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(03/06/06 6:00am)
Writer-director Wayne Kramer's Running Scared\ will be dismissed
as yet another derivative action fiasco tricked out with trippy
visuals and restless, pointlessly elaborate camerawork, but those
who watch it closely will find one of the most subversive products
to come out of mainstream Hollywood in some time. ""Running
Scared"" is possibly the most brazenly over-the-top action film
since Schwarzenegger made luggage of loose alligators in
""Eraser.""
(02/27/06 6:00am)
This year, the Academy got the Oscar nominations surprisingly
right for the most part, giving well-deserved nods to ballsy dramas
('Good Night and Good Luck,' 'Munich') and even a gay love story.
Even 'Capote,' a film I found skillful but often tedious, is a
smaller film with sincere artistic intentions. But there's a
whirling controversy over 'Crash,' Canadian writer-director Paul
Haggis' racially fueled ensemble drama, and for this Oscar race,
I'm going to have to shoot down the little indie that could.
(02/20/06 6:00am)
\As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a
gangster.' This is the most famous line of Scorsese's 'GoodFellas,'
which is, and will always remain my favorite movie, and it
generally sums up how I feel. It's not because I absolutely love
organized crime (or at least the cinematic depiction of it), but
rather because gangsters thrived in the most fascinating,
tumultuous historical periods in the United States. In short, I
feel as if I was born in the wrong decade'this era of hip-hop,
blogging and 'Halo''and my preferences in music and especially
movies reflect it.
(02/13/06 6:00am)
Ironically, most songs written specifically for movies are
downright awful. I don't know what it is, but most 'original songs'
are contrived and terrible, and Oscar has continually chosen to
honor a curious supply of the worst of the worst. Whether it's
taken from the soundtracks of 'Con Air' or 'Beethoven's 2nd,'
wannabe Top 40 pop/country/crap has a tendency to show up on the
ballot every year.
(02/09/06 6:00am)
Since her first Oscar nomination in 1997 for 'Mrs. Brown,' Dame
Judi Dench has established herself as a standby candidate for
Academy Awards recognition. She won Best Supporting Actress for
'Shakespeare in Love' after appearing for a mere eight seconds of
screen time; she took what could have been little more than a
dignified cameo and created an indelible comic presence that
significantly bolstered the entire film.
(02/06/06 6:00am)
Take a look at the movies out right now: 'Big Momma's House 2,'
'Underworld: Evolution,' 'Annapolis,' 'Tristan and Isolde,' and
'Last Holiday.' This is the kind of 'entertainment' Hollywood has
to offer during the dreary months of January and February, after
the winter's holiday features come out, and well before pre-summer
blockbusters arrive. The typical movie comes in four
varieties'Oscar nominee, sequel, remake and piece of shit'or in
various combinations of these.
(02/06/06 6:00am)
There has been much hullabaloo lately over the steady decline in
movie theater attendance numbers, as it seems the majority of
moviegoers prefer to pop in a DVD and lounge around at home
instead.
(01/31/06 6:00am)
Pulling off a truly dark comedy is a treacherous high-wire act,
and it very well may be the hardest type of movie to sell to a mass
audience.
(01/30/06 6:00am)
I am not ashamed to say that the 'dumbass action movie' is my
favorite cinematic subgenre, hands down. The first movie I ever
unabashedly loved was 'Cliffhanger,' which featured Sylvester
Stallone as a ridiculously skilled mountain climber who foils a
group of greedy thugs (led by John Lithgow of all people).
(01/23/06 6:00am)
Terrence Malick is probably the most enigmatic director alive
today, having made only four films over the past 30-plus years. As
he has spent most of his time teaching philosophy, Malick
essentially moonlights in film, and every time he ventures out to
make another, it becomes an event for cinephiles. Like the
similarly reclusive Stanley Kubrick, Malick is a striking visionary
whose work eschews conventional storytelling techniques. Malick's
latest film, 'The New World,' is his most stylistically extreme and
will undoubtedly inspire divisive reactions, but for those who are
not put off by its deliberate pace, it is a lush, intoxicating
masterwork.
(01/23/06 6:00am)
This year, we've seen plenty of fantastic debuts (Craig Brewer
with 'Hustle and Flow,' Judd Apatow with 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin,'
Joe Wright with 'Pride and Prejudice,' the list goes on), but the
inconsistent output from many revered directors was especially
striking. There were some surprising comebacks, both huge and
minor, but also quite a few astounding letdowns from some of our
most highly esteemed auteurs. Here's my list of directors that need
to come back.
(12/13/05 6:00am)
Critics today like to complain about Hollywood's lack of
topicality, writing reviews that endlessly yearn for the ballsy,
turbulent cinema of the '70s that tackled relevant issues head-on.
This year's hugely-underrated 'Jarhead' did not take much of a
political stance on oil and the government's corrupt preoccupation
with it; even though it was an illuminating, indispensable portrait
of life in the Marines, critics tended to unfairly knock it for
what it wasn't about more than anything.
(12/12/05 6:00am)
As usual, this holiday season is replete with movies, from
modestly budgeted independent movies released to capitalize on
award consideration to mammoth spectacles designed to pack every
multiplex in the country to the gills. Peter Jackson's remake of
'King Kong' is by far the riskiest cinematic endeavor this
year'maybe even the most dicey studio-funded behemoth since
'Titanic.' If Jackson's gamble pays off, it could be the biggest
movie since then, as well.
(12/05/05 6:00am)
When I was a freshman just getting situated in the dorms, the
first thing I did was hop a bus to the nearest art theater. I went
to high school in the dinky town of Hurley, Wis., which itself
doesn't even have a movie theater or video store. If you cross the
Michigan border into Ironwood, you'll find only a Family Video
(where I worked, of course) and a rather pitiful little four-screen
multiplex (which I also briefly worked at) with a penchant for
getting only the most mainstream movies. Sooner or later most Oscar
contenders would come to us, but most of the time, if you didn't
want to see 'Harry Potter' or the latest Julia Roberts movie, you'd
be out of luck. So when I came to Madison, I was as excited about
the Hilldale Theatre and Westgate Art Cinemas as I was about
college girls and beer.
(12/02/05 6:00am)
Christmas movies tend to fall into two camps: sappy affairs
earnestly celebrating the Yuletide spirit (i.e. 'It's a Wonderful
Life,' 'Miracle on 34th Street') and those that use the most
stereotypically joyous and romantic of holidays to overtly contrast
with their nastier content. Harold Ramis' cynical neo-noir 'The Ice
Harvest' is the latest attempt to provide a cheerfully- bleak
antidote to the sugary onslaught of Christmas-themed cinema, but it
is too lopsided and strained to differentiate itself from any other
lackluster black comedy.
(12/01/05 6:00am)
Fifteen years ago, Shane Black was Hollywood's golden boy
screenwriter: he had just penned the first 'Lethal Weapon' and
studios were prepared to pay him obscene amounts of money to do it
again. But after 'The Last Boy Scout,' 'Last Action Hero,' and 'The
Long Kiss Goodnight' failed to justify his outrageous price tag,
Black sank into borderline obscurity and the general consensus was
that he was a has-been hack.
(11/28/05 6:00am)
If any of you have ever taken Intro to Production, you know that
this is the time of the semester when everybody is scrambling to
finish (or maybe even start) their final projects. I am currently
in the class, struggling to make the best movie I can with only
five dollars and a couple friends.
(11/21/05 6:00am)
Biopics of legendary performers are perhaps the most ambitious
examples of big-budget Oscar bait, though, ironically, they all
roughly follow the same fundamental formula. Since movies about
these rebels and risk-takers are rarely unconventional, skill and
creativity must be exhibited in the telling of the story.
(11/15/05 6:00am)
Often two films with extremely similar subject matter will come
out at the same time, and the inevitable comparisons that result
can drastically alter how each is received. This is more of a trend
among critics than audiences'actual turnout doesn't shift
dramatically'but when one of the films is much better than the
other, negative reactions to the lesser movie can be exaggerated
and detrimental. For example, the marginally entertaining 'Dante's
Peak' seemed awesome solely because it came out a few months after
the truly horrible 'Volcano.'
(11/14/05 6:00am)
Sooner or later, famous musicians face the temptation to
diversify a little bit and try their hand at acting. Some have
found the transition to be smooth and successful (Mark Wahlberg and
Ice Cube come to mind), while others have become perennial Razzie
winners (Madonna, unfortunately, will never learn to stay away from
celluloid). But if there's anything I've learned after watching
decades of movies with singers broadening their horizons for better
or for worse, it's that dramatic range is always essential for a
singer's longevity as a thespian.