Elegant Distractions

How did they manage to make this movie without any drowning polar bears?

Pixar's latest offering, Wall*e, is nothing short of an all-out propoganda film for the Church of Environmentalism. Pixar pulls out all the stops, utilizing their dazzling animation, clever story-telling -- including a minor love story -- all in an effort that would make the KGB balk and Leni Riefenstahl blush. (No I'm not comparing Pixar with the Nazis. This is a comparison of propoganda efforts)

Continue reading "Wall*e: Green Propoganda" »

Posted by director at 04:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While waiting for the start of Iron Man yesterday the audience was treated to the trailer for Indian Jones and the Kingdom of Once Great Filmmakers. I gotta say that my only reaction was this:

Even the trailer is boring.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Spielberg and Lucas used to know how to make fun movies but both have lost their way for, likely, different reasons.

Lucas: Never a great director or writer he at least knew the difference between a good story and a bad one. Now he seems to have surrounded himself with sycophants and worshippers and not a single person with the balls to speak up when a bad idea is on the table.

Spielberg: Perhaps the best director of the 80's, if judged by box office. Somebody poured sweet lies into Steven's ear, telling him that he must use his talents to make important movies, that he needed to use his power and money to promote important issues in his films. Too bad he listened to those Hollywood vipers because they stole his creative sole.

I don't know when I will subject myself to the latest Indy offering but when I do I will take the time to report on it here.

Posted by director at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There was a time when I assumed that Hollywood produced dreadful film after dreadful film because they were consciously suppressing the good screenplays. I imagined something like a weekly bonfire where producers would meet up and toss the great scripts into the inferno while gleefully greenlighting American Pie XVII.

In Roger Simon's analysis of the Writer's strike and the future of Hollywood is this excerpt:

I am not saying television and movie writing is easy. It clearly is not. Very few people can do it. The Writers Guild has only 12,000 members not because it is a difficult union to get into – it isn’t – but because few people are good enough to get hired by a signatory company, the minimum requirement for membership. I can attest to this. Years ago, when I wrote for Richard Pryor, I would occasionally dip into one of the literally thousands of unsolicited scripts pouring into his office. Not a single one was worth reading past page five. Years later, I taught graduate screenwriting at the American Film Institute, said to be one of our better film schools and certainly one of the most competitive in admissions, and hardly any of my students were able to succeed as professional writers.

Having taken a stab or two at screenwriting I can say with enthusiasm that Mr. Simon is absolutely correct. It is difficult work that very few can do well. There may be the rare brilliant screenplay that can't get read but that has got to be about as often as Haley's Comet. I have grudginly shifted to the belief that Hollywood makes the best films they can.

Now, think what that implies.

Posted by director at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night I watched Blade Runner: Final Cut, which Ridley Scott calls his favorite version. The film looks amazing, just brilliantly grunky.

There are, however, a few things that should be addressed about the content of the movie. It takes place in the year 2019, a mere twelve -- no eleven -- years hence. Some things about the near future that should be noted:

• There are flying cars. Naturally. Not a lot of them but there are old flying cars. We will have to hurry to get old flying cars in the next eleven years. By 'we' I mean 'somebody'.
• I have to believe that robo-babes in Daryl Hannah form are the cause of society's fall. Nobody goes to work anymore.
• Sean Young will still be a, er, robotic actress.
• Not only do we have interstellar colonization but space-based wars as well. I don't think the space shuttle will be up for those tasks. Maybe Richard Branson builds the first space warship? Bill Gates could but I don't think he would.
• Apparently flat-screen tv's go out of style in favor of tiny CRT screens.
• Cell phones and pagers seem to have been outlawed.

Hey, I can't fault Mr. Scott for not actually seeing fifty years into the tech future from the barbaric hinterlands of the early 1980's. I do find it amusing that Hollywood future tech is often only mildly advanced from the current state of the art.

Posted by director at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

OK, let's get this out of the way: what a terrible title. Just awful. The runners-up must have been some real stinkers. Reminds me of one of the biblical names for the devil, I Am Legion.

This movie was pretty good for a zombie flick. Worth a matinee ticket. I very much liked that the cause of the zombie-ness was a virus design to cure cancer. It apparently had some unexpected side-effects. The law of unintended consequences in full bloom. (Let's see, that seems familiar somehow)

Will Smith was in his save-the-world persona and that's what was called for here. As the Spousal Unit mentioned, Mr. Smith is starting to look -- not old but no longer young. Happens to all of us if we're lucky.

At 101 minutes the movie came in way too short. Whole swaths of potential storeline were snipped away so that key story points touched the screen only briefly, like a stone skipping across the water. This left the movie experience much less satisfying than it should have been.

On the whole, for a zombie movie it was better than most.

Posted by director at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The latest from the Cohen Brothers, No Country For Old Men, is an intriguing movie right up until the movie stops. This film doesn't have an ending. Rather, it reaches a point where the brothers apparently ran out of film stock, ideas, or both and then decided to simpy run credits.

It took quite a while to decide what the movie was about. I was pretty sure I liked it, except as noted above, but had to think about what I liked and why.

*SPOILERS GALORE AFTER THE JUMP*

Continue reading "No Country For Bad Endings" »

Posted by director at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Two things that were didactic about Sunday's Oscars: the self-congratulations for the openly political (read: leftist) nature of films in 2005 and the begging for people to head back to the theaters.

Only people in such a self-contained, self-referential echo-chamber of an industry could fail to make the connection between the two trends.

My prediction is that Hollywood as we know it will continue to fail in this regard but the demand for simply entertaining films is so huge that a separate industry, probably geographically diverse, will emerge to meet that demand.

Posted by director at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's been apparent for a while that Hollywood was out of step with mainstream America. The Oscars reflect what Hollywood thinks are the best movies of the year. You would think that those movies making a lot of money would be at least represented in the awards. Alas, you would be wrong. This is the first year in a long time when I don't think I've seen or even wanted to see any of the movies in the best picture category. Usually there are some I've seen and some I haven't. More often than not, what I consider the best film of the year is at least nominated. This year, all 5 films were small-budget niche films. I don't think I'm alone in this assessment. The ratings this year were terrible. They are the worst they have been since 1987. They dropped off something like 10% from last year. I wonder when they'll resume making movies for the rest of us.

-Godshatter

Posted by Godshatter at 07:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Twenty-five years ago, anything that showed up at the multiplex with the names Spielberg or Lucas would be cause for excitement and an automatic must-see.

Today no director gets an automatic ticket purchase. The closest any come are Clint Eastwood, Ridley Scott, Peter Jackson, and Ron Howard. These few get the benefit of the doubt.

Continue reading "Long Live the King" »

Posted by director at 03:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is a little more on the decline of dino-media. So where are people spending their entertainment dollars?

Posted by director at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It would seem that my thinking was off: the insane Oliver Stone has found more work after the disastrous Alexander.

I broke down and rented Alexander over the weekend. What a disaster of a movie. Unbelievably bad in every category. The story was a mess, the characters non-compelling, the editing kept yanking you out of the moment to show you meaningless flashbacks, Colin Farrell was a simpering wimp nobody would follow into a coffee shop much less into a battle, the art direction was third-rate, the cinematography boring, the visual FX done on the cheap. A total wreck, the kind of movie you see only because you can't believe it can be this bad.

This direct-to-DVD B movie was better in most ways than what Stoned put on the screen.

via the adorable and talentd Malkin.

Posted by director at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Take a look at the new Peter Jackson. It would appear he's putting his riches to good use.

Watching LOTR extra features you hear many of the actors talk about the incredible amount of energy he puts into each day. The thing that struck Spousal Unit and I was he must have consumed massive calories to keep that size.

Posted by director at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A while back I noted that Microsoft had secured a studio to produce a Halo movie. At that time I was intrigued by the possibilities. This movie has the potential to be like Aliens. I was also scared by the probability. It could easily end up like so many other video game movies. Have you seen the trailer for Doom? Enough said.
Anyway, it was just announced that Peter Jackson will be directing the Halo movie. That relieves a lot of my fear. He can do an amazing job with this movie. I expect to see an incredible film.

- Godshatter

Posted by Godshatter at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A few weeks ago I, along with a cast & crew, entered a fast-film competition hosted by Film2880. Our entry can be downloaded here. We came in 6th place with this film, learning a great deal along the way. One thing we learned is: it is tough to beat the locals for the audience choice award.

Another is: don't let your screenwriter and your editor be the same person.

Enjoy.

Posted by director at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Halo, the great XBox game, is going to Hollywood. Here is the inside story from Bungie. The hollywood take on the story can be found here. Microsoft traded some of its cash for creative rights on the movie. Think it will work out? Can Microsoft and Bungie end up making a video game movie that doesn't suck? They don't have a lot of great competition. Let's see. Mario Brothers, Lara Croft, Street Fighter. You get the idea. Halo could make a really great setting for a movie ala Aliens or something. Then again, it could be as bad as any of the recent video game converts. Only time will tell.

-Godshatter

Posted by Godshatter at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Blowing Smoke is a direct-to-online film. Congratulations to the filmmakers.

This is exactly the model I've been working towards myself. I expect it to work out fabulously for those able to create viable products.

Posted by director at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Hollywood has discovered the new film bad guys. Tired of Evil Drug Lords? Can't quite make Republicans evil and still get them to buy tickets? Evil Lawyers too boring? Afraid of calling terrorists evil?

Have no fear, the Evil Pharmaceutical Corporation is here to perform All the Evil In the World^tm. The trailer for the upcoming film was so unnoticable that I can't even recall the title but in it Rampaging Drug Companies are killing people in Third World villages for profit.

Wall Street Journal reports that profits for Mega Zuess Drug and Influence Peddlers, Inc. rose for the second straight quarter due largely to a sharp increase in the deaths of villagers in remote locations. "Nothing pays like death," remarked CEO Cash N. Kerry. "Monkeys are too expensive for testing whereas dark-skinned villagers? Who cares?"

And the deaths of untold millions due to malaria? Those deaths are clearly laid at the feet of the drug companies, not the Only Trying To Help activists who lied to get DDT banned. Of course they are.

UPDATE: The film is called The Constant Gardener. An intriguing title but I'm afraid that will be the most it has going for it.

Posted by director at 05:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Attended a sneek peak of The Great Raid which is based on the Army Ranger raid on the Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philipinnes.

Look, I could go into typical film-review stuff about acting, cinematography and so on but about two minutes into the movie I wanted to shout at the Surrenderistas in the media, "Shut the hell up about Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay!" Until we get reports of prisoners being murdered, being burned alive or hung in the sun by one arm, just shut the hell up. There is no equvialence between starving to death and needing bigger jeans because prison food made you fat.

We tend to forget that at the time of World War II the Japanese and the Germans had some traits in common: unspeakable beastly brutality and intolerable racism. The Germans have (rightly) suffered for their acts but the Japanese have been treated more kindly by history, except by those who lived through it.

This is not a movie about American greatness. It is about civilization facing down it's vicious unyeilding enemies. The Japanese did not attempt to subjugate the entire Pacific because they were misunderstood or offended by percieved slights from Western democracies. It was because they thought they could get away with it and until free men stood up against their onslaught they were right.

During the credits the audience stayed quietly, respectfully, in their seats then with equal reverence filed out without comment to each other until reaching the hallway in honor of the brave deeds depicted in the film. The kind of deeds those crying loudest against our own country could never perform.

In the car afterwards, the Spousal Unit said, "Thank you for insisting on going to this movie. I loved it."

I loved it, too. See for yourself then tell the Surrenderistas to shut the hell up.

Posted by director at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

If your heart is too hard to appreciate a baby-penguin mosh-pit, then perhaps you need this film more than most. It certainly seemed to be the most popular show at the multiplex today.

Visuals are so spectacular that sometimes I thought they must be CG but that's not very likely coming from National Geographic.

The use of 4:3 aspect-ratio struck me as odd for a landscape that screamed for a wider format. Images from the web site give me the impression it was shot on 16mm and the blow-up was grainy at times. Not sure how HD cameras would hold up in that extreme environment.

Mr. Simon calls it the best film of the summer. Tough to argue against that.

Posted by director at 06:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What he said.

This is a film in which death has no sting because the characters have no lives to lose.

See also Sin City Review

Posted by director at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A terrific Townhall article concerning Hollywood's continuing suicide.

Look, anybody not in Hollywood can see this a continent away. Hollywood disdains middle America, all these good people stand for and believe in, but still expects them to fork over their dinar for films that are spiralling into the abyss of wretchedness.

Problem is, these hated people now have a) the internet and, b) options.

If you don't know how the internet is affecting movie-going habits, drop a line to Tim Robbins & Susan Sarandon.

The only reason DVDs eat into boxoffice revenues is because what's on the screen is terrible. The local mega-chain has racks of DVDs for $8. So, I can drop $40 for two at the giga-plex (not counting dinner) or stay home and see something I know will be good. Or, more precisely, I can see five movies for the same price.

There is way too much money at stake for this problem to go unsolved. Studios execs seem willing to suffer as long as possible before facing the stark realities they have brought on themselves.

Posted by director at 06:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Quite by chance Netflix delivered both a Danish and a Swedish film this week. The Danish one is a certified Dogme95 production, the first I've actually seen, called Italian For Beginners.

From Sweden, it was A Song for Martin. Both films turned out to be love stories but that's where the similarities end.

Continue reading "Sweden 1, Denmark 0" »

Posted by director at 08:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As has been stated by others, this is the best of the prequels. Not a high standard to clear, to be sure. Still, George Lucas manages to entertain on occasion.

The dialog was simply painful. It reminded me of how dialog might be written by someone who doesn't interact with people much. Say, for example, a young dork who sits in his room drawing spaceships and imagining being loved by a beautiful girl. I, on the other hand, imagine the painful expressions and tears of Natalie Portman resulted from having to repeat those lines over and over.

Continue reading "Review: Star Wars" »

Posted by director at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Neal Bortz describes his reasons why movie attendence is down, down, down.

Actually, I think he has the order backwards. If there were less dreck in the theaters the DVDs would hold less interest. The last time I saw a preview that I felt I really wanted to see was Return of the King.

Everything today is a derivative, carefully calculated non-risk.

For a more in-depth look at why movies suck, go to my pre-Oscar post.

Posted by director at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was waiting for the Director to review this but he hasn't so I will. I'm sure he'll chime in with his review here soon too.
In a lot of ways, this was the best of the first three episodes. That's not saying a whole lot, but it didn't have the low points of the first one (jar-jar, pod race) and it wasn't quite as bland as the second. On the other hand, it also didn't have the highlights of the first one. The ending light saber duel in TPM was probably the best such fight in the whole of the series.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Star Wars Episode III" »

Posted by Godshatter at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A courageous theater owner bans Hanoi Jane's latest film. I'm sure she wishes people would just forget about her support of the enemy during wartime. History is soooo inconvenient.

Via Malkin

Posted by director at 06:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

National Treasure is a national disgrace.

First of all, Nick Cage is neither an action hero nor suave. Whenever he tries to play above his IQ, things go badly. He struggled just to spit out the lines in this turkey so forget about saying them in a convincing manner. It seems doubtful he understood all of the words the writer put together for him. I think some of his lines might have been interesting but Cage just destroys them.

Nick, please, just stop, OK? You've got enough dough socked away. Please retire to Italy.

This is on top of a production that would embarass Saturday morning cartoons. The whole thing is a bad copy of Indiana Jones. It's too bad, since the premise of having to steal the Declaration of Independence holds so many possibilities. And yet, this is what the writer and producer decided on. Come on, Jerry, it didn't have to be this way.

Posted by director at 06:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The theater was curiously empty for opening weekend for this blockbuster. Perhaps 100 people rattled around the largest room at the gigaplex. Granted, it was a dry and fairly warm spring evening in Seattle and yet there was a sense that this film was not the big deal it should be.

Now, the Spousal Unit loves this stuff. She would devote an entire room to functional swords and daggers (none of that decorative junk for her) if space permitted. Unsurprisingly she was much less concerned with the niceties of storytelling than usual.

I am a huge fan of director Ridley Scott. Every time I see him on TV or a DVD special feature I am more impressed than before. This time out I kept waiting for the big conflict with the big payoff but it never happened.

Problem is, there isn't really an antagonist. The scheming Guy de Lusignan (Marton Csokas) is sort of jealous towards Balian (Orlando Bloom) but they don't come into direct conflict, at least not much. Also, Guy is taken out of the way prior to the major battle sequence so he has no influence on the outcome.

Saladin is not the antagonist, either, played magnificently by Ghassan Massoud. He just wants to maintain the tenuous peace with the Christians, some of whom are tired of the peace.

Maybe the antagonist is War itself. Still, as the film amply displays, war or peace is made through choices with either state turning on the word of the right person. So, War isn't it, either.

This lack of a clear antagonist drained most of the drama from the story. The protagonist Balian found himself in deadly peril, to be sure, except that it was against men who didn't really mean him harm.

The score recalled Blackhawk Down, which I consider a better film. Visually, Kingdom of Heaven will be familiar to fans of Mr. Scott's recent works. Terrific detail in every frame, wonderful performances from every face on the screen, and still won't be enough.

A word regarding the speculation that this is a message film. It is not, in the sense that many hoped it would rail against the War on Terror. There is a fine speech near the end where Balian explains that Jerusalem has been changing hands for so long nobody really has a claim, and everybody does. Salidin is portrayed as a cunning warrior but one who understood the cost of war and so preferred to avoid it. Is that being overly kind? No more than omitting the butchery of the Crusades themselves.

I liked the movie but Mr. Scott should have done better.

Posted by director at 08:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Terrific article on the continuing communist cover-up in Hollywoood

How strange for Stalinists, Marxists, Communists and other flavors of socialist to make a home in one of the most lucrative industries our capitalist society has to offer.

Or is it?

via The Blogfather

Posted by director at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is an earnest film that tries so hard to be important that it forgets the audience. It also steps carefully to avoid following the tracks of Backdraft. Perhaps too carefully.

The primary drawback is that the protagonist (Joaquin Phoenix) pursues no goal, and therefore is never opposed by a viable antagonist. In this case, a likely candidate for antagonist would have been fire itself but fire has been reduced to a supporting role, going about it's job as the firefighters do theirs.

Which is all too bad, since this movie has a level of authenticity you can sense even when you lack first-hand knowledge of fighting fires. Not a lot of physics-defying leaps or running through thousand-degree infernos.

John Travolta puts forth his typical charismatic performance, this time in a restrained fashion. Does he ever play a follower?

This is a film that could have been terrific but the story is just a series of events rather than a journey for the protagonist.

Posted by director at 09:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Took the Spousal Unit to see Sin City on Friday. Let's just cut to the chase: she hated it. "It was the first movie in a long time that I couldn't wait to end," she said shortly after the credits rolled. If you think this is a girly reaction see below.

Read somewhere (William Goldman, perhaps?) that the use of narration is the first sign of a weak script. This film didn't use narration so much as internal dialog. Far more of that than words between characters. While I wouldn't say I enjoyed this aspect I did get used to it.

Our daughter said the story structure mimicked Pulp Fiction and she is right, of course. (We taught her to be right about these things.) Multiple short stories that touch each other ever-so-slightly.

This would be OK if the short stories had maintained some semblance of classic structure. The audience often had nobody to empathise with, although Bruce Willis' Hartigan worked well for a short period.

Visually, the film looked like a noir Sky Captain. I found the style appropriate while the occasional use of color had me searching for a pattern. Didn't find one, except to draw attention to some aspect of a scene. Most of the blood was white so that when it was red the violence felt more pronounced.

My wife asked what the point of the movie was? If a theme exists, it may be expressed as, "People live mean, pointless lives and trying to do otherwise is equally pointless."

As pointless as the movie itself.

Posted by director at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Let me explain something about my wife. She grew up a tomboy to a certain extent, sometimes even wishing she were a boy. You know that beer commercial where the bride catches the groom in the coat closet watching sports only to join in? That's my Spousal Unit.

She will often prefer Terminator over more girly fair such as Ella Enchanted.

That she is very much a girl is something I have appreciated for many years now even when she gets in the mood for a good romance. So, I dropped Spanglish into my NetFlix list.

Pros
How about a nice round of applause for making a father who is neither a jerk, a philanderer, an incompetent fool, nor an ogre (in the non-Shrek sense). Brave and daring stuff these days. How far have we come that this rates as an original concept?

Cons
Glorifying and normalizing illegal immigration. Nobody ever questions the status of this little family. The housekeeper's daughter gets a scholarship to a private school, later applying to Princeton all while living illegally in this country. Nobody bats an eyelash.

Normalizing extramarital affairs. While this film doesn't simplify or attempt to smooth over the pain of an affair, it does when it comes to reconcilliation. A few tears, hugs and promises and before long it's like nothing happened. Anybody outside of L.A. buy that?

Remarks
Tea Leoni has abs like I never did, even playing high school sports. Yoga, it would seem. She also happens to be a fun actress to watch. Adam Sandler stayed more in control than usual. Cloris Leachman was the real treat and nearly stole the show.

The scene, played in trailers, where Leoni cries,"Good guy [pointing at Sandler], bad guy [pointing at herself]" rang familiar to me. My wife complained on more than one occassion that moms have to deal with the nitty-gritty daily mess only to have dads swoop in like fun super-heroes.

Not a bad movie but I'm glad I waited for the DVD.

Posted by director at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)