All posts by archangel

Film, Internet, Television

Common Sense Ratings

Noticed something new on Netflix: a rating that wasn’t from the MPAA. Turns out it’s from an organization called Common Sense Media. It strives to do what Roger Ebert has been doing for years – let parents know when the MPAA got it wrong. However, it goes beyond movies into TV and video games, and goes beyond covering sex and violence into areas like consumerism. It also seems to stress – gasp – talking to your kids about how they should think about what they’re watching.

Sadly, this will probably go completely unnoticed by the parents who need it most. Like that couple complaining that the “free under 3” policy doesn’t apply to R-rated movies. Like the Exorcist. And yes, that’s a true story. We are doomed.

Share/Bookmark
Film

Are Any Of These Movies Great?

3 Comments

I’m trying to work on my Best Films of 2008 a little early this year. I went through the list of Oscar-eligible films and copied all the titles I haven’t seen yet that might make my “best of” list. I’m sure some of these are great1 and some have almost no chance, but if you have an opinion (for or against) please comment.
Continue reading Are Any Of These Movies Great? →

  1. The Wrestler, WALL-E, and Slumdog Millionaire are already in the IMDB Top 250; a few others are Ebert 4 star films. [↩]
Share/Bookmark
Film, Internet

Finding Movies to Watch

1 Comment

TV shows are in limbo, making this a good time to catch up on those movies you’ve missed. I’ve tried to use Netflix, but it’s recommendation engine is still sub-par.1 Here are two resources that are actually reliable:

Ebert Search: Just select 3.5-4 stars in 2008. You’ll find some interesting stuff from the best film critic in the world.

2008’s Oscar-Eligible Films: Going through the 281 films that can be nominated for the 2009 Academy Awards, I found a lot of interesting films I didn’t have a chance to see.

  1. No matter how I browsed, it never suggested Step Brothers, even though I haven’t rated it, I want to see it, and Netflix predicts I’ll really like it. [↩]
Share/Bookmark
Film, Music

Mediocre Movies, Good Song

This weekend I watched Meet Bill and Cashback on Netflix downloads. Meet Bill has a great cast, but they’re tied to a messy plot with an unfulfilling ending. It’s also a bit gayer than was strictly necessary. I would have been better off watching American Beauty for the seventh time. Cashback has some hot naked chicks, and while I can relate with the protagonist’s (and director’s, I’m sure) obsession with the beauty of the female form, there wasn’t a lot of there, there. Here, I should have rewatched Art School Confidential. Neither are terrible films, but you can find better. Even on Netflix downloads.1

But coincidentally, both films included Royksopp’s What Else Is There? in their soundtracks. This is a great mid-tempo electronic song with ethereal vocals, so I include it here for your enjoyment:

  1. Netflix’s download selection is notoriously subpar, especially if you discount the classics. Illustrating this, one commenter on IMDB, complaining about Meet Bill, wrote “now I know why it was available for download”. [↩]
Share/Bookmark
Everything Else

You Talkin’ To Me?

4 Comments

There was a shooting in a theater on Christmas, and what’s most interesting is what isn’t being discussed. Here’s what went down: a family was laughing and talking very loudly during Benjamin Button, which annoyed other theater goers. Words were had, then popcorn thrown, then fighting broke out, then gunfire.

Here’s another way to put it: an Italian guy shot a black guy in a South Philly movie theater because the black guy’s family wouldn’t keep quiet and the Italian guy is clearly unhinged1.

And nobody is mentioning any stereotypes here. I’ve read several articles, and comments on those articles by people who did not have to pass any tests to comment, and still no mention of race, ethnicity, black, white, stereotypes, etc.

I think this is progress. But I’m not 100% sure.

  1. After the shooting cleared the theater, the shooter sat back down to enjoy the rest of the film. Ah, peace and quiet! [↩]
Share/Bookmark
Film

The Day The Earth Stood Still: IMAX: Review (spoiler free)

Having seen the original, then the trailer for the remake, I came in with low expectations. I recommend you do the same. It got 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, which seemed a bit harsh after watching it. Then I remembered Rotten Tomatoes lists the percentage of critics who recommend the film. This is not a critic’s choice. I’m not sure this is even an average moviegoer’s choice. It’s simply better than we expected, which may say more about our expectations than the film.

The original is an absolute sci-fi classic. It was very easy to improve on the circa-1950 effects, and they did. However, even though this is billed as an IMAX movie, they don’t have any IMAX scenes; they just reformatted it for the bigger screen.

And even though the f/x are much better1, they don’t make up for the changes to the characters’ personalities. The boy, played by Jayden Smith, went from likable to slappable. As for the alien visitor Klaatu, played by Keanu Reeves, well, they removed his personality altogether. To quote Ebert:

He is so solemn, detached and uninvolved he makes Mr. Spock look like Hunter S. Thompson at closing time.

The acting is fine throughout (assuming Smith and Reeves were told to act annoying and wooden, respectively), but solid performances and nice effects can’t save it from bad characterization and plot holes. One of the dangers of making a film more realistic and up to date is that it invites more scrutinizing; unless you’re really thorough, the audience can see the holes better. These guys weren’t so thorough.

Again, the original is a true classic, currently #197 on the IMDB Top 250. For the $17 I spent on the IMAX ticket (plus gas), I could have bought a copy of the original on Blu-ray. I suggest you do that instead.

At Amazon:
The Day the Earth Stood Still (Special Edition) [Blu-ray] (1951)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (Two-Disc Special Edition) [DVD] (1951)

  1. For instance, you can’t see wires holding Gort’s arms up [↩]
Share/Bookmark
Film

X-Files: I Want To Believe (Spoiler-free)

2 Comments

When the movie was released over the summer, I was a little surprised by the lack of interest. I realize it had been 10 years since the original movie and 6 years since the series ended1, but I would have thought the lack of material would have raised interest. I can only guess that the trailer did a poor job selling it because the poster had people talking.

For me, the marketing made no difference. I simply thought: I’ve already watched about 150 hours of X-Files – why would I stop short of what could be the final 2? This is the basis for my recommendation; if that’s not good enough for you, well, OK.

Now it’s available on Blu-ray and I’ve finally seen it – the extended cut, no less. It turns out I wasn’t prepared. I forgot a lot about the series. I watched it with a friend who had also seen the series, and we were expecting closure on topics like Mulder’s alien-abducted sister, conspiracy plots, etc. There is almost none of that in the film. It’s pretty much a standalone episode with a little “where are they now?” thrown in. I felt like I was shorted.

Then I visited Wikipedia to research a couple references I didn’t fully remember. This was, uh, enlightening. As it turns out, just about everything I wanted closure on I had already gotten – in the series. I just forgot it all.

So if you’re going to watch this, but like me haven’t give the show much thought in the last 6 years, do a little pre-reading on Wikipedia.2 Reading the main X-Files article will obviously help, but if you’re short on time, there are two character histories that will save you a couple major “Wait… what???” moments: Fox’s sister Samantha Mulder and Baby William.

Once you do that, and you go in with the mindset of “cool, I’m getting one last standalone bonus episode” then seeing I Want To Believe won’t be a big disappointment.

And “one last” sadly seems to be the case. Chris Carter said that if this was a big success he’d make another X-Files movie about the foretold alien invasion of earth in 2012. Obviously, that would be very cool. Unfortunately, judging from the IMDB box office numbers, IWTB was less a big success and more a “let’s hope this thing breaks even after DVD sales”.

Where to next?
So it looks like this is really the end, as The Lone Gunmen didn’t exactly take off.3 My recommendation: Bones.

It’s about a female doctor (Temperance Brennan, aka Bones, a forensic anthropologist rooted in hard science and skepticism) partners with a male FBI agent (Seely Booth, who relies on psychology and hunches) to solve homicides. There is constant sexual tension between the partners, but no gratification. Heck, they even made Booth Catholic. It may not be X-Files, but it’s as close as you’re gonna get.

At Amazon:

The X-Files Store
The Bones Store

  1. And mostly without Mulder and Scully for the last two seasons [↩]
  2. Alternately, the DVD (or at least the Blu-ray) has an exhaustive episode recap for every episode in the series, plus a video clip for each. You can go through it and get really caught up, but it will take you hours. At that point, you may want to rewatch the whole series. It’ll only take you an hour a day for 6 months. [↩]
  3. Thinking about TLG pisses me off. I postulate that it would have been fantastic if it carried the dramatic tone and conspiratorial plot of X-Files instead trying to turn it into a screwball comedy. They were my favorite characters on the X-Files but were turned into complete jokes on their own series. The episodes were mostly standalone – and goofy, yet these guys were the kings of conspiracy! What happened to The Lone Gunmen was a creative tragedy that could have been easily avoided. [↩]
Share/Bookmark
Humor, Television

A Lifetime Of Delusions

6 Comments

I’ve been hearing radio commercials for something called Flirting With Forty starring Heather Locklear. It is, unsurprisingly, a Lifetime movie. According to the commercials, Locklear plays a lonely single mom who just turned 40 (even though Locklear is 47). While on vacation, she meets a much younger guy who’s all over her. Apparently, in Lifetime movies, this is how guys in their late 20’s think:

She’s 13 years older than me AND she’s got kids? Sounds a little too good to be true. There’s gotta be a catch! But I’ll stick with her and show her complete devotion until the other shoe drops. Seriously, though, how can she be single? Her husband must’ve died hours ago…

Lifetime is the female equivalent of the Spice Channel.

Share/Bookmark
Books

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman: Review

1 Comment
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman I started reviewing Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs a while ago. It got so long I decided I could write a series of posts on or inspired by the book. Like anything that ambitious, I eventually realized it’s too much work and I should just write a succinct review. I just tried that and I still fell short. See, my aim is to get you to buy the book, and just not for the pennies I might get from an affiliate sale, but because I think it’s awesome. So here’s why you need to buy it:
  1. It’s laugh out loud funny and never boring.
  2. It’s insightful on many interesting topics, assuming you find our culture remotely interesting.
  3. Its chapters are pretty unrelated, and broken into subchapters and sidebars, so you can pick it up and put it down easily.
  4. Wherever you go with it, people ask you about it. Often female people. It makes you look cool (or at least interesting).

Basically, if you know anyone like me, buy it for them for Christmas or Hanukkah or something. They will love it.1

If you’re still not sold, here’s an excerpt I feel is fairly representative:

My obsession with serial killers began when I was ten years old. My fourth-grade teacher told our class that we should never hitchhike, because the only people who picked up hitchhikers were perverted serial killers. This advice was complicated by what my fifth-grade teacher told us the following year; she said that we would all have driver’s licenses in a few years, and the one rule we always needed to remember was never to pick up hitchhikers. This was because all the hitchhikers were serial killers. According to what I learned in public school, every person on every freeway was trolling for destruction. I used to imagine nomadic, sadistic drifters thumbing rides with bloodthirsty Volkswagen owners, both desperately waiting for the first opportunity to kill each other. Hitchhiking seemed like an ultraviolent race against time.

  1. Thanks again, Doubledeuce! [↩]
Share/Bookmark