24 posts
Late? Whatever. I don't live in New York or LA, I don't have press passes, so I have to wait for movies like Che to roll through my town before I can call for a verdict on the year previous. First thing's first – maybe it's because I'm coming off the wondrous… Continue reading
I'm not really sure how I ever made it through Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, Barry Lyndon, but boy was I glad I did. By the end, I found it without a doubt Kubrick's most involving film, one of the few he did that I actually truly cared about the characters.… Continue reading
Today – I woke up, saw my girlfriend off, threw some bacon and french toast on the stove, listened to some Christmas music, and prepared to sit down and finally watch Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park and probably something else. I didn't have to leave the house… Continue reading
No, I don't work for Criterion and I benefit from this in no way. It's just awesome and something I thought should be shared. If you hit up the Criterion Collection online store, they're having a 40% off sale 'til November 25th. Some tremendous deals in there… Continue reading
Quick setup so this doesn't seem totally insane – I wrote this for a class given this basic instruction, taken from Christian Keathley's 2006 book Cinephilia and History, or The Wind in the Trees: "Select a detail from a movie…it should not be obviously… Continue reading
Some days, there's a movie… The day of the screening for Slumdog Millionaire, I was wiped. I'd been up late the night before doing homework, had around five, six hours of sleep when all's said and done, taken a test, and just generally felt like going… Continue reading
It's almost impossible to talk about this movie without spoiling, so if you don't want to know how it ends (and I know there are a fair number of people who have actually seen it and wish they didn't know how it ends), steer clear after the big spoiler… Continue reading
"Show, don't tell" is one of those things that gets pounded into your head in all avenues of creative writing, but especially in film school. The idea behind the mantra is that it's better to convey information (exposition, facts, character, anything)… Continue reading
This week's a relatively light column. Too many other deadlines looming, on top of which I'm getting ready to move to Portland for a month and a half, so I've got an apartment to get in order. Next week I hope to address this business of the "new classics"… Continue reading
It's kind of strange to see the sudden surge of critics tripping over themselves to say how much they love (and have always loved) Ang Lee's Hulk. I mean, maybe they were there in 2003; I wasn't tuned into critical movements at the time. But I kinda doubt it,… Continue reading
I just found out that Warner Home Video is releasing a 172-minute Extended Cut of Terrence Malick's The New World. I should make one thing perfectly clear – I love Terrence Malick, and seeing The New World for the first time was a profound turning point in… Continue reading
I know this is an odd time to publish this, given the recent passing of Stan Winston, one of the great practical effects artists, but…I love computer-generated imagery. And I'm tired of it getting a bad rap. Part of this does stem from growing up in the… Continue reading
