| Saturday | July 17th | 2010 |
My two line review of Inception:
The Matrix and What Dreams May Come had a baby, raised it on a steady diet of heist movies a la Ocean’s Eleven, and let it play with that nice neighbor boy, Dark City. See it, then scrape your brain offa the theater walls.
| Thursday | May 27th | 2010 |
Unabashedly the greatest movie review ever written. It doesn’t matter if (like me) you haven’t ever seen even a minute of Sex and the City—the sheer foam-at-the-mouth loathing of the entire ethos of the franchise is enough to have you howling laughing. Stranger writer Lindy West has out-done herself, surely peaking early in her career and doomed forever to languish beneath the shadow of this piece of withering hatred.
You doubt it? Here’s my single favorite line: “SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human—working hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled cunt like it’s my job—and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car.”
Read on.
(PS: This post has allowed me to make use of tags that I never thought would be used again. My day is complete.)
Update via The Stranger:
Movie|Line has gathered and ranked The 9 Most Scathing Critical Responses to Sex and the City 2—and Lindy West’s Pulitzer-worthy screed tops the list.
| Tuesday | May 25th | 2010 |
Charles McGrath, New York Times May 25th 2010. “A Gamer’s World, But a Dramatist’s Sensibility.”
If that is what you think popular video games are these days—“nonstop action without the distractions of too much plot”—then it’s clear you haven’t played a video game in the last decade. If I can think of half a dozen titles that value drama, plot and character depth as highly as combat off the top of my head in five minutes, then certainly a writer for the NYTimes should have been able to come up with one in the span of composing his article. For Shame.
| Friday | May 7th | 2010 |
Hmmuh? I thought everyone had agreed that Willy Gibby’s Neuromancer was untouchable by grubby movie fingers? In an unspoken-baseball-rule kind of way. In a don’t-cross-the-pitcher’s-mound-when-walking-through-the-infield-A-Rod-I’m-looking-at-you kind of way.
Don’t get me wrong: I love “Cube” as much, nay, more than the next girl, but…no? No! Hands off the sacred origins of cyberpunk!
| Monday | March 8th | 2010 |
| Saturday | December 19th | 2009 |
—Rotten Tomatoes.
I wish I could say this makes me jump out of my seat with excitement, but…meh.
Speaking as an old-school X-Men fan, the last movie in the trilogy + the unwatchable Wolverine movie = absolutely no need for more X movies. Especially a prequel which would let a bunch of 17 year old actors run roughshod over some of Marvel’s best (and most ridiculous) backstories. The X movie trilogy already forced the comics into retroactively giving Rogue—sorry, “Marie”—a real name (horrifying, I know), so I assume nothing is safe from rewrites and edits. :nerdnerdnerd:
I’m more than happy to watch the first and second movies for their fun, slightly hacky action value! But, please, leave me a few characters untouched by bad screenplays and starlets in latex. Please?
| Wednesday | December 16th | 2009 |
Eeeheehee! It’s really coming! It’s like they’re real people, or something! Rumors in the intertubes say the Scott Pilgrim movie is now in post production, and is slated for release in 2010. Good thing, too, since the final volume of the comic is also slated for release at the very same time. Which will be first, hmm?
| Friday | December 4th | 2009 |
This unfortunate soul went and saw the Glenn Beck Christmas movie just so we all never have to. How very kind and eye-gougingly generous of him.
Oh, what, you didn’t know there was a Glenn Beck Christmas movie? Now you DO, and you can’t UN-know it, so you’d better just read this loathing re-cap of it to feel better about the whole travesty. I warned you.
| Friday | October 16th | 2009 |
“The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” trailer.
Heath Ledger + Johnny Depp + Jude Law + Tom Waits + directed by Terry Gilliam.
It looks so completely and outrageously out of control, and I can’t wait to see it. (Though, as we know from every other Gilliam movie, it’ll probably have some huge gaping faults, but it ultimately won’t matter.)
| Friday | September 25th | 2009 |
As promised, the Cloudherders did indeed see 9 last weekend. Why the delay in a review? Because the three of us were dismally disappointed: so much promise, so many problems.
Let’s not mince words: the screenplay is terrible. The ending makes no sense and is thematically separate from the rest of the plot. The voice acting is nothing special. The characters aren’t spared a second for development. And an entire world is presented to the audience without so much as a minute of context.
All of that said, it is visually one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. Little thought seemed to be given to the plot and pacing, but countless hours of work were clearly spent on the design. The little mechanical characters that populate the post-apocalyptic world of 9 are a joy to watch as they perambulate: each has its own individual design—made of materials such as sackcloth or pinstripe linen—and their expressive eyes blink like contracting camera shutters. (The problem is what happens when they open their mouths.) The mechanisms they create to navigate their very big, very tumble-down world are an inventive jumble of scrapyard junk, and their armor and weapons are the bones and feathers of small creatures.
But, it’s hard to see the incredible creativity of the design and meticulous animation when yet another chase scene breaks out (what is this, number six? seven?) and it all becomes a blur of motion and crashing music. The plot, showing so much room for originality, is highjacked by any number of fantasy/sci-fi cliches and doesn’t pause for any reflection between action scenes. What happened to this promising movie on the way to the theater? Did someone decide it needed to be dumbed down, explosioned up, faster and louder? Whatever happened, I’d be curious to see a director’s cut of this poor, limping mess, and see if any more exposition or soul was actually presented at some point.
World building fail.
| Wednesday | September 9th | 2009 |
The Cloudherders are gonna go see it sometime this weekend, and we’ll let you know what we thought. We’re all terribly excited, even if the reviews thus far are less than sparkling.
(Photo ganked from Rotten Tomatoes).
| Monday | June 22nd | 2009 |
Oh, baby. Tim Burton is taking a whack at Alice in Wonderland, and his two most reliable stand-bys—Johnny Depp (the Mad Hatter) and Helena Bonham-Carter (the Queen of Hearts)—are inch-deep in makeup and dooded up for the show. Also in the fray are Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen.
From just these character photos I’m already on board and excited as all get out for this movie. The wonderful thing about Alice is that it hinges on the fantastical and the madcap, rather than on character development or a meticulous plot. The few weak Tim Burton movies are usually doomed by relying too heavily on spectacle, barely masking a weak or maudlin plot (I’m looking at you, Big Fish), but Alice is all about the spectacular.
Early stills are coming out, and they all look incredible. The film won’t be released til 2010ish, but expect lots of buzz around it as more shots are leaked. The story has apparently been updated a bit, and Burton’s Alice will be somewhat older than Carroll’s. I deem that a good decision, since there remains that creepy vibe lingering around the history of the real-life young Alice/old Carroll relationship. I can’t wait to see if there will be more heads rolling in this movie than there were in Burton’s Sweeney Todd!
Images copyright of Entertainment Weekly.
| Monday | June 15th | 2009 |
Scott Pilgrim vs The World is in the midst of shooting, for a 2010 release. Most of the Cloudherders are fans of the little indie comic, so we’re understandably trepidatious about how film is going to mangle our fun.
However, as previously discussed on the blog, the film is in pretty good hands: Edgar Wright, the director of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead is at the helm. He’s been posting little vids on the movie’s official site, and above is one of the most interesting. Author Bryan Lee O’Malley has included meticulously drawn site-specific streets, stores and homes from Toronto in the comic, and this 3 minute video demonstrates how the film is shooting on location at some of those exact places. The care with which these locations are being chosen and shot makes me breathe a huge sigh of relief: maybe we can start to uncross our fingers?
| Tuesday | May 19th | 2009 |
The trailer for the new Sherlock Holmes movie.
Given that I’ll see absolutely anything that Robert Downey Jr is in, it already has a leg up. But, adding Jude Law, pugilism and deadly hair pins just seals the deal. This looks plain fun. I can’t wait.
| Saturday | May 9th | 2009 |
“Wolverine in 30 Seconds” by Shyaporn Theerakulstit.
I’m sure most everyone who reads this blog has already seen this, but…but…I absolutely need to make sure. Damn sure, because I laughed so hard at this that I both cried and nearly hyperventilated. I’m still cracking up as I write this. Maybe I’m punchy, cause it’s 1 am after work, or maybe it’s because I’ve always disliked Wolverine for this very reason.
Now I never need to see that terrible movie!
Leif writes words, music, code and bug reports; somehow he's still sane.
Nickherder is a science and engineering kind of guy, but we forgive him for it.
SaRRa is using her fancy university degree to blog.
Legal Drug makes the coffee, eats the food and drinks the booze.
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Posted by various vapor, assembled. on Sat Jul 17th at 11:47AM
