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(02/07/11 6:00am)
This was the second year that the Sundance Film Festival featured
the NEXT program, a category for extremely low-budget films,
intended to give burgeoning filmmakers an opportunity to shine the
spotlight on their labors of love. One of the films I saw at this
year's festival in the NEXT program was ""Bellflower."" The movie
didn't win any awards, and I wouldn't say it was one of the best
films at the festival, but it was one of the most memorable. It was
incredibly innovative and intriguing and helped its rag-tag group
of creators garner some much-deserved attention.
(02/01/11 6:00am)
This past Sunday marked the end of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
I attended the last half of the festival and saw 17 films spanning
a wide variety of genres. Here are my thoughts on a few of the
films that were the most hyped going into the festival, and a few
that definitely deserve a look coming out of the festival:
(01/25/11 6:00am)
The holidays have come and gone, leaving us with a gray slush that
hardly resembles the fluffy white powder of winter wonderland
fantasies. And the cinemascape isn't much more appealing since
January, February, and early March are the notorious dumping
grounds for movies that studios know are flops and have been
looking to dump quietly.
(01/18/11 6:00am)
I'd bet that after his caustic performance emceeing the 68th Golden
Globe Awards this past Sunday, Ricky Gervais won't be invited back
for a hosting three-peat.
(12/07/10 6:00am)
Last week the films selected for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival in
Park City, Utah were announced. Relatively little is known about
the majority of the films beforehand beyond a brief synopsis
released in a press release. This year there is a distinct lack of
big Hollywood celebrities promoting their own small projects or
forays into indie film. While there are certainly some recognizable
names on this year's list—Kevin Smith, Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear
and John C. Reilly—the majority isn't the usual tabloid fodder and
as a result even less than usual is known about the films.
(11/30/10 6:00am)
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced yesterday
that James Franco and Anne Hathaway would co-host the Oscars Feb.
27, continuing the co-hosting precedent set last year by the
dynamic duo of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. The Academy certainly
chose to go in a younger direction with these hosts, seeing as the
combined ages of Hathaway and Franco are still less than Martin's
venerable 61 years, probably in an attempt to bring younger viewers
to the notoriously long-winded ceremony. Neither Hathaway nor
Franco is usually characterized as a particularly comedic actor,
but even if this pair of blossoming Hollywood stars isn't as
entertaining as their predecessors, Franco's presence may make for
an uncommonly tension-filled evening, as there is major Best Actor
buzz surrounding his portrayal of survivor Aron Ralston in ""127
Hours.""
(11/16/10 6:00am)
This week, the seventh Harry Potter film opens in theaters. I've
been a pretty dedicated life-long Potter geek, having gone to a
midnight release for every film since I was 10. But this will be
the first one I'm skipping.
(11/09/10 6:00am)
Madison's Majestic Theatre hosts semi-regular late-night screenings
of the beloved Coen-brothers cult classic ""The Big Lebowski.""
These screenings, dubbed the ""Brew and View,"" usually sell out
quickly and end up packed with avid fans, some dressed in costume,
sipping $4 White Russians. Despite positive critical reception,
when ""The Big Lebowski"" first opened it was a box-office flop. In
1998, it opened at number six at the box office, made less than $6
million and left theaters after just four weeks. However, slowly
but surely a fan base for the movie grew purely by word-of-mouth.
Eventually DVD sales put ""The Big Lebowski"" in the black three
times over. Like ""The Big Lebowski,"" ""Scott Pilgrim vs. the
World"" opened this summer to critical praise but box office
failure.
(11/01/10 6:00am)
This week nerds of all kinds across the Web rejoiced as Christopher
Nolan revealed the title of his next Batman film—""The Dark Knight
Rises,"" set for release on July 20, 2012. Although Nolan has said
it won't feature the Riddler or Mr. Freeze, it's a good bet it will
be a phenomenal film, if its predecessors are any indication.
(10/25/10 6:00am)
The Hollywood blacklist was not something any writer, actor,
director or entertainment professional wanted to find themselves on
60 years ago. It was a list of anyone in Hollywood who had been
publicly exposed as having ""communist sympathies,"" connections to
those with communist sympathies or anyone who just acted too
liberal or progressive. With the country in the midst of the Second
Red Scare, anyone who was placed on the Hollywood blacklist was
utterly unemployable. Presently, however, whenever someone in the
film business talks about making ""The Black List,"" there is an
entirely opposite, overwhelmingly positive connotation.
(10/18/10 6:00am)
When Hollywood studios started to realize that mining the childhood
nostalgia of Generations X and Y with quality movie adaptations
such as ""Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen"" and ""G.I. Joe:
The Rise of Cobra"" could be a gold mine, they rushed to procure
the rights to any entertainment property that had been even
remotely popular within the last 30 years. While 2010 may have been
the year of the sequels and reboots, 2011 and 2012 are shaping up
to be the years where all the memories of your favorite childhood
toys and games may be altered forever as studios dig up their
remains and make them dance for your ten bucks on silver screens
across the country.
(10/11/10 6:00am)
Is your idea of a scary movie a tension-building nail-biter or
something more like a visit to the butcher shop? Over the last
decade or two, horror films have increasingly sacrificed more of
their plots for excuses to show scene after scene of extreme gore.
Personally, I'm not a blood-and-guts sort of guy and would take a
quality psychological thriller over the torture porn that
inevitably floods theaters every October. So, in the spirit of the
witching season, the following are a few movies you can stay home
and watch instead of venturing out for a showing of ""Saw VII: I
Can't Believe You People Pay For This Crap"" (perhaps the saddest
part is that even though the subtitle of that movie is fictitious,
the ‘VII' isn't). While the following movies may be light on gore,
they are still chock-full of scares and suspense.
(10/08/10 6:00am)
When I left Sundance Cinemas last weekend, I was one excited film
nerd. I had the transcendental experience of a Friday matinee
viewing of ""The Social Network."" When I discussed the film
afterwards with my friends I encountered an opinion I've heard many
times before. I described the film as flawless, and a friend of
mine, who had not yet seen the film, told me that he highly doubted
that it was flawless and that the term ‘flawless' should be,
""reserved for like, ‘The Godfather' and ‘Star Wars' and
‘Chinatown' and that ilk."" This notion really irritated me, and
I'll tell you why.
(09/27/10 6:00am)
Documentaries have been playing hopscotch with the line between
fact and fiction for a while now, even spawning a new genre—the
mockumentary. The term ‘mockumentary' is derived from director Rob
Reiner's description of his 1984 film, ""This Is Spinal Tap,""
which he called a mock-documentary. But the first popular example
of the genre dates all the way back to 1964, when ""A Hard Days
Night"" depicted a few days in the lives of the Beatles.
(09/20/10 6:00am)
Three-dimensional films have been around longer than you may
think--since 1922, in fact. Before World War II, approximately 90
million Americans went to the movies weekly. But in the post-war
years, television sales in the United States went through the roof
and cinema fell from its pedestal in American culture. By 1953,
weekly movie attendance had dropped to 46 million.
(09/13/10 6:00am)
Films with Oscar aspirations like to plan for an end-of-the-year
release in the hopes of remaining fresh in Academy voters' minds
while still meeting the December 31 release deadline. This leads to
an ‘award season' jam-packed with quality films. However, every
year there are a few contenders that sneak in before fall. Remember
""The Hurt Locker,"" ""Up"" and ""District 9""? All three were
summer releases, which have the added challenge of maintaining a
place in voters' hearts for a few extra months.
(09/07/10 6:00am)
Do you immediately head out to your favorite movie theater when a
newly released flick piques your interest? Or are you content to
kick back on the couch and do your movie-watching a few months
later when the DVD is released? These questions may be completely
obsolete within a couple of years, as soon enough you may be able
to watch a movie from the comfort of your own home while it
simultaneously opens in theaters.