only Oblivion, at the multiplex this weekend, where you'll enjoy the un-sublime non-pleasure of being distracted by your fellow patrons' glowing smartphone screens throughout the film. (Only those patrons who are pitiable, uncouth savages, of course. But one bad Apple iPhone user can spoil the whole bunch, as Confucius said.)
You need wheels to get there: It's a 2.5-hour round trip from DC to Easton, MD, where Bengies is located. You can make some of that cash back by bringing your own food, though you should buy an honor-system outside food permit for $10 if you do that. Pack a picnic basket; you'll be there for six or seven hours, remember. (Alcohol is verboten, a rule always strictly observed by everyone, just like the 55 mph speed limit posted on Interstate 95.)
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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.
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:
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.
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.
Because I routinely make awful decisions about how to spend my time, I paid $24.99 (50% of MSRP) for the four-disc, 3D Blu-Ray edition of Prometheus, a film I'd harbored huge hopes for but ultimately found disappointing. A Ridley Scott film, in other words.
I don't have the gear or the inclination to watch a 3D movie at home, but the deluxe set that includes the 3D version of Prometheus (along with the plain-Jane 2D in three different formats, because what price piece of mind?) is the only way to get The Furious Gods, a three-hour, 40 minute (!) making-of documentary by Charles de Lauzirika, a nonfiction filmmaker whose substantive, well-edited making-ofs for similarly lavish reissues of Scott's only two great films -- say their names with me now, everybody, Alien and Blade Runner -- have already claimed many irreplaceable hours of my life.
The Furious Gods is long, sure, but actually it's longer, because I've been watching in "enhanced mode," meaning that when an icon appears at the top of the screen I can press a button on my remote and watch an "enhancement pod" -- a video footnote, basically -- containing even more nerdily trivial information about whatever specific aspect of the film's conception and production is being discussed at that moment.
When Scott talks about casting original Dragon Tattoo Girl Noomi Rapace in the movie, you can watch her screen test. When production designer Arthur Max talks about creating the movie's titular spacecraft (which was still called the Magellan for a long time, did you know, even after the Untitled Alien Prequel acquired the name Prometheus), you can click through dozens of drawings and schematics of the ship -- which I think that all of us, regardless of our political affiliation, can agree is fucking rad. You can even watch an enhancement pod about the film's many rejected titles. Alien: Tomb of the Gods, anyone?
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