Normally I buy my kids whatever the new blockbusters are on DVD. But IMO, there weren’t many good movies this year, so I got my kids (who are all teenagers) mostly cult classics. I think it’s safe for you to assume that my kids would appreciate them more, anyway.
My 15 year old son asked for and received:
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Well, the series makes a whole lot more sense now.
And a whole lot less sense. (Spoilers below).
Since we’re talking movies, let me tell you about the best movie I’ve seen in awhile: Big Man Japan!
At first glance, it looks like a Godzilla movie with a giant human instead of Godzilla fighting the monsters.
It pretty much is. But it’s a lot more than that, too.
It’s awesome. (more…)
A couple in each category.
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Now that everyone with an internet connection has seen her performance on Britain’s Got Talent at least once, and Susan Boyle has begun her stateside media tour, there’s an emerging meme that maybe she’s not all that she seemed. Reports are flooding in: she lied about never being kissed! She was caught wearing a leather jacket! She’s started trimming her eyebrows!
The subtext—and, in some cases, the text—of these reports is that there may be a backlash coming if her fans feel they’ve been snookered. I’d like to go on the record now that if it turns out Susan Boyle knew what she was doing all along, my admiration for her will increase exponentially: she goes from being a dowdy-looking English Scottish** villager with a good singing voice to a dowdy-looking English Scottish villager with a good singing voice and an amazing ability to exploit pop-culture media expectations. The latter is much more interesting and, yes, even admirable.
Go back and watch that clip again and see Simon Cowell’s reaction. If you look into his cold, dark eyes, you can see him figuring it out. There are very few people more media savvy than Simon, and he knows something’s up. That doesn’t stop him, of course, from giving Boyle a standing ovation—maybe that’s why he gave her one.
**Edited to account for my typical American ignorance of British sensitivities.
There’s some music that makes me want to gather it up in my arms and squeeze it so tight that it sinks into my body. I want to absorb into my bones, so I can carry the feeling it gives me around with me forever. Ladyhawk’s music is like that.
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Well. I finally did it. After my kids manage to lose yet an other DVD and I looked at what replacing a Disney DVD cost I realized it was time to get the AppleTV. The way I figure it I need only justify the cost of 12 DVDs and I’ve paid for the AppleTV. Plus I get the convenience of having all the movies handy without having DVDs in a place where prying little hands can scratch them or worse put them in the trash.
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Some of my fondest memories of my childhood involve staying up late with my father and playing Space Invaders on our Atari 2600. For some reason, Dad loved that game. We figured out the cheat where if you held down the reset button while you powered up the console, the game would give you double missiles. But when we weren’t playing Space Invaders, we were usually watching really bad movies on late-night television. As we sat there, we’d mock the shows we were watching and die laughing. To us, alone, late at night, it was hilarious. Years later, when I first saw “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” I knew immediately what was going on. The show captured the mood of our experience exactly, along with a goofy sci-fi premise. The show was both legitimately hilarious, no matter what time of day you watched it, and about ten times more clever than expected. Random, often obscure, pop-culture references were peppered throughout. It was immediately familiar and yet unlike anything I had seen before. I loved it.
So when I recently had the chance to interview the creators of MST3000, who have revived their shtick for a project called Cinematic Titanic, which will be released in individual episodes on DVD and direct downloads, I jumped at the chance.
OK, so today my 5 free HD-DVDs that were promised when I bought my (now obsolete) HD-DVD player arrived.
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I got this purely on a whim the other day. I was browsing the documentary aisle at Best Buy and the pickings were slim. I ended up buying this for two reasons. One, I grew up as a teen in Seattle and used to see Nirvana play at small all ages shows. Two, there was a list of bands on the back whose music are featured in it, including Bad Brains, the Melvins, Butthole Surfers…my kind of stuff. When my husband saw it, he said, “I wonder if there’s any footage of us in it?” I figured chances were slim, but maybe there might be some footage from a show we were at.
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This brilliant documentary purports to be about the elusive high score on the classic arcade game, Donkey Kong, but is in fact a classic tale of Good vs. Evil, Weak vs. Powerful, and Trimmed vs. Mullet. Billy Mitchell is widely recognized as one of the greatest classic video game players of all time as he recorded the high scores on games such as Centipede, Donkey Kong Jr. and the notoriously difficult Donkey Kong, a record which stood for nearly twenty years. Steve Wiebe is a normal dude who got laid off from his job at Boeing and with his extra time decided he’d like to beat that record.
But beating it wasn’t the problem. (more…)
OK, like at least one other person here I got an HD-DVD player over the holidays. It was extremely cheap at the Thanksgiving sale at Costco ($170) so I said, “Dang. How can I miss that?” Especially since I now had an HD-TV and the Dish shows only play at 720p not 1080i. I’ve only watched a few HD-DVDs. (Oceans 13, Bourne Ultimatum) However I noticed that at Walmart, while the BluRay section was slightly larger it had fewer movies I wanted. Further the HD-DVDs were always sold out while the BluRays never were. Plus, since Microsoft was pushing HD-DVD I figured momentum was on that side. Dang. I should have paid attention to Microsoft’s failure with Vista.
Good news, everyone! (more…)
Sean Cassity is a movie producer and writer living in New York City. He agreed to write a piece about his experiences in the film industry.
In writing this I’m torn between advancing a project I’m actually quite proud of and admitting that it was probably a bad idea to do it. For some reason, I went off and produced a feature film. The film is called IN THE BLOOD and it premieres this Sunday night on LOGO. (more…)
Wow, guys, how did we miss this topic before? MARTIAL ARTS. And I’ll say it right now, this movie, Undefeatable, is the front-runner, despite what you Gymkata and Surf Ninjas fans say.
So, what are the worst Martial Arts films available on Netflix?
You asked for it, jerks. You made me watch From Justin to Kelly: the Tale of Two American Idols. And I watched it. And my wife watched it too, and my dog.
It was not the worst movie I’ve ever seen. (more…)
Due to the miracle that is NetFlix my wife and I have recently seen three movies featuring magicians. I’ll present them in the order we saw them:
OK, since I did the excited iPhone writeup back in January I thought I’d revisit the Apple TV (henceforth aTV because Windows browsers don’t display the Apple character correctly). Now let me note that I don’t have one of these things. So this is basically an apology for why I’m not buying one and why you probably shouldn’t either.
There is a list out there somewhere of life-altering experiences that each one of us should have before we die. Burn incense at Kathmandu. Visit the Grand Canyon. See the Mona Lisa.
Viewing SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 is not on that list. If it were on the list, it would be near the bottom, along with performing Cast Away style dentistry and having a Silkwood shower. This is the worst one I’ve had to watch so far, people. I know I say that every review, but this time I mean it: I really hate each one of you with all my heart. I mean, just look at that poster.
This film was far smellier than my twins’ diapers. (more…)
The Prestige is writer/director Christopher Nolan’s fourth major work. He burst onto the scene in 2000 with the amazing mind bender Memento and with each subsequent film he has seen his stock rise. 2005′s excellent and successful Batman Begins announced Nolan as a mainstream force to be reckoned with. The Prestige shares many elements in common with Nolan’s previous works, from the complex narrative structure, to the dark feel, to the psychologically maladjusted male protagonists and further demonstrates Nolan’s storytelling prowess. (more…)
It was a nightmare. Blood, corpses, the stench of the dead everywhere.
And then I watched the movie. (more…)
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. – 1 Corinthians 13:11-12.
During a recent attempt to tighten household expenses, I discovered that I’m currently spending about $200 a month on gasoline and about $80 in tolls just to get to and from work every month. The only upside I’ve been able to uncover in this situation is that it also means I have an opportunity, should I take it, to listen to audio books during my daily commute. Recently, I finished listening to the unabridged audio book version of Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly.
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“Film noir” is a term that gets tossed around a lot by movie fans and critics, both professional and amateur. So it’s somewhat surprising that, six and a half decades after the genre began, there is still not a universally accepted definition of what makes a noir. Is it the characters (morally confused protagonists, dangerous women, and compelling, larger-than-life villains), the subject matter (crime and its consequences) or the cinematic style (black-and-white film, high-contrast lighting and dramatic camera work)? Although many film noirs share certain characteristics, not all movies considered film noir contain each and every element of the genre. Roughly speaking, classic noir refers to films that were made, mostly by Hollywood, in the 1940s and 1950s that all share a certain tone, style and attitude (post-war cynicism). Perhaps the best way to learn about noir is to broadly sample the best movies of the genre. Below is a list of eight movies that I think represent the best and most influential film noirs of the classic period. (Feel free to argue with my choices in the comments.) If you haven’t watched much, or any, film noir, this list is a good place to start. I think you’ll be surprised at how well most of these movies have stood up over the years; they still feel modern, fast-paced, suspenseful and extremely entertaining.
File under: Schwartzenegger wrestles man in bear suit.
Movies that involve the Greek gods are always problematic. Clash of the Titans, Troy, you name it — they’re all fairly mediocre. Hercules In New York, a 1969 masterpiece and Arnold Schwartzenegger’s first feature film, seems to recognize this problem and confronts things head-on — by deliberately making the film as terrible as possible from the onset.
Some of you may recall the movie Scanners, in which people with telekinetic abilities make other people’s heads explode. Upon viewing Hercules in New York, I have become convinced that either Schwartzenegger or the film’s producer, Aubrey Wisberg, are in fact Scanners themselves, planted among us to snare the unsuspecting and make their heads asplode. (more…)
The horror. The horror. (more…)