Fish Tank, dir. Andrea Arnold (2010)
There are movies I see every once and a while that remind me why I watch in the first place. If that seems clichéd, let me assure you that Andrea Arnold’s second feature, Fish Tank, is not. Here is what we hope for and rarely get: urgency without manipulation, intimacy without bland sentiment, shock without exploitation. (more…)
Our company is, also, pleased obliged to report that Warner Brother’s The Blind Side has been nominated for Best Picture. [Insert despairing, snarky remark about the Academy here]
After a record-setting year at the box office, what can we expect in 2010? More of the same. Don’t expect Hollywood to surprise us when things are going so well. Expect more 3D, more talking CGI animals, more lame comedies/soft dramas starring Sandra Bullock.
Not that I’m cynical. (more…)
Looking through our top films of 2009, I’m a little disappointed with the range of films. (more…)
Yesterday, Alvin 2 grossed 18.8 million dollars.
A few days before, Obama denied ever promising a public option.
I don’t know which is more troubling.
This is the time of the year when the big passion-projects come out–films that either soar (Lord of the Rings, Million Dollar Baby) or sorely disappoint (All the Pretty Horses, Ali, Alexander). It’s Oscar season, but you wouldn’t know it from the year-end mainstream releases, many of which hope to be THE hit Christmas movie. Don’t believe the hype: Sherlock Holmes will be mostly air, It’s Complicated won’t work out (just stop, Nancy Meyers) and were you actually going to see Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel? There won’t be much to see for a while besides Avatar, unless you live in a town with an independent cinema, until some of the indies start to expand.
Here are a half dozen movies I GUARANTEE are worth seeking out: (more…)
(a few spoilers here)
Yesterday Curb Your Enthusiasm wrapped its season-long Seinfeld reunion arc. We hadn’t seen any of the characters since May of 1998, when the much despised finale aired, but I’ll be surprised if any Seinfeld fan was let down this time (I’m not, however, surprised Giampaolo was displeased by 2012–I advised not to go!)
I was hesitant about the reunion considering Curb Your Enthusiasm had refrained from ever getting too Seinfeld-meta over its 7 seasons, effectively making the show its own thing instead of feeling like a spin-off (remember Joey?) At its best, it is edgier, rawer, and funnier than Seinfeld ever was, thanks to HBO’s creative freedom. In previous seasons, Seinfeld was a topic of consternation to “Larry David” and we believed it was the same for the real Larry David. The Seinfeld arc felt like a sell-out.
It wasn’t. Here were the 5 biggest surprises:
If you’re in the Boston area November 12-22, I suggest you see Blue Spruce Theatre’s production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the Arsenal Center in Watertown, MA.
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I’m 1.5 months into the post-production of a faux-documentary I shot this summer called Make Them Cry (a sort of vestigial title) and I am lost. It’s one of those films that walks the line between fact and fiction and has a collage-like structure, which I thought would be easier to edit than a straightforward narrative. However, at this point, I’m not sure what it’s about.
When people ask about it, I tell them that it’s about a teenager who rapes an older women over the internet, in Second Life. The older women has such a connection with her virtual avatar that she is traumatized by the incident and can no longer log on, and, in effect, her life loses meaning. Cool, huh? The people who I tell this to seem to think so.
The thing is it’s not really about this at all.
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