On The Matter of "Film"

These Men Are Unpleasant to Look At

2010-04-20T18:27:00.005-04:00

I want you to soak this in. Not for too long! I don't want you to go blind from ugly:

This is the production team behind what is known currently as Project X. The first man is Todd Phillips, of Old School, Starsky and Hutch and The Hangover fame. The beardiest man is Joel Silver, who produced The Matrix, Fred Claus and what kind of looks like every shitty action film since 1976. Wow. The last man, with his strange maw and terrible squints, is Nima Nourizadeh. I guess he's made commercials? His IMDb page is about as bare as they come, with an editing job and Project X the only two listed.

I could harp on about how little good these men have contributed to the world. Phillips is almost the definition of 'hack,' tackling films with giant comedy banners draped over them, working with talented comedic actors, and ending up unveiling meandering stories with very little humor. And this Joel Silver guy impresses the hell out of me with how many just awful movies he's produced. But none of this is the issue. The issue is how unbearable it is to try and look at the above picture.

Look at those slobs! How did they get anywhere in the state they're in? Isn't filmmaking a profession? Shouldn't you have an ounce of self respect to even get yourself into a job like that? Is there any possibility these men aren't actually human, but are part of some horrible mole-man species released into the wild after a lab experiment gone awry?

That picture is of the worst looking trio I've ever seen. Please take it away from me.

- Eric T. Voigt

Sex and the City 2 Trailer!?

2010-04-13T13:41:00.001-04:00

It feels like just yesterday we were throwing on our Carrie Bradshaw costumes and rushing off to the theater to catch the first "Sex and the City" movie. The two hours and twenty-five minutes felt like mere seconds, but for that glorious period of time we were back with our dearest friends: sassy Samantha, sweet little Charlotte, gentle Miranda and the star, Carrie. The credits rolled, and it hurt to be separated. "First with the series cancellation in 2004, and now this?"

Luckily that separation will end once more, on May 28th, with "Sex and the City 2." Even luckier: the first full length trailer has just debuted. What does it have in store for us? Just what could be expected. The entire cast is back, picking up right where we left them: Carrie's enjoying life with Mr. Big, Charlotte's grappling with motherhood, Samantha's defying all odds with her sex life, Miranda's basically holding down the fort. There's lavish fashion, hunky men and exciting vacation destinations. Sounds a lot like another "Sex and the City" movie you may have seen.

Details on the story are scant, but we know the film will be taking place in both New York City and Abu Dhabi. The girls will be dealing with their lives as wives, mothers and cougars and it appears a faithfulness story line has been introduced, revealing Carrie flirting with the idea of betraying Big. Could she return from the Middle East with a new man?

Michael Patrick King, the writer, director and producer of the first film is reprising all of his roles as well. Guest stars include Liza Minelli, Penelope Cruz, and even Miley Cyrus. The main draw, as always, are the leading ladies: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon. Go get 'em, girls.

- Eric T. Voigt

"The Terminator" Was Boring and I Didn't Like It One Bit

2010-03-16T19:13:00.001-04:00

James Cameron isn't the sort of director I take the time to learn much about. I know he has a history of making action movies, which is a genre I don't understand and don't want to understand. I'd delve into Cameron's back catalog if I'd be compensated for my time, and as the chances of that happening are like 1 in 4 it doesn't feel like something I'll do. Lucky for me I have a professor who wanted to help me give Cameron a chance. He screened The Terminator in class today. It felt like I was watching the fight sequences in Transformers 2 all over again, shot on older film stock and starring less sympathetic actors.

I'm grateful to Cameron for keeping the first twenty-five minutes mostly dialogue free. If a character opened their mouth to do something other than shout for help I was either holding back laughter, failing to hold back my laughter and chuckling audibly or staring at the screen hoping I could rewrite the speech as it exited their waste holes. Those lines I've been unable to avoid since childhood were nothing like I expected them to be. "I'll be back" and "come with me if you want to live" have the ring of memorable lines when everyone goes around adding their own clever spin, but in the movie they were kinda just there. "Come with me..." was especially poorly delivered, half-squawked and all embarrassing. I assumed people quoted these lines to honor the movie. I forgot people quote for all sorts of irreverent reasons. I wish people would say "I was dreaming about dogs" more often. That one's a winner.

For every last practical reason I would label The Terminator as an action film. There are explosions, guns and chases. All three can be immensely thrilling. I could watch people shooting at an exploding chase all day long and never get bored. I could not watch the way Cameron employs them for more than a few minutes without rolling my terrible eyes and yawning my terrible yawns. Innocent people getting mowed down by a terminator was barely cool the first time it happens, yet it happens over and over. Unstoppable forces aren't exciting unless they have something deeper backing them up, or something that may impossibly stop them to counter. Car chases can be thrilling, too, if people aren't constantly spinning out or slowly scraping against the opposition. That's all that happens, with plenty of exposition on top. And if there are going to be explosions how about showing some damage? I want to know what's at stake when a pipe bomb bursts in a busy tunnel. A frame of reference would be nice.

Linda Hamilton's Sarah Conner was so much the victim in a slasher movie I couldn't agree with her more through all her many, many complaints and cries that she couldn't be the mother of a powerful future rebel leader. Michael Biehn's Kyle Reese was a poor warrior, and a huge creep for falling madly in love with a photograph of a woman living 40 years in his past. The police force had a few interesting characters, and are shot dead, because The Terminator doesn't deal with likability, it deals with mind-numbing line after blah-level action scene.

How The Terminator ranks in as one of anybody's favorite films is a question that makes me verbally angry. I'm verbalizing my anger at this. It doesn't hold up at all if it was even worth watching for effects back in 1984. It's a movie like this that causes me to make sweeping generalizations directed at 80s cinema. What a waste of everyone involved's time, and I hope they all used the money it made to wash away their memories connected to the project. Ugh. Ugh minus.

- Eric T. Voigt, "We use them to spot Terminators/Your world is pretty terrifying." ~ Kyle and Sarah, The Terminator

I Wanted To Be Right (But I Was Dead Wrong and You Knew It'd Happen)

2010-03-09T00:11:00.003-05:00

I was very, very wrong about the Oscars this year. Back in 2007, when everything about the Oscars was fun, I could have swept house. Last year I didn't even try, because there if ever was an Oscars devoid of fun. Dead Oscars. This Oscars was kind of interesting. Kind of political in the speeches, kind of surprising in the winners. Here's who won, how wrong I was, and what it was like to see it all go down:

Best Picture

I thought it would be Avatar. I was wrong. It was The Hurt Locker.

Now, I really thought it was going to be Avatar. Why wouldn't it be? Well, because it wasn't a very good movie. The voters knew this, and with astounding logic decided The Hurt Locker was the worthy movie. Nah, it wasn't my favorite of the year, but it would have been in top fifteen, so I hold no grudge, and am honestly pleased by the turn of event. Huzzah, young Hurt Locker. Huzzah forever.

Best Director

I thought it would be James Cameron. I was wrong. It was Kathryn Bigelow.

Kathryn Bigelow, you lucky dog! Not only was she the first woman to win the award, she was the first giant to win the award. She is so huge. Full of talent, I guess. She makes her first respectable film, and gets an Oscar. A true Cinderella story. More of a Little Engine That Could, really. I guessed Cameron because I guessed Avatar. I take it he's probably one of societies worst men, so I thank the Academy for keeping the statue out of his grubby grasp.

Best Actor

I thought it would be Colin Firth. I was wrong. It was Jeff Bridges.

After hearing over and over everywhere but in my own head how much of a chance Jeff Bridges had at winning I wanted to change my guess. I stuck with it, and was met with crushing defeat. Colin Firth deserved it. Jeff Bridges deserved it for The Big Lebowski and The Last Picture Show. Congratulations on getting a long overdue award, Jeff Bridges. You're this year's Kate Winslet.

Best Supporting Actor

I thought it would be Christoph Waltz. I was right. It was Christoph Waltz.

His acceptance speech was so humble. It was like a gentle caress. The Academy doesn't deserve that level of sweetness, but if we get more like him it could change us all for the better. I hope his rising star keeps on rising and he blows up in the sun. In a good way. Lets see if The Green Hornet shows him giving us a complete loop away from The Jew Hunter.

Best Actress

I thought it would be Gabourey Sidibe. I was wrong. It was... ugh... it was Sandra Bullock.

She called Gabourey GAH-BOO-RAY! She shouted it just like that. What a speech. What a speech from an undeserving actress who knew she didn't deserve that award. Not that she was up against any greats. Meryl sure, but not for that. Here comes Sandra Bullock, fresh off winning a Razzie of all things, and she gets an Oscar, too? That's the sickest joke you can tell me.

Best Supporting Actress

I thought it would be Mo'Nique. I was right. It was Mo'Nique.

This lady has an open relationship with her third husband. She's never taken advantage of this, but she would in a flash because that's how much she trusts her husband, and that's how much they understand each other. And for another thing: they're childhood sweethearts. Who wouldn't become an actress with that?

Best Animated Feature

I thought it would be Up. I was right. It was Up.

Like anyone thought Fantastic Mr. Fox would win. Like I didn't dream about it. They were the wildest. Even bloggers dream.

Best Art Direction

I thought it would be Nine. I was wrong. It was Avatar.

What a fantasy nerd's love affair. Avatar got all the nerd awards and it knows it. Dorky nerds wanted Avatar to win Best Picture and they seriously thought their respect for it would force it into the winner's circle. I thought it'd win Best Picture because I have no faith in humanity. My pessimism lost for a good reason. Their optimism lost for a good reason they can't understand. Eat your heart out, Avatar. You earned this..

Best Cinematography

I thought it would be The Hurt Locker. I was wrong. It was Avatar.

Winner of the worst win. Computers can't film movies, even if they come from Columbia College.

Best Costume Design

I thought it would be Bright Star. I was wrong. It was The Young Victorian.

How could I know? I feel like Ebert over here, trying to cover my shame for not understanding these categories. I didn't see the movies. I'm sorry. I'll try and adjust that in the coming years. Nah. Probably not. These are movies to see on DVD. This is how I operate.

Best Documentary Feature

I thought it would be The Cove. I was right. It was The Cove.

This weekend I'll watch The Cove, so I can see how enjoyable and/or Oscar deserving it is then. For now I'll stick with assuming the Academy went with the most popular, viewer friendly choice, and be on my cynical way.

Best Documentary Short

I thought it would be Rabbit a la Berlin. I was wrong. It was Music by Prudence.

Who the hell cares? The dumb ol' uplifting movie got the dumb ol' award and the cool black-and-white rabbit short about the Berlin wall got shafted. No big deal. I'll watch it later.

Best Foreign Feature

I thought it would be A Prophet. I was wrong. It was El Secreto de sus Ojos.

I'm no expert on these immigrant pictures, but I know the El Secreto de sus Ojos clips made it look like the worst film nominated. The White Ribbon is great, A Prophet looks as great or better, The Milk of Sorrow looked really cool, and even Ajami looks cutely joy inspiring. None of those got it, and the gross looker did. I'll never see it. I might see it, but I'm not going out of my way to find it. Close-minded maybe. Bitter-minded definitely.

Best Make-Up

I thought it would be The Young Victorian. I was wrong. It was Star Trek.

Hey! That's kind of cool. I thought Star Trek was more fun than most of the other big Summertime movies. I'm glad it got something.

Best Original Score

I thought it would be Michael Giacchino. I was right. It was Michael Giacchino.

Knew it.

Best Original Song

I thought it would be "The Weary Kind." I was right. It was "The Weary Kind."

And I don't care.

Best Animated Short

I thought it would be Logorama. I was right. It was Logorama.

Proving some of my wins were my boldest guesses. Takes the fun out of guessing when your serious bets are wrong.

Best Live-Action Short

I thought it would be Miracle Fish. I was wrong. It was The New Tenants.

It looks really good. I want to see it, myself.

Best Sounding Editing

I thought it would be The Hurt Locker. I was right. It was The Hurt Locker.

Oh, and by the way

Best Sound Mixing

I thought it would be The Hurt Locker. I was right. It was The Hurt Locker.

The only film worth its weight in sounds. Well chosen.

Best Visual Effects

I thought it would be Avatar. I was right. It was Avatar.

Who the hell cares, and I mean it this time.

Best Film Editing

I thought it would be The Hurt Locker. I don't remember covering it earlier, but I thought it would be. I was right. It was The Hurt Locker.

Lockin' things up.

Best Adapted Screenplay

I thought it would be Up in the Air. I was wrong. It was Precious.

Meh.

Best Original Screenplay

I thought it would be Up. I was wrong. It was The Hurt Locker.

Kinda cool that The Hurt Locker was so full of wins that night. I'm looking forward to next year's Academy Awards, and that freaks me out. Maybe I'll guess with a surer foot. How many did I end up getting? Well, it breaks down like so:

Right: 11. Wrong: 13. There are 24 categories to worry about? Jeez. I lost. Have a good night.

- Eric T. Voigt, She Does Spend a Lot of Time Here

Shutter Island: A Place Where Miracles Happen

2010-02-23T19:49:00.007-05:00

People are going to tell you Shutter Island has a ridiculous plot. They're going to say it amounts to quick entertainment for the culturally inert Saturday afternoon audiences. Maybe they'll tell you things were too predictable, or to the opposite side of the spectrum too confusing. Don't believe it.

I'm not saying Shutter Island is one hundred perfect goofy-proof. There are some downright laughable moments, and the script doesn't lend itself to subtle filmmaking. Luckily for us Scorsese doesn't need that to make a great movie. If Shutter Island can be damned for letting dangerously violent criminals roam dark hallways unsupervised it can be rewarded triply for Leonardo DiCaprio's powerful, pulling-on-heartstrings performance, the creepy, stylized world of the Ashecliffe Institution and a conclusion that elevates everything leading up to it, especially the nearly farfetched moments. For every minor unsatisfaction there are a handful of more noteworthy positives.

It's probably unfair to claim only someone like Scorsese could take a story like Shutter Island's and turn it into the gold it was, but I think it's fair enough. Every aspect of the film is handled with such sincerity that the sillier parts aren't just glanced over, but willingly accepted. Sincerity and expertise. Everyone working on the film was clearly a master at their craft. Scorsese directed a team of crack movie-makers, and the results speak for themselves. I'll speak on their behalf. Take Leonardo. I consider him a fine actor. His past work with Scorsese has been good, and sometimes great. As Federal Marshall Daniels he outdoes himself, giving one of the most evocative performances I've had the pleasure of watching this year.

My formality is bogging me down. What I want to say is that Shutter Island was a fun, well-paced adventure thriller. It's long, but it's well worth it. I've heard complaints that too much time is spent on what in the end could possibly have been done away with. I think this would have jeopardized the emotional impact. The tone would have lost its eerie, the style would have been stripped of its dazzle. The scenes feel so nuanced, and like so much care has gone into them that having seen the brunt of the beast I can't imagine what could be stripped off for time's sake.

When I like just about everything in a movie I find jumping off on points like cinematography or editing to be kind of moot. Giving the film as a whole a standing ovation seems a more apt approach. Shutter Island gets a quadruple-ovation from me. It's Scorsese at his near best, fit snugly in the middle of his greatest achievements, and his good achievements. There is no bad with Martin Scorsese.

Perfectly Reasonable Oscar Win Guesses

2010-02-03T21:14:00.009-05:00

Hang on to your hats everybody, the Oscar train is pulling in, along with a strong wind which could remove the caps from your heads. Last year I did what some could call a meagerly terrible job guessing who would win which titles. This year is gonna be different. This year I have a feeling my guesses will be rock solid.

If I'm not right about ten of these nominees I'll eat one of those hats I mentioned earlier on.

With ten potential Best Pictures to choose from the title's esteem could be seen as getting stretched a bit thin. What's the point in even trying for an award nine other shmucks are being considered for? But pictures do not nominate themselves, and Inglourious Basterds is going to be seated on a pedestal right next to The Blind Side, and the animated Up is going to have two chances at best. Who do I think is going to win Best Picture?

I've given it a lot of thought, and spent restless nights pondering the matter. I really hate to say Avatar, and I'm not even sure I'm saying Avatar. Should I say Avatar? The chance that Avatar is going to win feels like a strong one. Is it that far fetched of an idea? Titanic was just as much of a long shot, and there isn't as strong a romance in Avatar, but there is the massive amounts of money raked in, plus industry people in the industry who have the right to vote on the matter are the ones calling the film a "game changer." That's my new favorite buzz phrase. My official word on the matter is...

Best Picture will go to Avatar. If not Avatar I would put The Hurt Locker as the second most likely, but almost tied with Up in the Air. If neither of those three win I will assume Hell has frozen over, and Lake Michigan has dried up. And pigs will fly. People aren't necessarily looking for a story about our failing economy and our fruitless war efforts to define our time. They're looking for someone flashy. Avatar can provide that.

Now that I've gotten the big one out of the way I really don't have a reason to keep writing this. Turns out I'm going to anyway! What Best Picture could be made without a Best Director? If past award ceremonies have taught me anything it's that the greatest directors do not indeed have to be responsible for the best film of the year. Kathryn Bigelow is getting much love from critics, and I wouldn't be shocked if she won the title this year. I just don't think she will. I will be happy enough if she does, and think she's deserving, but who will probably take home the little golden man is...

James Cameron to coincide with the Best Picture win. It might not be fair for Avatar to sweep house, but there's really no reason it won't. It has the main stream support, it has quite a critical backing, and it was insanely expensive while still getting all that money back with interest. Only a real award winner could pull something like that off, and that's James Cameron. Jimmy Cam. The father of all blue cats. He'll take his award, go home and watch dailies of Zoe Saldana while drifting off to sleep in a puddle of drool. Mostly drool.

Do the 82nd Academy Awards seem like a rip-off yet? That's okay. This isn't really the 82nd Academy Awards. This is speculation about how they could end up playing out. Here's where my speculation is going to get even shakier than it already is. I've saw three of the five performances in the Best Actor category. I've heard mixed remarks on Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart although he did take the win at the Golden Globes. Morgan Freeman looked fine in the trailer for Invictus, but he didn't look any more or less like his past Morgan Freemans, and I've read his take on Nelson Mandela was nice and expected. Nothing superb. George Clooney was a derivative of many of his past roles. Jeremy Renner looks like he's growing into a fine young actor, and I hope to see even more maturity brought to the table when he stars in The Town. All those guys aside, the winner as I predict will be...

Colin Firth for A Single Man. The Academy Awards seem like a much friendly place for him to be nominated than the Globes, and with Julianne Moore taking a hard snubbing there's no other way A Single Man can get its supposedly due recognition. I'd consider it this year's Penelope Cruz for Vicky Cristina Barcelona. A solid performance in a somewhat unseen film. Worth talking about, placed in a group with a bunch of good, but not great hopefuls. If not Firth I'd have to guess Jeff Bridges would get a reprise.

Best Supporting Actor gives even fewer performances for me to have born witness to. I hear Woody Harrelson is great in The Messenger, I haven't even heard of The Last Station, let alone know how Christopher Plummer was in it. Ohhh. Wait. The one about Tolstoy? Ohhh. Weird. Okay, no, he's not going to win. I highly doubt Damon will get anything out of Invictus past a nomination, and really? Stanley Tucci as the kidnapper in The Lovely Bones? Was this category made for me not to care? I'm not going to remember any of them were nominated after the worthy winner takes the crown, and he will take it in the shape of...

Christoph Waltz! The best performance in Inglourious Basterds, and one of my favorite of 2009, Waltz made Nazi Colonel Hans Landa bristle with intensity. He was great. A blood-chilling villain who keeps a steady tongue in cheek. I hope he wins, and if one of the others gets it I'll probably go ahead and stop watching. If I even do watch. I might just check up on the results when they come in at The Playlist or Slashfilm. Christoph Waltz for the win. Disregard that I haven't given the other nominees a chance. I don't think I need to on this matter.

Great... I didn't think I could get any less informed after Best Supporting Actors. Turns out I didn't see any of the five films the Best Actresses were pulled from. I think I can safely say Sandra Bullock is not going to win for The Blind Side. Was that movie really that good? Really? I understand Carey Mulligan being there because people can't shut up about her role in An Education. Guessing with the help of word of mouth and reviews I've perused I'm going to blindly hand the award to...

Gabourey Sidibe. Streep won at the Golden Globes, but that's... that's not even right. Sandra Bullock was nominated for her performance in The Proposal at the Globes, so I'm thinking I shouldn't bother taking them into any serious account. If there was one leading female performance I heard about more than Mulligan's last year it was Sidibe's as Precious. Go get 'em. I never had faith in that film, but I have faith she's going to win.

Neither Anna Kendrick or Vera Farmiga were anything above average in Up in the Air, so I'm trusting they were nominated because nobody could think up any leading ladies they'd seen prior to December once the other three slots were filled. Melanie Laurent, anybody? Guess not. So maybe I was wrong and I will trust the Globes to steer me right on this one...

Mo'Nique for Precious. Probably. Penelope Cruz didn't look like she was stretching anyones imagination in Nine, and Maggie Gyllenhaal has never acted outside an range of 'standard.' A comedian turned abusive mother shouts Award worthy performance. Hooray for two shots in the dark.

Finally we're back in familiar territory with Best Animated Feature. I haven't seen The Secret of Kells, but who has? Am I right? Up top! Shoot... I didn't see The Princess and The Frog, either. I did see Coraline in glorious 3D, though. In fact, I saw Fantastic Mr. Fox twice. That'll count toward one of the movies I didn't see. The final animated nominee I caught in theater, and the assumed winner, is...

Up. Why? Because Pixar made it. Not that I didn't like Up. I liked it quite a bit. I just don't think it's fair to pit other animated films against a Pixar film. It will trounce every other animated film each and every single opportunity it gets. Pixar films are like unstoppable forces. Consider Up a pitbull that hasn't been fed in a week or two. What that dog would do is what Up will do to its competition.

Maybe writing this was a mistake. I mean, the next category is Art Direction, and once again I'm finding myself only familiar with a single nominee. That nominee is Avatar, and I'm getting pretty sick of feeling like I'm vouching for Avatar. I'm sick of not having enough information to base my judges on too, don't get me wrong, but that coupled with potentially giving Avatar another win bugs me. So here I go, with a near complete in the dark...

Best Art Direction will go to John Myhre, with Gordon Sim as set decorator, for Nine. It's a supposed train wreck, and I'm betting art direction was one of its only strong suits. Myhre has won in the past, and the art direction in Avatar is potentially the worst thing about the movie next to the dialogue. If there's a definite anti-trend with the Oscars picking odd ducks like Nine I guess it will just go to show I'm not the analyst I claimed to be. And if Nine doesn't win I don't have any more credible guesses to give.

This could have been an easy category, Best Cinematography. Being a veritable wonder nut when it comes to cinematography I figured I could pinpoint the clear winner no problems. Avatar and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince are in the running beside The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds and The White Ribbon. The most intentional loop has been thrown. I didn't realize any of Avatar could be considered to have 'cinematography' what with everything happening inside a computer, and the Harry Potter nomination is eyebrow raising, then overlook-able. The other three nominees are all very worthy. The loopy thing is that each has such a different style. Vastly different styles. Three way ties need be accepted.

Since we've seen the color film stripped of its color routine before from films like The Man Who Wasn't There and Prince's Under the Cherry Moon I think the academy is unlikely to go for the black-and-white option. Sorry, Berger. Robert Richardson's work on Inglourious Basterds was wonderful, but his past wins may have convinced voters to look somewhere else. In keeping with the flavor of the month the academy may think handheld and gritty is the way to go and give the Slumdog-ian work of Barry Ackroyd the honor. The Hurt Locker for the win?

Now to costumes. I don't know anything about costuming. Half of me wants to believe everyone brings their clothes from home to the set. The dumb half of me. Assisting the dumb part make a choice is the part of me that didn't see a single nominee in this category. My success rate staying about 50 percent will be quite a sight. Winner:

Bright Star? I hear it's really good. I hear it's considered snubbed. I'll confirm when I see it.

Writing is nice. The more I write the more enjoyment I'm getting out of it. For this article writing less might be writing more. My points are threadbare now. This is the dregs. Two categories in a row where I haven't seen the slightest bit of any nominee. I could fake it up with the actresses. I know enough about their work to make deluded guesses. Documentaries aren't the same breed as actresses. They're each as different from each other as the cinematography options. In keeping with the "if I've heard buzz it must be gold" method I dub the winner...

... The Cove. I'm interested in seeing this. Bright Star, too. Where were all these movies in 2009?

Now I have to choose a documentary short film, too? Ugh. Alright. Rabbit a la Berlin sounds good. Not to knock short documentaries, by the way. This is coming from being uninformed.

I'm also uninformed with what constitutes a well-edited film. If the story is cohesive and the images aren't detrimentally jarring hasn't the editing done its job? I know what most of the editing in these films looked like and none of them are standing out. Why not The Hurt Locker again?

The foreign category I wish I was familiar with. I saw The White Ribbon, and it was great. It's somewhere near the top of my top films of 2009 list. It won the Grand Prize at Cannes, and has made plenty of people very proud of their cinematic achievement with the film. I don't think the academy will give it the win. I think the award will go to...

Un Prophete. Call it a hunch. Only call it a hunch. It isn't anything more than a hunch. For some reason. They missed their chance to give the award to last years foreign crime film with Gomorra, so that could play a role. Something about the cold violence in The White Ribbon being more unsettling than the blatant prison violence is playing a role, too. I really want to see A Prophet. Itching to, really. A win could push it closer to my grasp.

Now for more mindless guessing: Best Makeup will go to The Young Victorian because period pieces seem to have a knack for snagging makeup wins; Best Original Score will be given to Michael Giacchino for Up when the deserving winner is Alexandre Desplat for Fantastic Mr. Fox; "The Weary Kind" from Crazy Heart will win Best Original Song, because T Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham wrote it; Logorama wins Best Short Animated film without batting an eye; Instead of Abracadabra would be a good choice for Best Short with Living Humans, but I only say that because it's the only one I've seen. Perhaps Miracle Fish will be the winner; The Hurt Locker will possibly narrowly avoid being beaten by Star Trek for Best Sound Editing, and will go on to take Best Sound Mixing as well; finally, Avatar will get a statue for visual effects because it's not fair, life.

I was thinking I could stop with the frivolous guessing when it got down to the writing nominees, but once again I'm baffled by the options. Since I haven't been very fair on Up in the Air through this post I'll claim it can take home the Best Adapted Screenplay win. People seem to enjoy Jason Reitman, and even if I'm in the minority with thinking it was a lousy movie it was indeed adapted from a novel. He managed to do that. That takes eyes.

Original screenplay would go to A Serious Man or Inglourious Basterds if I was the one deciding between nominees, but since I'm not I think Up is going to win. Pixar is always going on and on about how they put the story first, animation second. I thought Up's story was full of flaws, especially when it came to the villain, but I think they should be able to coast by and take a win home even if I think it undeserved.

How many of these am I going to guess correctly? If Avatar isn't Best Picture I think I can safely say I'm going to have chosen completely wrong for the rest of them. I'll cross my fingers.

- Eric T. Voigt

2010 Will Be Great? Part One

2010-01-24T15:12:00.004-05:00

I have only lived through one great year in film. That year was 2007, a year in which I had no trouble coming up with a truly top top 10 list: Gone Baby Gone, Knocked Up, There Will Be Blood, The Darjeeling Limited, No Country for Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Zodiac, Michael Clayton, Superbad, and last but not least 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. That was a mouthful. A mouth-watering mouthful. I think of every last one of those films as exquisite little babies. I'd watch them all this very moment without a moments question. Or a moments notice. Unfortunately for 2008 it didn't live up to the previous year's might, and while 2009 had maybe five top tops it was mostly bushels of good.

Can 2010 vanquish 2007? Of course it can, but will it? I'm not so sure. There are a lot of movies I'm interested in seeing, but out of these fifty or so will any astound me like I was three years ago? I'll do a little rundown of what I think I'll want to see, with explanations and reservations.

1. Mystery Team. Derrick Comedy's first feature film. I've heard favorable talk and unfavorable talk around it, and have enough faith in them from what they've delivered in the internet shorts to trek on over to a theater and see what they can accomplish on a grander scale. Officially a 2009 film, but it won't be in Chicago until the 4th of February.

2. I Love You Phillip Morris. Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as a convict couple. The story sounds like it has plenty of room for hilarity and poignancy. Its two trailers made me laugh out loud. Both. I want to see Jim Carrey funny once more, and this feels like it'll deliver.

3. Shutter Island. October was very nearly ruined when Scorsese's latest film was pushed a full four months back, all the way into a new decade. I took the high road and complained to no end. Finally, in three weeks? I'll be able to sink my teeth into this bad boy. It's getting positive reviews, but I hear it has weak story points. Of his 18 features I've watched I've been let down by none of them, and why should this disappoint? His priors are nearly too good to be true. I wish it could have hung out in my Top 2009 list, but it should do nicely filling a '10 slot.

4. The Ghost Writer. Roman Polanski is sadly all over the map with his filmmaking. For every Chinatown there's a Death and the Maiden. If he makes Rosemary's Baby he also has to make Oliver Twist. There isn't a rhyme or reason to when he'll make a dud or craft a masterpiece, it just sort of seems to happen. Luckily for him his track record hasn't shown him become as inert as a Francis Ford Coppola, and The Pianist, which was fairly recent, was fantastic. This could be one of his greatest, but could also be a failure. I bet it'll be... one of those. I'm tentatively excited. Solid trailer bolsters this.

5. Cop Out. Kevin Smith has never been one of my favorite directors, I didn't bother seeing his Zach and Miri movie after lousy trailers and poor word of mouth and I haven't felt he's lived up to the potential he put on display with Clerks in any of his later works. The probability I'll see this in theaters kind of counts on a better trailer coming out, because it just doesn't look good. It's on this list because I'm not ready to write Smith off entirely, but I'm damn close.

6. Greenberg. I'm even less excited for this movie than Cop Out. Normally I like Noah Baumbach. I think The Squid and the Whale is his best, and hold Kicking and Screaming dear to my liver. The trailer for Greenberg doesn't share any of the wit and none of the humanity of his previous few films. I expect more from him than it looks like he's giving. Sure it's just the trailer, but if there was not one interesting moment in a series of supposedly enticing trailer-ready moments what hope does the full film have at entertaining me? I would see it if it somehow presented itself with a 180 degree turn, but it's doubtful.

7. The Runaways. (see post below)

8. Kick-Ass. I almost wrote it off after the first miserable excuse for a trailer. But a few character-centric clips and another trailer later and I'm feeling quite optimistic about Kick-Ass. It feels like there's a strong cast, a mildly funny script to work off of, and the red band trailer shows quite a bit of balls-out action that I wouldn't mind wrapping my eyes around. The production design is a bit cartoony, and a few jokes do fall flat, but the good will hopefully outweigh the lamer aspects, and I plan on giving it a chance.

9. MacGruber. SNL needs help. There hasn't been a worthwhile character based movie from SNL since Wayne's World. Now, I like the current SNL cast, and thing writing is one of their strong suits, but the first trailer did not do very well to sell the thing, and the second trailer relieved this worries by a miniscule fraction. I might not bother with it, but positive talk could turn that around.

10. Get Him to the Greek. Nicholas Stoller directed Forgetting Sarah Marshall, my favorite comedy of 2008, and has now directed Greek, the spin-off to Marshall. Comedy sequels often find themselves to be failures, but I have a feeling this can avoid similar doom. It could even be my favorite comedy of 2010. That's probably ridiculous. I don't really believe it. But maybe...

11. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Technically I don't expect this to even be half good. The idea of David Slade's take on the Twilight series is too wild to pass up, though. I expect a healthy mix of Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night, with no similarities to the first two. It may even be the series' Prisoner of Azkaban. If only.

12. Knight and Day. Tom Cruise looks adorable. What else can I say?

13. Inception. Christopher Nolan hasn't made guessing what Inception could be about easy after decidedly keeping most of the plot points hidden. What he has made easy is getting me pumped for it. What a great cast. What a pretty good director. What fantastic looking effects. If this turns out to be a documentary on the creation of socks I would still gladly watch. I'm not saying it will be that, and I don't mean to say that couldn't be interesting, but I'm all out of logical comparisons.

14. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Edgar Wright made Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. That's a wonderful series and two basically flawless genre-smashing comedies. I've read comments from early screeners saying it was unlike anything ever seen before, and that it's also very funny. I don't doubt either statement, and can't wait to see it in theaters.

- Eric T. Voigt

Am I Excited to See "The Runaways"?

2009-12-14T17:59:00.002-05:00

I'm serious here. Am I actually anticipating the release of the new Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning starring movie The Runaways? A movie about two people I know nothing about (Joan Jett and Cherie Currie) dealing with a relationship I had no idea was tumultuous? The Runaways as directed by Floria Sigismondi, who I have never heard of and therefore have no pre-formed high or low expectations over? There isn't even a trailer swaying my excitement, but I can feel it. This is what being excited feels like.

Now that I've come up with an answer for the first question (the answer was "yes") I have yet another question: why am I excited to see The Runaways? I have only seen Kristen Stewart act competently on two occasions, with an almost invisibly small role in Into the Wild and a not-great but not-painful supporting role in Adventureland. No way do I consider myself a fan of her work. Nor do I think I've been pleased to see Dakota Fanning lead a film.

Maybe I have a secret admiration for female rock stars? A deep-seeded love for biographies of any variety? I don't know. It's confusing me more than the time I went gaga for the Cherrybomb trailer. The Runaways is apparently being released on the 19th of next March. We should have more of a peek at what's really going on with the movie by then after Sundance has strained it. Right now we have this to go off on, and apparently I've been wowed:

The Two Ten Best Films of 2000

2009-12-10T21:48:00.027-05:00

The 00s. The first decade in which I was entirely conscious of the world around me. Wow. Time flies. I'm nearly two decades old, I have three children, millions in gambling debt... wow. What better way to handle ten years worth of films than with a writing partner? I present to you a series of best ofs by Abi Travis and myself. You'll get used to it.

Warning: "best" isn't going to mean best. It's going to mean "favorite." These are the films we thought were best. So they're our favorites. And in some years? Some years we didn't even think many movies were great. We'll explain. Really. You'll get used to it.

1. Requiem for a Dream (Directed by Darren Aronofsky) - Eric

A lot of people say they will never watch this movie again in their entire lives, but in turn call it one of their favorites. I'm not on board with that. I think this movie should be watched once a year. Like It's a Wonderful Life but instead of holiday cheer it'll deck the halls with a dissuasion toward drug abuse. Requiem's power comes from the lead four performances for me: Burstyn, Leto, Connelly and Wayans. When these characters suffer I believe the actor is in torment. Each one of them is incredible in their wildly challenging roles. And Aronofsky throws handfuls of in-camera tricks and other bells and whistles like split-screen, slowed down frame rates, fish-eye lenses, managing to forward the story with them, keeping them from cheesiness. The best film about addiction I've seen, and my favorite by Aronofsky.

Abi Says: I knew this was going to be your number one. I'm in an in-between camp, one that says this film is wonderful, and a definite favorite, but should be watched sparingly. Less than once a year. It should be more like the Olympics. Or a presidential election. I like the repeated bits. The dilating pupil and everything that goes with it. Really shows how monotonous-but-still-kinda-awesome drugs can be. Burstyn is my favorite, and the most sympathetic in my book. Seeing her makes me want to cringe in disgust, but also sympathy. This film is well-crafted, but...so sad. I have a hard time enjoying all the sad.

1. In the Mood for Love (Directed by Wong Kar-Wai) - Abi

If I could pick one film from 2000 to watch over and over again, it'd be this. Obviously. It's my top pick. What I like most of all is how this film manages to create plenty of suspense with a story that isn't too crazily unthinkable. Two people are cheating on their respective spouses with one another, and the spouses find out. I like the way that they find out. I like their reaction to finding out; pretending that they're also having an affair, just to see what it's like. I like all of the walking, and how the music gets super loud at important parts, and is nonexistent at other important parts. I want these characters to be happy, but also want to like that they're innocent. It makes me conflicted, but delightedly so.

Eric Says: I knew This was going to be on your list. I like the music in this a lot. It's always being repeated, but it's always worth being repeated, and creates familiar themes. Ojo Verde, and Yumeji's theme are my main dudes. All of the emotion is conveyed in such subtle, little moments, but it's strong. I think this is my favorite film by Wong Kar-Wai, but I've only seen Days of Being Wild aside, so that might not be saying much.

2. Requiem For a Dream - Abi

2. Titan A.E. (Directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman) - Eric

I consider this to be the most underrated animated film of all time. It's directed by the man behind The Land Before Time, written by Joss Whedon and John August, and was voiced by Matt Damon, Janeane Garofalo, and Ron Perlman, among numerous others. An impressive list that came together to make an impressive movie. It's science-fiction at it's best: action-packed, post-apocalyptic, with a lot of heart. The jokes are all well-timed, and the suspenseful scenes are nerveracking. I want it to be more talked about than it is, which appears to be not at all.

Abi Says: Huh. Wow. Never have I seen this one. Post-apocalyptic?! So ahead of its time, both literally and film-genrically. I'll watch it, and then I'll talk about only it forever until I stop.

3. Amores Perros (Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu) - Abi

I'm a sucker for films that have spliced-together stories. Much like this one. It's got three separate stories that all come together with a car accident. There is so much chaos - with a dying dog and guns and tearing up floorboards - but it all ends up coming together in a big picture way. Like that dot painting. I watched this film in the language lab at school trying to fulfill my necessary hours. I was sitting in a ridiculously uncomfortable chair and wearing headphones that had been worn by thousands of gross college students, but still I was riveted. Sympathetic characters is something I feel like I'm going to be bringing up a lot, and this film has them by the pounds. This one made my heart race itself to infinity.

Eric Says: Well I hate this movie. Hate it so much it's on my list, too. And my favorite by Inarritu. I like Gael Garcia Bernal's storyline most of all, because it feels like it has the most depth. He's in love, with a girl and a dog, and he's willing to stab plenty of people over it. The storylines seem to all come together in a much more rewarding way here compared to his later film 21 Grams, and there seems to be a lot more going on in the character's minds than in Babel. Great movie.

3. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen) - Eric

I'm a fan of all the Coen Brothers works. Except The Ladykillers. I can't stand that movie. Unfortunately for O Brother I rank it at the very bottom of the Coen favorites. The goofiness of the characters doesn't always balance into funny. It's sometimes offputting. And the music isn't my cup of tea, either. I think the acting is fine, I just don't think the acting is given to the best roles. But the lowliest Coen Brothers movie still makes it onto the top of 2000, and that's why they are terrific.

Abi Says: I haven't seen this, either. But I read the book.

4. The Emperor's New Groove (Directed by Mark Dindal) - Abi

This is the only film on my list that I actually saw in 2000. In theaters, no less! And as such, it holds a special place in my heart. I'm almost positive this is the last non-Pixary Disney film that I enjoyed, and it's one of my favorites, as well. The Emperor's New Groove got my Disney hopes up right before they were smashed to oblivion with Atlantis. Spade and Goodman play off each other really well. The writing makes me laugh, still. I know this, because roommates of mine were watching it last weekend, and I chuckled from afar. And the villain... Yzma (Kitt)! And her bumbling sidekick Kronk (Warburton). They Also play off each other well! This film is all about partnerships to me. And llamas. I just like a good llama film.

Eric Says: This is the second film on the list I saw in theaters, and one of two. Both animated. Cartoons were good when I was ten. And yes, until The Princess and the Frog blow our expectations out of the bayou we will look upon New Groove as one of those last few, proud members of the Disney old guard.

4. The Emperor's New Groove - Eric

5. Amores Perros (Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu) - Eric

5. Almost Famous (Directed by Cameron Crowe) - Abi

I didn't see this film until 2009. Until this very day, in fact. And maybe it's riding high in the "recently watched" part of my brain, but for now it belongs here. I liked the opening credits. I always appreciate when a film goes out of its way to make the opening credits enjoyable. These were. Fugit was apparently 18 during filming; a fact around which my head simply will not wrap. He looks every day of the 15 years of his character. Frances McDormand plays a great concerned and well-educated mother, and Zooey Deschanel is an excellent brat. And P-Hoff is in this! I almost forgot about him, but he's good. Billy Crudup's role as Russell Hammond is my favorite, though. He plays it to the nines. It made me want to be a rock star. It made me want to take acid.

Eric Says: I myself don't like this movie much. It's okay. I like Billy Crudup most, too, and I think there are fun moments between the band and the boy, but there's so much focus on the awful Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), and there are a lot of unbelievable moments that are supposed to be played as reality. I and Almost Famous do not gel.

6. Best in Show (Directed by Christopher Guest) - Eric

I can't remember if I saw this first, or A Mighty Wind first, but whichever sparked my interest in mockumentaries. I couldn't get enough of them. I only Really like four, all by Christopher Guest and his troupe, but I can't get enough of them. Best in Show is possibly one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. They are masters at improvisation. Every line is said with a ridiculous earnesty that makes me fear these people actually do walk the Earth outside of the film. Thank goodness they don't, and only exist to make me laugh.

Abi Says: Mockumentaries are sometimes brilliant, and other times just painful. Christopher Guest makes 'em brilliant. Again, I haven't seen this, but I will never deny my extreme appreciation for his writing and acting contributions in This is Spinal Tap. He's a mockuartist. While we're mentioning mention-worthy mockumentaries, I want to say I enjoyed Akel's Chalk, and also that Summer Heights High gets at least honorably mentioned.

6. Chocolat (Directed by Lasse Hallstrom)

It's the stereotypical heterosexual woman in me that likes this one. Chocolate. Johnny Depp. That right there gets the attention of about 96% of all females. Add some Gypsies to the mix, and you've got yourself a gem. This film is like watching a two-hour long Snickers commercial, but with more emotional payback. I liked the vibe. I wish it had been more brightly-colored. I remember feeling it was kind of washed-out. But maybe Jeunet has lured me into this false sense of all things French having to be garish. Garish might be too harsh. Anyway. Chocolat.

Eric Says: I haven't seen Chocolat, but I've heard from many girls that it's a great movie. I like Johnny Depp, and I like chocolate, so I think I'd enjoy this. What did the homosexual woman in you think of Chocolat?

She was also appeased. Everyone likes chocolate. Everyone likes Johnny Depp.

7. In the Mood for Love (Directed by Wong Kar-Wai) - Eric

7. The Perfect Storm (Directed by Wolfgang Petersen) - Abi

You know what else women like? George Clooney. George Clooney, and a sad ending with Mark Wahlberg floating in the middle of the ocean. And fish. This film has them all! It's the story of a swordfish gettin' team, which gets stuck in this huge storm. There's a lot of exposition, because audiences have to actually care about the men on the boat, as well as their landlubber friends and loved ones. I liked this film, because I got to kick my younger siblings out of the room while I watched it due to its rating, and that made me feel cool. But the film itself made me sad. And I watched it on vacation. A vacation that involved fishing. Probably not a good idea. More film stuff... in the days before shows like Deadliest Catch, audiences probably didn't realize how much danger is actually involved in being in a fishing boat. It's a lot. This film did a good job of showing all the danger, I think. One guy gets a huge fish hook stuck in his hand! Films with dangerous water always make me feel uneasy, and this one was no different. Also, I should mention that this is based on a book, which is a creative nonfiction story. That means it actually kind of happened, which is sad. (PS: I should also mention that Chocolat was a book first. A fiction book. Here's to you, literary fans).

Eric Says: We're finally getting some diversity in this list, because I've never seen this movie either. I've watched parts on the television, and remember catching a glimpse when it was in theaters, but I normally don't like weather movies, and I definitely don't like tales of heroism. This would probably be off my list, had I seen it. It's very telling that it's on yours.

I'll say. It's also very telling that it's not on yours.

8. Memento (Directed by Christopher Nolan) - Eric

When I first saw this movie I thought it was So Cool. Guy Pearce is a total badass, getting justice for something he doesn't fully understand. The backwards narrative structure was unlike anything I'd seen before. This was prior Following, or Pulp Fiction. Fractured narrative was awesome. The second time I watched it, knowing the twist ending, and story style, I liked it even more. The best scene, for me, is when Moss leaves the house after screaming her head off, and... well, you haven't seen this, Abi, so I shouldn't spoil it. But that part's great.

Abi Says: What?! Who said I haven't seen this? From whom are you getting your information?

Wait... you have? Have we discussed it?

Abi Says: No. No, I haven't. No worries.

You...

Abi Says: Having (again) not seen this, there's not much I can say. A backwards narrative structure is something I've applauded e'er since that one episode of Seinfeld. And a twist ending?! I can hardly contain my excitement. I've tried checking this out at the library, but it's been unavailable every time I've gone to snatch it up. Wouldn't you know it.

8. X-Men (Directed by Bryan Singer) - Abi

It feels good to be at number 8 already. The fact that my number 8 is X-Men feels less good. I watched this with a bunch of teenagers, I think. Teenagers who wished they had super powers. This film just leaves me feeling "ehhh" whenever I think about it. I see it as the first in a long line of the comic book films we keep getting, and I don't feel it was done nearly as well as, say... Watchmen. Duh. I liked Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Didn't like Anna Paquin or even Halle Berry much. Felt really uncomfortable with Mystique.

Eric Says: X-Men is my number nine. And I like it. I think it's deserving of this list, to a degree. More so I think X2 should be on a year's end list, and since it's not on my later lists this can serve as a place-holder for its sequel. Plus, without this one there wouldn't be the sequel. You didn't like Hugh Jackman? Or James Marsden? Yeah, they weren't so great. X-Men is more about the message than the movie, too. The X-Men are a fantastic group of superheroes, and of all the other superhero franchises sparked this is one of the best handled in terms of source material faith, and well-made-ness.

9. X-Men - Eric

9. Unbreakable (Directed by M. Night Shyamalan) - Abi

Sixth Sense was the very first "scary" movie I ever watched. I don't know why I put scary in quotes, because I was actually very scared by it. Scary. There. As a result, M. Night Shyamalan was able to captivate me with anything he made, so long as Bruce Willis played the lead. The first thing I think about with this film is the shot over young Samuel Jackson's head when he opens up his first comic book, and the camera spins around one way, while he spins the book around the other way. The younger me was enthralled by that. I also really like that color that means Samuel Jackson is involved. You know the one. Oh yeah! Remember when the son pulls a Gun on Bruce?! What a messed-kid! As a whole, this film left me partially shaken (due to the dangerous water), but overall unimpressed. Maybe because it was comic book-y? Do I really just not like comic book films? We've discussed this film before, and you made a good point about something. Something about the ending, like how dumb it was that he showed his kid that newspaper article, revealing his "superhero" identity.

Eric Says: It is a sad, sad world where we have to put films that have left us "unimpressed" in our ten favorite films of any year. I don't remember what I said about the ending. I don't remember talking much about this movie, except when I've told people how chilling Jackson's broken baby body is at the start of the movie. I too am overall unimpressed with Unbreakable, because it has a very strong story, and Bruce Willis is pretty good in it, but it eats up time with his exercise routines and sad, blue shots of his child.

Yup. Yup. Broken Bodied Baby is more chilling than an old Benjamin Button Baby any day.

10. Traffic (Directed by Steven Soderbergh) - Eric

2000 was a good year for anti-addict films. This was more of an anti-dealer, really. The War on Drugs was strong in our minds back then. A little less realistic than the War on Terror, but a little more realistic than the War on Crime. Soderbergh made the drug war feel entirely unbeatable. He didn't present it in a hopeless sort of way, he drew it out realistically. Troublesome and real. It's Topher Grace's best role. Benicio del Toro's, too. Actually, I don't like him in anything but Traffic. It's one of my favorite Soderbergh films. 2000 was a good year for favorites for certain directors. This weaves a bunch of great, diverse stories together in a less experimental way than Amores Perros, but in a more satisfying way, I think.

Abi Says: Good. Good; I'm glad for it. Haaaaven't seen it.

10. Miss Congeniality (Directed by Donald Petrie) - Abi

This film is kind of a guilty pleasure. I'm allowing it on this list mostly because it made me laugh as a young gal. But it's number ten, so keep that in mind. Filmically speaking, this doesn't have much going for it. It's not particularly well-shot, nor is Bullock's character very appealing. Less so before the make-over, but still not much overall. The other Miss State's are expectedly banal and flighty. Annoyingly so. I keep confusing this with Two Weeks Notice (sic). Not a good sign. I don't like the fact that there's a love interest. You know what I still like about Miss Congeniality? Michael Caine.

Eric Says: Michael Caine should be an argument in court. "How do you plead?/Michael Caine." Then you don't have to go to prison because everyone is busy thinking of how charming an actor he is, and of all his fantastic roles. Remember that picture I used for my Inception cast post? When he was young and dashing? Boy is Michael Caine stupendous. But yeah, Miss Congeniality sucks. I think I smiled at some of it when I watched it with my Mom, and Bullock's sidekick seemed like a nice guy when I was younger, but now the whole lot of them seem like huge wastes of film. A fitting end to 2000.

I wish all the films of 2000 were just Michael Caine.

Eric Says: Me too. Me too.

Written by Abi Travis and Eric T. Voigt (Dictated but not read)

The Five Best Trailers of 2009

2009-12-10T20:40:00.009-05:00

A good trailer should make you want to go see that movie instead of the movie you came to see, or shut the internet off and get to the nearest theater. I like a trailer to give you a hint of what tone to expect, and a glimpse at the story, but refrain from spelling it all out. I'm looking at you, Funny People trailer. My favorite trailers use the music and sounds to get an emotional response. Simple pop songs rarely do. My favorite trailers have images I've never seen before. It intrigues. Excites. Enthralls. Etc.

Anyway, I'm doing trailers for movies that came out in 2009. The trailers may have debuted in 2008, but I can't keep track of that sort of thing. I'm busy. Busy watching trailers.

1. Watchmen

I watched this before The Dark Knight and it re-calibrated my heart's beat. The remixed Billy Corgan matched the dark tone perfectly. All of the shots had an unbridled intensity to them. It felt so confident in what it was presenting. None of the super heroes looked familiar, so I was itching to find out what Watchmen were all about, and why I'd never heard of it before, on top of the film looking awesome.

2. Observe and Report

This trailer runs on hutzpah. It's so well paced, too. We're hooked by the flasher, who the lead is and exactly how the lead sees the world is introduced a few seconds later, and then it takes off like a rocket. A firecracker rocket. Jokes cross with violence cross with surprising crudeness. In the last fourth the shots are incredible, and they cut so fast, and the music blends so well... it's like seeing Obama get elected all over again.

3. Moon

Clint Mansell's score steals the show. Sam Rockwell steals what's left. The moon sets can have whatever's around after that. Plus, there's a mystery set up. Who is that other Sam Rockwell. Why is Sam Rockwell crying? Can I have a beard like that? Did they really film on the moon? It got me wondering, and eventually I went to a theater and learned the answers to each of these questions. Half worth it. Such is the power of the trailer.

4. A Serious Man

The Coen Brothers have figured out how to sell a film. This. This is the way you sell a film. Awesome. My favorite trailer of these five favorite trailers of the year. I watched it for the first time at work, and I think I wrote about it then, too. I could have watched it ten times after. Ended up hitting the six-time mark by the end of the day. I knew next to nothing about the movie and I wanted to see it more than any other advertised. Magnetic.

A Single Man in HD

Trailer Park | MySpace Video

5. A Single Man

With kind of a similar vibe to the similarly-named A Serious Man this trailer is one of the most inspired, and attention grabbing I've yet seen. The score is haunting as it punches along with each shot, the imagery growing more compelling and alluring as the seconds tick. The ticking is a nice touch, too. I haven't had a chance to see the movie yet. It's getting a limited release tomorrow, and I'm pretty sure Chicago isn't an opening location. But I'm gonna try to see it. Thanks, trailer.

Honorable mentions include The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle, which I desperately wanted to see but has never come near enough. It looks charmingly weird, and I didn't understand its appeal until the second viewing. Antichrist was a movie with a great trailer that turned out to undersell the film. What is possibly the coolest trailer, and also gives away most of the best moments in the movie, was for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Calls New Orleans. The movie was just okay, but the trailer is fantastic.

- Eric T. Voigt, Thinks He'll Do a Best of 2000s for Each Year... For Fun!

Eric Reviews Everything He's Ever Seen (Numbers 700, 720, 740, 760, and 780)

2009-11-21T02:49:00.013-05:00

So I can't keep up with this series. So what? You aren't trying to review every movie you've ever seen, are you? Well? Are you? And if you are, are you managing to write five reviews daily? You are? Jeez... this really isn't going as I planned. This batch is a good batch. I either remember a lot, or nothing, about each of them. Guess which is which and you win a prize.

700. Cats Don't Dance (Directed by Mark Dindal)

I don't remember anything about Cats Don't Dance. Okay, I remember the lead was a cat, and he had a cat love interest with white fur, and there were other animals, and a whale? There may have been a stage production there were planning. Or it took place in a dance hall. I think it was set up to take place in the 1920s.

I've read up on it, and have concluded Cats... Dance was a musical, and it was set in the late 30s.

I distinctly remember playing it on TV and being disinterested. Un-enthused to have it in my home. It didn't terrify me, and it didn't satisfy me, so it's joining the ranks of animated 90s movies I shouldn't have bothered watching in the first place. They are stacking.

What? I can't remember it. I really can't. I can't think of two good things to say about the movie. This could be the least worthwhile review I've yet written, but that's the cost of seeing movies once or twice when you were seven. Me, not you.

720. James and the Giant Peach (Directed by Henry Selick)

This isn't Tim Burton's James and the Giant Peach. I've heard people get mixed up over this, and I'll set that straight right here and now: Henry Selick directed James and the Giant Peach, and The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Coraline, and Tim Burton did not. Henry Selick, who may have the worst haircut in the movie world. Trust me. Find a picture. Any picture will do. I think he's worn his hair in the same style since the 80s. The same terrible style.

I used to fancy myself an artist. I drew constantly. I knew I was going to be an animator when I grew up, and have a very popular television show on Nickelodeon, or better: Cartoon Network. Then the world beat me down. My doodles were called 'no good' and 'dirty rotten' by my peers, and I figured out on my own that I have no eye for consistency. I gave up. But when James and the Giant Peach came out I was fully on board the animation train, and Had to see it not for the story, but for the character designs. Lane Smith, children's book illustrator, was concept designer behind James and his talent has no boundary between two- and three-dimensions.

Not much of the story has stayed with me. The opening live-action with the cloud rhino killing off James' parents is what I recall most vividly, because it was the scariest. Next would be the underwater scene with the ghost pirates, but that's because that scared me, too. I don't know if I liked the movie for anything other than the awesome artwork and animation if the only parts I remember terrified me. That's okay, because at six I didn't need an engaging story to keep me engaged. The scuttling and bouncing clay bugs were entrancing purely through physical presence.

740. The Bothersome Man (Directed by Jens Lien)

The Bothersome Man exists in a weird split between soul-crushingly depressing and hilarious. It's surreal, about a man finding himself in a generically perfect, inescapable purgatory. Everything he could want is at his fingertips, but lacks the soul he was familiar with in the real world. The world is a bit like that in Wristcutters: A Love Story, with grays and blues and whites assisting in the cleansing of joy from the environments, but the tone of the film is much more contemplative, less silly. The style works wonders with the story.

The comedy is dry and much of the time subtle. Many of the gags are visual, but never slap-sticky. Small looks and barely perceived hand motions carry the brunt of the jokes, with dialogue finding it's wit with convoluted explanations and misconceptions. The direction is fantastic, as it melds dark, gloomy material with a cheekiness that keeps the film causing laughter instead of sobbing tears, which would not be hard to see happening in the hands of someone other than Jens Lien.

For a film with such little ever really going on, and lengthy segments without dialogue all of the actors are still personable and charming. The titular bothersome man plays the role so earnestly, and believably. Every time he makes a new discovery it felt like he really was unraveling the truth behind a horrible mystery. Does that make sense? It felt like he truly had been set in purgatory, and he went about his days naturally with cameras rolling.

I watched The Bothersome Man because my Mom happened to have it home from the library. I knew nothing about it before watching, aside from my Mom telling me I might like it. A very pleasant surprise. Another of Norway's little gems. You know Norway and its gems.

760. A Very Long Engagement (Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

When I press people to think of Jean-Pierre Jeunet they normally wind up mentioning Amelie, or how great of a disaster his Alien was. What I wish everyone would be thinking about every moment of their day is Jeunet's 2004 film A Very Long Engagement, one of my top ten favorite films, and in my top five favorite wartime movies. I think it overachieves at every aspect of filmmaking. It has incredible cinematography, every shot is gorgeous, the universe is crafted perfectly, crisp pacing for a film over two hours long, wit-filled writing, performances with so much love and heart put into them I'd be hard pressed to find a single character I didn't like, even if they were meant to be hated, and such a touching, convoluted-yet-satisfying story that by the end of it, after all that time, I wanted the engagement to have lasted much longer. If the film had lasted for six hours it would still be too short.

One of its greatest accomplishments is how many genres it straddles, and how well it straddles them all. At the start I thought it was going to be a sweet fluffy romantic drama. Then it bares its fangs and turns into a dark comedy. It morphs again into a war epic. Then again into a murder mystery. Never does it lose its emotional core, and none of the films components feel at odds with the specific styles, constantly changing though they are. There really is enough to stretch into five separate films, but Jeunet is smart, and balled them all into one. And it's amazing. More than a five on a five star scale, much higher than a 10 if rating from 1 to 10.

780. The Bicycle Thief (Directed by Vittorio De Sica)

Gigantic props to The Bicycle Thief for making Italian sound like the ugliest language on the planet. When Lamberto Maggiroani isn't busy chasing after bicycle thieves or failing at menial tasks his ears are filled with the sound of exasperated, shouted Italian voices. So on top of watching the plight of a man I didn't care about do things I wasn't interested in I had to listen to what hell must sound like.

Probably more disagreeable than my opinion of The Deer Hunter is my vendetta against The Bicycle Thief. I've watched it twice and haven't had a change of heart, big or small. I dislike this movie. It isn't a passing sort of "didn't care for it," it's a very angry "why does everyone care about this so much?" I get that it's an unflinching look at post-war Italy, and the use of non-professional actors portraying such realistic problems was revolutionary at the time but I don't see how that should give it a free pass into Classics territory.

This is a personal problem. Thousands of Thief defenders will proudly stand beside the story, the acting, and the lot of it. I don't like any of it. The main character is a dolt. Sure, times are tough for him, but times are tough for everyone, and times are tough for much more interesting people. The guy is a failure as a sign paster, and as a father, but mostly as a character I could pay any serious attention to. The story is powerful, sure, and the family's livelihood is at stake, but I didn't see it told in a way I could support.

I haven't seen any other Italian neo-realism, so I'm not sure if I'd have a problem with the entire genre, or just this film. Maybe my sensibilities were unable to compromise in the face of De Sica's. It could be that I'm unfeeling for idiots and their impressionable children. I could ponder my distain for The Bicycle Thief all night, and hear perfectly reasonable arguments for the film for a month yet I still would not be moved. I don't like The Bicycle Thief.

- Eric T. Voigt, XOXO

Eric Reviews Everything He's Ever Seen (Numbers 600, 620, 640, 660 and 680)

2009-11-21T02:44:00.011-05:00

Okay. Hiatus over. It isn't good for you, and it isn't good for me, when everything I've ever seen continues to go unreviewed. Not on my watch! A few new movies added to the list over the weekend took the place of more errors already on the list, so I think my overall total movies watched is still 1,067. Convenient.

600. Pee Wee's Big Adventure (Directed by Tim Burton)

Tim Burton is kind of an eclectic director for having such a definitive style. More he's ignored when a film doesn't carry his more familiar darkness mixing with innocence themes, or star Johnny Depp. Everyone knows he made Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, and many think he directed The Nightmare Before Christmas. It isn't often I remember he's responsible for the Planet of the Apes remake or Sleepy Hollow, and the movies he directed I like most, Big Fish, Ed Wood and this, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, are only grouped in with his more Tim Burton-y works on IMDb lists. This is a roundabout way to complain that emo kids (do they still exist?) and misanthropes only give credit to Burton when creepy black-clad losers are prancing around. I'm not into that Burton. I like it weird, but I don't like it... lonely? Anyway, Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

Pee Wee makes a fat guy chew tainted gum, almost sleeps with a woman in a stone age-styled pit stop, has a run-in with Large Marge, lights a match and is surrounded by beasts stricken with taxidermy, and rides his bike in one of the coolest ways I've ever imitated. I remember all of this, but I don't remember what the plot was. There was a story. I mean, he was on the road for some reason. I have no clue why. I liked it. I think I watched at least four times when I was a child. I really liked it. Pee Wee was hilarious. I never saw his show, but I think that's probably for the better. Saves the mystique of the movie.

620. Slacker (Directed by Richard Linklater)

It's really interesting to look at this movie, compare it to the world I grew up around in the 90s, and compare this film to that, seeing just how perfect Linklater captured everything I could have been a part of had I been born a decade earlier. Slacker doesn't have a plot, and it hardly has a concept, it's just an honest look at Generation X from the eyes of one of their own.

The characters and stories that run through the movie are all a little bit strange, but feel a whole lot true. No-dialogue traveling scenes break up the lengthy all-dialogue scenes so as to never have the film bogged down in one camp. It's a well-acted, well-paced slice of life.

I think this is Linklater's best film, and it's his first. Dazed and Confused comes close to matching it, but there is so much raw humanity in Slacker, relatable yet perplexing, that it seems he will never be able to reach those levels again.

640. Airplane! (Directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker)

The godfather of all parody. Has a spoof movie since been as zany, or as innocently politically incorrect, or as all around hilarious? It's debatable, but for me the answer is no way. Airplane! was the first comedy to shock me. There's an irreverence to it which keeps the constant stream of absurdity grounded somehow.

It may have helped that I didn't understand anything they were spoofing. Parodies these days draw so directly from what they're mocking that they're getting to be the movies they're making fun of, with a fart thrown in, or a car running over a character. Airplane! doesn't suffer from this. It doesn't lean on other movies, it leans on strong writing and excellent timing from its performers.

If other parodies took the time to learn from Airplane! we wouldn't be drowning in the slime created by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. Airplane! isn't a breath of fresh air because it came out decades before what we have now. It's a wonderful gem from ages past. I'm glad it remains one of those most widely praised American comedies I can actually agree with.

660. Monkey Business (Directed by Norman Z. McLeod)

I'd watched a few Three Stooges shorts before I got around to watching The Marx Brothers and I hated the Three Stooges. I knew The Marx Brothers were another group of grown men who found themselves in wacky premises making hijinks happen, so by my reasoning I had to be wary. Old comedies seemed stilted and campy to me at the time. I was in middle school. I hadn't given many a chance. Giving The Marx Brothers a chance was ultimately one of the best filmic decisions I've ever made.

The Marx Brothers are the greatest comedic actors to walk the Earth between the 20s to the 40s. No exceptions. They kill. They can draw a single joke out for five minutes, and it won't lose its charm or its hilarity. The Marx Brothers are three of the most well-endowed humorists ever, comedically, and sure, Zeppo doesn't have any of Chico, Groucho or Harpo's abilities, but he's still there, and I give him a pass.

Having said all that I don't remember what Monkey Business is about. I think this is the one with the "ran out of fuel, had to go back" bit. I know it came out before A Night in Casablanca, the sign of their declining prowess in 1941, so Business is okay in my book. I think their work in the 20s was the height of their awesomeness, and this falls a few years shy of that. I trust I laughed.

680. In Memory of My Father (Directed by Christopher Jaymes)

Now this is an odd one. I saw this at the Waterfront Film Festival my first year as a volunteer and was blown away by it. I went into it knowing it was a comedy about a dead father, and that's it. No idea who was in it, no idea who had written or directed it. The festival opened my eyes to how great it can be to walk blindly into a screening, because without any expectations it is much easier to be impressed and disappointed. No pre-judgments. Huzzah!

I watched it twice in two days. That's once a day! My reaction to it the second time was a less enthusiastic one. The cast's stellar delivery, and the hilarious writing felt kind of amateur and trying-too-hard when I watched it again. I laughed so hard I was crying when I first say it. I chuckled at the familiar lines the next time. So either this movie has absolutely no staying power as a film, and should never be viewed repeatedly, or my moods were drastically different between days.

This is on my list of movies to buy, but now that I've written this I think maybe I need to view it a third time before making any brash decisions. Judy Greer was great in it both times, and I think the main three characters, played by Jeremy Sisto, Christopher Jaymes (writer and director as well) and Matt Keeslar, were interesting, if not as funny, the time yonder. Yeah, I'm going to give this another shot. Thrice shot.

My life is empty without Baby Gorgeous. Her absence helped me find the strength to finish this. I'll try to be a good seriesest. I swear.

- Eric T. Voigt

Eric Reviews Everything He's Ever Seen (Numbers 500, 520, 540, 560, and 580)

2009-11-21T02:32:00.011-05:00

Hellraiser and License to Kill were almost 2/5 of this post. I must have been lax when I started listing. I'm positive I've never watched License to Kill and think I mistook it for one of Pierce Brosnan's Bonds. One Monsterfest I tried watching Hellraiser, but I got grossed out and disturbed and missed what were probably important chunks of story flipping between channels. This list has been altered, and films I've actually seen were brought in. Whenever I find mistakes like this I'll pull movies from the bottom of the list and replace the un-watched, like I did with Police Academy and Dirty Dancing. My count's back up to 1,067. No worries.

500. Wayne's World 2 (Directed by Stephen Surjik)

Mike Myers, how far ye have fallen. I bought his Austin Powers movies because I remember Myers fondly, not Powers. I should have been buying Wayne’s World. Wayne is a much funnier, likeable character, and paired with Dana Carvey’s Garth he was hysterical. I worried the sequel, this movie, wouldn’t live up to the standards set in the first one, but if anything it meets and surpasses.

Now, I’m not what you’d call a “fan of heavy metal or even pseudo-heavy metal,” but I can understand wanting to be after a sit-down with Wayne’s World 2. The level of Wayne’s grit in creating the best rock festival in the world is endearing. Hard rock is handled with an understanding and care that makes even the die-hardest techno junkie’s heart melt for the rockers.

Everything is accessible, when so many of my senses are reeling against it. Even when the humor is at its most juvenile it’s so earnest I throw all caution to the wind and smile until my lips want to rip. Wayne’s World 2 is one of my favorite buddy movies, demonstrating the essence of comedy, love of music, and friendship.

520. The Addams Family (Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld)

I remember watching the Addams Family Vacation at my house. My Grandfather snuck out of the house, crept over beneath the window and popped his head up, shouting. He nearly scared me to death. Think, a seven year old going into cardiac arrest, and it being all his Grandpa’s fault. That’s the most interesting memory I have of any Addams Family movie.

The Addams Family movie(s) weren’t as funny as they tried to be, or as creepy as they could have been if they’d stuck to the source material. They fell into this kind of funky purgatory. Not a good funk, a lame funk. The first Casper movie suffered from the same problems. It aspired to be spooky, but turned out dusty and disgusting. Dusty isn’t an adjective often applied to tone. Its the only word I can think of.

Morticia and Gomez had this running gag where Gomez would become incredibly horny, and start kissing his wife’s arm, I think. I know there was a sexual undercurrent that I understood at my young age, but didn’t approve of. It was disconcerting. If I’m a prude now I was even more of a prude then. I blame the German and Puritan blood what flows through me.

If Addams Family had any humor it flew right over my head. I think I remember there being jokes. I don’t remember laughing. If the movie was too mature, or just a bad movie I’m not totally sure of. I supposed it left some kind of impact if I’m using four paragraphs to talk about it.

540. Black Sabbath (Directed by Mario Bava)

The Boris Karloff hosted Black Sabbath is a strange beast. I saw it at my first Music Box Massacre, at threeish in the morning. It took three Italian horror shorts and compiled them into an anthology. All of the actors were dubbed over in English except for Boris, who gave brief introductions before each short. He starred as a vampire in the longest and most boring short. The other two felt like average Twilight Zone episodes. I didn’t like it. Why did they subject us to such blah filmmaking?

Whether or not the shorts were intended to be compiled as an anthology still confuses me. The English dubbing appeared to take liberties with the stories, with dialogue not always matching up with the visuals. Whole chunks of exposition felt tacked on to help slower audience members. It was one of the least entertaining films in the twenty-four hours and ill placed for an audience who’d been awake for seventeen hours and at least nine more to go.

560. Scarface (Directed by Howard Hawks)

Now I know where “the world is yours” comes from! One more reference to notch into the bedpost.

Hopefully the poster has lead you to understand I’m referring to the 1932 Howard Hawks film, not the Brian DePalma/Al Pacino Scarface. I haven’t seen that Scarface. The only DePalma movie I’ve liked is Phantom of the Paradise, so I don’t have much interest in checking out the remake, if that’s what it’s considered. Judging from what I know about both there isn’t much similar ground between the two.

Hawks’ take was surprisingly comedic. Like, laugh out loud comedic. I haven’t seen a gangster movie mix humor and violence quite like Scarface. There’s a character, Angelo, who was the equivalent of a murderous Chico Marx. Hilarious. Paul Muni outdoes himself on the funny, too. He’s a greedy, evil bastard, but light enough to feel alright rooting for. He’s ruthless, but he’s a ruthless endearing underdog.

I definitely want to check out more by Howard Hawks. Did you know I haven’t even seen The Big Sleep? It feels deplorable, it does. If his other work is as masterful as Scarface I may be getting a new favorite director. If I’ve spoken too soon, with my foot in my mouth, I’ll address it in upcoming installments, over 220 posts from now.

580. Intolerable Cruelty (Directed by Joel Coen)

What a sick twist of fate: the last Coen brothers movie I see is the first I review. Destiny is a confusing she-wolf.

Screwball comedies, I miss you. I want gutsy, fast talking women and adorable leading men who remain at their best when bested. Intolerable Cruelty pays homage, and adds on to, a great familiar genre which has been lost somewhere in the past half-century.

Judging from the cover, poster, and anything else marketing the movie I expected Intolerable Cruelty to be my least liked Coen brother venture. I was shown George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones, big Hollywood names with nothing to lose, staring dotingly into each others eyes. “Romantic comedy blech,” I thought. “Surely the Coens jest.” I should never have misjudged them.

Intolerable Cruelty may be one of their funniest films yet. The clever wordplay is at its cleverest. Its comedic timing could have a clock set to it. All of the actors treat the absurd as dead-pan as possible, and man, oh man, does it culminate into something hilarious. That something: Intolerable Cruelty.

Don’t be like this guy over here. Give Intolerable Cruelty a chance. If you’ve heard someone denigrating it ignore them, and let yourself decide. I can see where it would be everyone’s cup of tea, but for a culture ready to throw thousands away on Epic Movie and the next straight-to-DVD American Pie it feels like Intolerable Cruelty is something all the more special. Hilarious and special. I cherish it.

Eric Reviews Everything He's Ever Seen (Numbers 400, 420, 440, 460 and 480)

2009-11-21T02:27:00.016-05:00

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the five reviews every single day. What a work load. If I had homework this would be difficult. Thanks, end of the semester relaxation. Thanks, you old building and loan. What else can I quote in this introduction? I'll save it for another time.

400. Mulan (Directed by Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook)

I could be found giving Mulan a resoundingly bad rap early this year. Buried beneath pounds of other Disney memories I was stuck thinking of Mulan as "that one with the scary Genghis Khan and an Eddie Murphy-dragon." It deserves more credit than that. I honestly can't remember much about the full movie, but I've listened to the soundtrack again, and the music is teeth better than I remembered.

"I'll Make a Man Out of You", "A Girl Worth Fighting For", "Honor to Us All"... their catchiness is astounding. Another giant Western production company's take on ancient Eastern civilization could not go better musically. My Mom had the cassette on repeat for months following its release, and I'd always be at the edge of my seat when Jerry Goldsmith's instrumental pieces came on. They're sweeping, suspenseful works of art.

I wonder if it hurts the crew to never see little girls dressed up like Mulan for Halloween when there are droves of Belles, Cinderellas and even Ariels. Is a cross-dressing warrior not pretty enough to earn a costume? Mulan has honor. She's a selfless patriot. This is exactly the character American girls should be emulating. Especially the going off to war part.

I'm sorry this post isn't more about the movie itself, but really, I'm hard pressed to think of much beyond the musical numbers. She goes to a spirit box in the rain at one point, and she gets so injured she has to nearly show her breasts, and there's a thrilling conclusion where the villain dies during a fireworks display. Those are the scenes I half remember, which bodes better for Mulan than Hercules, because I remember so many scenes from that movie and I hate them all.

420. The Puffy Chair (Directed by Jay Duplass)

My very first mumblecore review and the first mumblecore of my life, years before I knew what a mumblecore was, or where to find other mumblecores. If I type it enough it will lose all meaning, and then it won't be a subgenre. They'll be free to be movies, gone from the shackles of that damning label. Mumblecore.

It's a pretty good film about a couple and their friend road-tripping a puffy chair cross country. Most of it made me smile. Occasionally I chuckled and laughed. When it wasn't making me happy it was busy scaring the hell out of me. Being in a serious relationship with a girl never looked so unappealing. It presents the couples' sad demise without a bit of uncomfortableness missed. The Puffy Chair leaves no unpleasant stone unturned. Jay Duplass directs the action so convincingly it feels more like an unfortunately real home movie than a feature film, with performances from Mark Duplass (co-writer and sibling), Katie Aselton and Rhett Wilkins remaining equally powerful switching between comedy and drama. Watching it was time well spent.

The special features menu offered me more from the Duplass brothers: short films This Is John, Scrapple and The Intervention. I liked the last best but enjoyed all of them. They were fine companions to Chair. They also made Baghead. That was good.

440. 101 Dalmatians (Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske and Wolfgang Reitherman)

Ah. Finally. A little classic Disney, circa 1961. That would make me... negative twenty-nine when it came out. I'm glad the Disney vault doesn't forbid these movies from being crammed down every new generations throats or I'd have missed out on the greatest children's films ever made. True story. 101 Dalmatians is a favorite. Inside my exclusive top five favorite Disney cartoons, definitely.

There are over one hundred and one adorable puppies in this one movie. That's as precious as gold to a once dog-enthusiast. And for the villain-enthusiast I still am there's Cruella de Vil, who transforms into a road-raging demon after approving of mass dog slaughter. On counts of cute and terrifying it almost can't be beat.

Starting off as a cute movie about family 101 Dalmatians turns into a sprawling adventure, set against the backdrop of a dark and dreary London Winter. The darling little animals face Death square in the face, and laugh at him. All of this factors into 101 Dalmatians earning my undying respect, and mad props.

460. Balto (Directed by Simon Wells)

Balto... I have nothing to say about Balto. It was meh when I was five, and it doesn't ring any bells at nineteen. I can't even remember the bare-bones of the plot. He was a dog sled dog, right? Maybe he wanted to be a sled dog, but didn't get to because he was gray. Is it about racial tension? That poster looks like it has a mean dog. That must be his opposition. Alright. I give up. What was this movie about?

In the Leave It to Beaver movie Beaver pulls out Balto and is excited beyond reason to watch it with Eddie. Was I as excited as the Beave when I saw the trailer for Balto? I'm positive I was. Oh man! I just stomped my computer. I tried crossing my legs and knocked it off the table. That wasn't cool.

Interesting fact: Simon Wells is also the co-director of well-liked sequel to An American Tail, biblical Prince of Egypt and nightmarish We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story plus the upcoming adaptation of Mars Needs Moms!. You can't keep this guy away from exclamations.

480. Dumb and Dumber (Directed by Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly)

I thought Dumb and Dumber was immature back when I was immature. I never sought it out on my own, but watched snippets at my friend's house quite a bit, and caught moments during my Dad's surfings. About every time TBS or TNT had it playing I'd end up seeing a minute more than the last time. It was on one of those very similar channels a lot in the mid-90s. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Why do I feel this way? "Gasman" and X-Lax. Terrible movie.

Bad movies getting one paragraph feels right. The better the movie the more I'll say about it. Or... maybe I shouldn't speak so soon. My shortest post yet. I don't know how that makes me feel. Quality over quantity. Something over something.

- Eric T. Voigt, Only a Twenty

Eric Reviews Everything He's Ever Seen (Numbers 300, 320, 340, 360, 380)

2009-11-21T02:21:00.016-05:00

I thought last post was going to be a struggle to get through. It wasn't that bad. It wasn't that bad. It wasn't that bad. I can't wait to review Red Dawn. I have to watch it more thoroughly than the first two times to count it as being watched... this is neither here nor there. I'm trying to get prepped to write about head-ache-inducing mediocrity. Pass me a gallon of Advil, ma'am.

300. Evolution (Directed by Ivan Reitman)

Before I was obsessed with film I was obsessed with aliens and UFOs. It lasted for a few years, bolstered by the Men in Black movies and animated series, X-Files, various Godzillas, plus lots of recreational reading. Society wanted me to like extraterrestrial monsters, so who was I to say "no"? I was trusting. Why would they set out to hurt me? Because they knew I was an easy target. That's why they tricked me into getting my hopes way way up for Evolution, only to have them maliciously smashed.

This movie was so boring. I don't remember what the aliens were even doing on earth. It didn't help that the creature designs weren't anything special. Even less of a help was the uninteresting to goofy acting. Ivan Reitman should have quit back in the 80s, back when he was ahead, raising a director son. This movie was lousy. I can't think of many specific scenes, but there's this looming vibe of disappointment hanging over Evolution that I can't shake.

I was over at IMDb a second ago and noticed Julianne Moore was a cast member. What? I didn't know that was her. She's one of my favorite actresses. And Dan Akroyd was, too? And Sarah Silverman? All these surprises. Surprises that don't matter, because this movie was bad. I think. Hazily bad.

320. Recess: School's Out (Directed by Chuck Sheetz)

Fond memories of Recess do I keep. I watched reruns most weekday mornings, and waited expectantly for each new Saturday episode. Recess was my favorite show in elementary school. It didn't talk down to us youths, and seemed to understand the workings of playground politics intimately. Were the writers fourth graders? They very well could have been, because they had their shit down. I think I'm going to go out on a limb and say Recess was like Seinfeld for children. Taking everyday problems everyone could relate to and spinning them into hilarious yarns. Man... this show rocked...

If only the end of the series had been the end of Recess. The show had capped itself off nicely already. No movie could capture the spirit of what an entire series had already given us. A movie was made, I was hopeful it would live up to everything coming before it, and I coaxed my Dad into taking me to see it. Sure, I laughed a little, and the familiar characters still held a place in my heart, but it was only good. It didn't compare to the better episodes, and left Recess to save its good name in syndication. Sigh... I miss you, Recess.

340. Road Trip (Directed by Todd Phillips)

I wish I could excuse myself from writing this review.

The only good thing Road Trip has contributed to my life is its helping me realize not every comedy needs to be funny. Let me explain. Road Trip is, in essence, a comedy. It stars comedians and comedic actors, it sets up gags with wacky payoffs, and it managed to make some audiences laugh. It didn't make me laugh. See, I used to think if a movie was made to be funny and I didn't laugh it was my fault. After seeing Road Trip and having its jokes fall dead at my ears I fully understood different senses of humor. It wasn't that I didn't understand, it was that Tom Green didn't do it for me. Clouds parted, the sun came out and I think I caught a little bit of a rainbow winking at me.

P. S. Amy Smart was topless for a while, so maybe Road Trip contributed two good things.

360. The Emperor's New Groove (Directed by Mark Dindal)

This one's somewhat milestoney. Lilo and Stitch and Emperor's New Groove, from 2002 and 2000 respectively, are the last animated Disney films I both liked or watched. Atlantis fell between the two, and I didn't care for it. Following 2002 there hasn't been a single Disney cartoon to interest me without the partnership of Pixar to sweeten the deal. I wonder if some terrible accident happened at the production studios making everyone forget how to tell good stories, or if it was a conscious decision. It has nothing to do with a growing age gap either, because I'm just as excited for, say, the new Pixar movie as I am the next Coen brothers movie. Okay, not as excited, but I have no children's movie distaste.

The message is this: Emperor's New Groove was a Disney movie I could still be excited for, and enjoy watching. It took the art design in an interesting new direction they haven't returned to. For a story about a shepherd taking care of a prince-turned-llama it had surprising poignancy. David Spade as a llama made me sad. How could something so goofy be so touching? John Goodman has such great chemistry with Spade, too. And there were awesome action sequences. And Patrick Warburton voices a character. This is a nostalgia rush.

If I could go up to Grandfather Disney and convince him to make movies the old fashioned way, the way they made them when I was a whipper snapper, I would. Right now. To think of how happy Emperor's New Groove made me, and how only one Disney movie after has surpassed that happiness fills me with a dull bitter rage. Better move on to the next movie.

380. Pokemon: The First Movie (Directed by Kunihiko Yuyama)

The Pokemon movie?! Come on!

This movie is straight up weird. As a fan of the show I was looking for more of the same, not a dark story about mistreated, forgotten super villain monsters tricking a bunch of teens into fighting for their lives on a spooky island. The tone is eerily different from the show. Many Pokemon are seriously injured in the movie. Like, permanently.

I got a free legendary bird card out of it, but even that was kind of a rip-off. Zapdos? I've never cared for Zapdos. Or Moltres. Articuno is the only bird I even liked. I'm kind of impressed with myself for remembering all of this. Unrightfully, probably, since I was a Pokemon junkie for a hefty chunk of my life. Collecting Pokemon was more of a job than a hobby. I invested years to Pokemon, and I'm repaid by leaving the theater feeling kind of violated? I'm not exaggerating. I felt depressed and unsafe walking out of that showing. They really pulled a fast one on me.

It's looking like beloved children's shows aren't doing a great job making the leap to the big screen. Will my review of Digimon: The Movie prove otherwise? Perhaps The Rugrats Movie was a pleasant experience? Find out in the coming installments. All 200+ of them.

Eric Reviews Everything He's Ever Seen (Numbers 200, 220, 240, 260, 280)

2009-11-21T02:15:00.022-05:00

I'm writing this now right after completing the second edition of reviewing everything. I scanned what I'm supposed to be covering in this post, and it doesn't please me. None of these movies have left a profound effect on me, positive or negative, except maybe 280, but even that's not a sure thing. I understood that I haven't only watched my favorite movies. I've seen good, bad and in between. This is the between.

200. Super Size Me (Directed by Morgan Spurlock)

I eat fast food a lot. Or... not 'a lot'... too often. Here in college it isn't so much chain-variety burgers and fries like back home, but I do cram so many burritos down my throat I could open a Mexican restaurant, and regurgitate a week's worth of meals. It's not healthy, but at least I'm self-conscious. I've been taught against doing this left and right, and to no avail. Super Size Me is one of those failing teachers.

Super Size Me is such pop-documentary it's hard to take seriously. The investigative work sloppy, and the film presents the facts all so blatantly one-sided that it's more attack campaign than information. It's cool to see Spurlock gorge himself on McDonald's and face health-jeopardizing consequences. I accept it provides convincing arguments against the fast food industry. I do not think it's a substantial enough to hold up against my favorite documentaries, and think of it as airy entertainment, not interesting filmmaking.

It scared me in the hours immediately after viewing, and stuck with me for maybe a few months after. I've forgotten all the facts and first-hand interviews. Well, outside of the way chicken nuggets are made and that some ice cream mogul was very sickly as a child from all the sweets he ate. I have it on a list of movies worth buying, but writing about it has made me seriously reconsider letting it into my house. I'll catch it on TV.

220. Good Bye Lenin! (Directed by Wolfgang Becker)

We got to watch Good Bye Lenin! for AP European History and it was one of the happiest days of that class. It's not like we were used to teachers showing us good movies. Mostly we got late-80s/early-90s educational pieces and made-for-TV shlock. He did show us a decent French movie earlier in the year, but I was wary when I heard the title. I'd had enough of Russian history that late in the term. Then he started the DVD and we all found out it was a German narrative from only a few years ago, not an irrelevant historical documentary. I could have wept with joy.

So the movie wasn't half bad. Putting a label on it I'd go with 'very good.' Daniel Bruhl was an adorable charismatic lead, and I really felt for him when he was taking care of his mother. His relationships with girlfriend and best friend were as sweet as they were. He played a good guy trying his best to do good things with real conviction, and I thank him. A genuinely kind-hearted film without a showy message.

240. Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (Directed by Gore Verbinski)

One of my uncles gave me a free trial of Netflix for Christmas '03. I used it to rent Futurama and Family Guy seasons mostly, but I also got a few movies I'd heard of, but hadn't bothered to see in theaters. I'd seen commercials for Pirates and it seemed like a semi-fun action movie. It was a free trial. What did I have to lose?

Pirates wasn't a flat out waste of a rental. I thought the fight sequences were well-staged. I didn't think the bone pirates were impressive. I thought Kiera Knightley was cute. I didn't think the comic relief was relieving or comedic. The pluses outweighed the minuses, but the pluses weren't great pluses, and the sequel I bothered seeing was crazy bloated. There's nothing in this installment to expand on in further films.

Oh wow. I forgot about Johnny Depp. Isn't he the main appeal of these things? He was kind of funny. I've never seen him be bad. I'd probably have a lot more to complain about if I had watched it now and not when I was in middle school, but it wasn't offensive that I remember. It is a damn shame there's more of them coming.

260. The Bourne Identity (Directed by Doug Liman)

There are few thing I remember about the first Bourne movie. I remember Lola (Franka Potente) being the love interest. Daniel Bruhl is her brother in one of the later movies! And Bourne has two sequels, going on four, just like the Pirates franchise! This post's movies have so many bizarre connections. It should marry itself. Or have the same parents. It can get married and have the same parents, I'm not picky.

That wasn't on topic. I had scenes to mention. Right. One of the scenes I remember is Bourne doing something with a gun, and then walking out into a middle-of-nowhere field to meet the man he shot, I think. I have no idea what they talk about, but that image sticks out. I think they talk about how Bourne was an assassin. Something to do with piecing his past together. Maybe I don't remember that scene.

A scene I know I remember Brian Cox killing his subordinate. The kid is about to help prove Bourne isn't responsible for a criminal action, and Cox kills him because he doesn't want the evidence getting out. I didn't even remember Chris Cooper being in the franchise until they flashed back in the later movies.

I'm not sure if the movie was forgettable. It might be that too much time has passed between now and then. I remember plenty from the second movie, and that came out only two years later. Bushels of movies before 2002 I remember clearly. I guess it was forgettable.

280. Punch-Drunk Love (Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)

I try to watch films the whole way through. I'm not a fan of pausing in the middle to make meals, or setting chunks aside for later. I don't think this makes me strange, I think most people watch their movies from start to finish if they're seriously trying. I'm driving it home that I don't stop movies when I can help it. With two films I've not only stopped, but have stopped, rewound and replayed a scene. The first is the opening sequence to Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. The second: the opening sequence to Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love. I wasn't re-watching out of necessity, mind you, I was re-watching to get a second look at actually mind-blowing cinematic moments. Am I a fangirl or what?

As kind of a side note I want to say this: Adam Sandler will only ever be good in Punch-Drunk Love. I state this as fact. I never liked him when I was a child when his Happy Gilmores and Little Nickys were all the rage. I didn't like him in Funny People where I was promised something better than goofy voices and man-childery. The only movie I consider him to give a near-human performance is here, in Punch-Drunk Love. I think he's great. He's insane, but he's also fragile and loving. He's funny, but in a subtle way, not in the trying-too-hard way. At least that's how I see his usual act.

It was a meditation on loneliness and anger. It was painful to see the frustrations of Barry Egan, but made his triumphs that much more rewarding. There are moments that truly scared me, and there were sequences having me laugh out loud, all alone, which means I thought they were really funny. This movie was awesome. I bought it, and haven't had a chance to re-watch it yet. It'll have its turn. Don't you worry.

Punch-Drunk Love marks the first of many movies I would watch between eight and ninth grade, when I went through my "watch two movies a day" phase. I discovered the popular indie directors of the late-80s and mid-90s: Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, the Coens, Quentin Tarantino, Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze. I found their styles and their stories extraordinary. The characters were so lovable, the dialogue dense and witty, the aesthetics more interesting than any I'd seen before (excluding Scorsese's and Kubrick's). I found my favorite directors.

- Eric T. Voigt, Did It

Eric Reviews Everything He's Ever Seen (Numbers 100, 120, 140, 160, and 180)

2009-11-21T01:46:00.017-05:00

I was looking through my list, trying to figure out how I was going to present these movies every day and settled on doing it by twenties. Why shake up the good thing I established in the first post? I also considered opening up a new blog for this because I feel like its going to be a lot more expansive and much more it's own distinct being than everything else I've done on the blog. Then I figured that would only bother the loyal reading community we hold here, so I didn't do that. I did review five more movies, though. They can be found below.

100. Across the Universe (Directed by Julie Taymor)

I saw Across the Universe out of a sick desire to learn what fresh hell The Beatles were being put through. I’d already put up with I Am Sam’s all Beatles cover score and figured a movie built entirely around covers was going to take this previous low and blow it out of the water. I was very disappointed, so I wasn’t disappointed.

When Bono’s allowed to sing “I Am the Walrus” and Eddie Izzard’s role is to dance around a gaudy green-screened circus in corpse make-up I am not happy. The singers have adequately strong voices, paling against McCartney and Lennon’s, or even Harrison and Starr’s, they can’t act a lick through the nonsense stringing the songs together. Jim Sturgess is a handsome fellow but he isn’t much of an actor, and Evan Rachel Wood’s out-of-focus nipple, though not an official member of SAG, stole the show from the rest of the cast.

There are a few memorable moments, but they only come out of the inspired production design. Strawberries bleeding their juice over a canvas and Easter Island-like heads peopling a luscious were interesting while failing to gloss over the predictable character arcs and corny dialogue. What was essentially a group of music videos stapeled together met my lowest expectations, and has served only to embolden my disgust for Beatles tributes, covers and/or modern musicals.

120. V for Vendetta (Directed by James McTeigue)

The credits told me “written by The Wachowski Brothers” and my mind did a double take. No way did something like that come from someone like them. Alan Moore provided the story and characters, but they had to have taken more than just those bare bones when putting the script together because believing they went from The Matrix: Revolutions to V for Vendetta takes a chasm-sized leap of faith. Give a big hand to graphic novelists, credible actors and competent directing, everybody.

V for Vendetta was so in tune with my fifteen-year-old sensibilities. It was about revolution against a conservative society, pairing nicely with my distaste for Bush-run America. It had a badass vigilante anti-hero preaching justice through knife throwing. There were explosions that looked like they could really fuck you up, and a quick, sweet story that never felt to stretch too far beyond the reasoning of the censor-happy futuristic universe it lived in.

Most important to me now as it was then is Natalie Portman. Before Sinead O’Connor I’d never seen a female celebrity with a shaved head before Portman as Eve, and I haven’t seen an attractive one since. She was smart, precocious, and sexy though her trials living in a cold, unforgiving world, and one of my favorite heroines for her earnest-feeling bouts of scared indecision, and her ability to make me root for her from the moment she walks onto the film.

After the movie, and after the shock of the Wachowskis I turned to my friends and awaited their thoughts. I assumed I was going to be alone in my enjoyment, but I was wrong. V for Vendetta struck a heavy chord with my liberal, excitable self, and the feelings ran from one socially conscious youth to another the world over. Would I feel the same now as I did then? Not sure. I’d like to think so. I really would.

140. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (Larry Charles)

I'm dealing with the misfortune of Bruno giving my recollection of Borat a bad aftertaste. I watched both in theaters, thought Borat was hilarious and that Bruno failed to recapture the spark and humor of its predecessor. More than that, it reminded me of all the problems I had with Borat that I'd glossed over on the first viewing.

It's worth watching the way Sacha Baron Cohen dupes naive, proud Americans into revealing their xenophobia but the segments between these candid encounters don't always live up to the standards of comedy set up in the secret mockeries.

I bought Borat thinking I'd laughed so hard I could only laugh more with repeated viewings. This was misguided indeed. Most of the fun comes from how shocking people's confessions are, and the unexpected zany turns Borat's journey takes. Definitely the sort of movie that should be watched with a large, happy audience once, and never again.

160. The Aviator (Directed by Martin Scorsese)

Considered one of Scorsese's minor works yet also winner of five Academy Awards of the eleven it was nominated The Aviator strikes me as a strange oddity. I've met a handful of people my own age who've seen the movie, and while it's getting an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes I never hear it fondly remembered. I purchased it on the cheap and was scoffed at. What is this anomaly?

My mother rented The Aviator from the library and sat us down as a family for to watch it when I was just fourteen years old. I wasn't entirely sure who Martin Scorsese was at the time, and from my limited experience knew that biographical movies were boring and formulaic. Perhaps my affinity for the film comes from my expectations' shattering, but when I think back on The Aviator I hold it in as high of regards as After Hours, Gangs of New York or The Departed, which I like very much. Not one of Scorsese's greatest achievements but not a film to be taken lightly.

It introduced me to Leonardo DiCaprio as a skillful actor, not just the apple of girls eyes I knew him as from Titanic and Romeo + Juliet. I found out Cate Blanchett can pull off a great Katherine Hepburn impression, and got to see John C. Reilly in something other than Chicago. This movie came to me in a time in my life where I was starting to actually notice how expressive the camera work and set design and costuming could be. The world of The Aviator was thrilling, exciting, and outside of what I believed to be 'good movies.'

Stylish and graceful, The Aviator won me over. The acting felt powerful and the style felt unmatched. This is another movie that I haven't revisited in an quite a while, but I don't think I'm going to feel much differently from how I initially did. I'll have to do a revised write-up if it loses its draw. Fingers crossed.

180. The Incredibles (Directed by Brad Bird)

The circumstances surrounding The Incredibles are quite remarkable. I went to The Incredibles with my very first girlfriend, on our very second official date. I don't mean to brag, but I can't remember if we held hands. I think we did, close to the end of the movie. Anyway, I wasn't and haven't been very impressed with The Incredibles as a Pixar movie, nor as an animated movie, and even nor as a feature film.

Oh, sure, the animation was fine. It holds its own on those terms when compared to the other Pixar dynasty members. Thought when I think about Pixar movies I never think "oh yeah, The Incredibles, that's a great one." Disney movies in general can never escape being grouped together in my mind, so Pixar's even smaller library of films faces harsher ranking.

When I think of Pixar movies I have distinct memories of awe at the characters. I've cared more about Pixar's animated characters than I have many characters played by real life in-the-flesh human beings. Marlin's attempts to bring Nemo back to safety nearly brought tears to my eyes. I had almost every line of dialogue memorized from the first Toy Story not because the lines were especially great but because the toys were all so special and believable. I have none of these emotions tying me to The Incredibles. I never got into the story deep enough to consider devoting precious brain-power to Mr. Incredible and his family. I don't even remember any of the characters names.

I've seen The Incredibles since its theatrical release and have been as disappointed or more each time. I try and give it as fair a chance as any other movie, but it always ends up at the bottom of my list when recalling the other far greater features Pixar has given me. Maybe I'll have to be a parent to understand what Mr. and Mrs. Incredible are going through with their marriage and children, but if that's truly the case The Incredibles didn't do enough to make these figures relatable or deserve affection.

I'm posting this a day late, but I got 2/5 of it done on Saturday. That means I'm almost keeping up, right? Right?

- Eric T. Voigt, Chugging On Diet Root Beer By the Two Liter

Eric Reviews Everything He's Ever Seen (Numbers 1, 20, 40, 60 and 80 of 1,067)

2009-11-20T15:29:00.032-05:00

I've been building a list. Started just before winter break last year and titled "The Official Every Film and Movie List" I have kept track of everything I've watched since the creation of the list, and have gone back and added every movie I could remember seeing before the list's existence. I'm up to 1,067 films, only including feature films I know I've viewed from the beginning to end. This list omits movies I've watched the bulk of, or caught large snippets of on television. "Teen Wolf" and "Harry and the Hendersons" may have played important roles in my childhood, but never complete, full length roles. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let the obsessive listing begin.

1. Citizen Kane (Directed by Orson Welles)

What a jerk way to begin a list of movies, right? Hailed as one of the greatest masterpieces of the last century, number one on the American Film Institutes' one-hundred best movies, and nominee of nine separate Academy Awards in 1941, Citizen Kane is potentially the most over-talked film in the universe. And while I wouldn't consider it one of my personal favorites I do like it quite a bit.

Being told to watch Citizen Kane since conception had me looking at the film with ultra-high expectations, and quite a few reservations. I suppose any movie as widely praised as Kane is going to set people up for a mind-blowing, and when it came time for me to actually watch the film it felt like I was reaching a grand milestone in my life. Rich with visual metaphor and across-the-board fine acting it wasn't difficult to understand the hubbub.

Welles' Charles Foster Kane was loveable throughout his descent into bitter wealth, and rest of the cast matched him admirably. Kane's shrill voiced mistress-wife Susan (Dorothy Comingore) struck me as both a stitch and one of the most endearing, relatable performances in the film. Definitely one of my favorites. I wasn't taken with Joseph Cotten's decision to put on an exaggerated accent playing present-day Jedediah Leland, but his Leland of the past was witty and charming. When paired with Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane) the duo present the funniest and most interesting segments of Kane's lifetime.

Cinematographer Gregg Toland captured mesmerizing depths of focus that give the film a still unmatched sense of style. Am I getting too stuffy about this? What I'm getting at is I like the way Kane looks. Young Charlie Foster playing in the snow while his childhood is signed away in the foreground and a wealthy newspaper man-Kane dancing in a window's reflection are two stand-outs. The way Toland conveys space is frankly inspiring, which I say at the risk of sounding gushy. Gooshy.

Yes, Citizen Kane is a technical masterpiece. The story is as relevant as it is fun to watch, and the film has undoubtedly stood the test of time. It may not be a masterpiece in my heart, but it holds a special place there, and it's on my top one-hundred list, if not in the top twenty-five.

20. To Kill a Mockingbird (Directed by Robert Mulligan)

I'm pretty sure I watched To Kill a Mockingbird in ninth grade as a companion to reading the book. It might have been earlier than that. Most of my memory of the movie is hazy. I know Gregory Peck was solid, and I'm being told Robert Duvall made his debut as Boo Radley, but I can't for the life of me remember Boo in the film. I liked the book a lot, and think the idea of watching the adaptation wasn't thrilling after so much class time already devoted to the story.

I paid attention to the whole thing, but I don't know where the novel ends and the movie begins. I do know the scene with the rabid dog terrified me, because that dog looked rabid with a capital r. Rabid. Gregory Peck seems to feel like he was a badass, and I know I wasn't bothered by scout, or any of the other performances. Clearly a forgettable movie, but it wasn't a bad movie. That I'd remember.

I'm doing these reviews purely on what I can recall. Really. I'm reviewing as far back as FernGully, and I can't remember anything about that movie. This is a gimmick. A good one.

40. The Deer Hunter (Directed by Michael Cimino)

Now here's a movie I remember. The Deer Hunter is another American Film Institute honoree, and one I expected great things from. Having previously fallen for Apocalypse Now and Platoon nothing sounded more satisfying than more doses of Vietnam-era stories with impressive acting talent and numerous awards. Then something terrible happened: the longer I watched The Deer Hunter the deeper the fact sunk in that I would not be adding it to any number of 'favorite' lists.

Almost everyone I know disagrees with me on The Deer Hunter and its merits, but I will not be swayed. I thought the amount of time spent with the young men in their small Pennsylvanian hometown dragged on for a nerveracking amount of time. I got jittery during this film waiting for something of any importance to happen. Their lives did not reflect an innocence before war but an oafish stupidity before madness. I could not see the pacing of hunting excursions and wedding antics being a means to justify the story's whole.

When the war and the Russian Roulette kick into gear they feel oddly placed. Though it is more interesting it's all so strangely put together that I could not to get into it. I see this as a failure on the film's part, not my own.

The actors and actresses were the cream of the crop for 1978. Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep and John Cazale in his final role before his death in the same year, all giving their all, yet all feeling so wasted. The skills were there, Cimino just didn't know how to utilize them. I worry the direction counted too much on the shock of the story and not enough on the heart of the actors. Many dispute everything I've just said. I'm here to try and dispute right back.

60. 21 (Directed by Robert Luketic)

Coming off the high of Across the Universe where he near-single-handedly taught the youth of the world that The Beatles weren't just for parents Jim Sturgess jumped into another leading role with 2008's 21, based on a true story. Just like Across the Universe!

I didn't like Across the Universe because it didn't respect The Beatles and portrayed bohemian artists as a bunch of pretentious nutjobs. I didn't like 21 for practically the same reasons. It doesn't give the viewer any credit. The movie is constantly pandering to the audience, piling on heaps of exposition and following through with every cliche in the cliched-plot-device handbook.

The lead flirts with the girl who doesn't like him until they fall in love and have sex. The teacher turns out to be the enemy. A large con is pulled off in a convoluted, successful way and no one questions how the characters had the means. It's dumb storytelling for a masses that won't give a damn the movie presented nothing interesting nor exciting.

I saw it with my parents over Spring break last year because it didn't look like it was going to be all that bad. My parents tolerated it, and I put on an "it wasn't bad" face for their sakes. I will never watch this movie again, and ask Kevin Spacey to stick to meatier roles. I also had a free poster for it on my door for a while because why not?

80. 300 (Directed by Zack Snyder)

The only action movie needing less story is 300. Whenever characters began to talk and nothing badass was said within two seconds of their mouths opening I considered leaving the theater. The movie was at its core about ripped men slaughtering other ripped men. That's what I wanted to see. Violence with honor. Stabbing of enemies. Beheadings. Magic. There was a story about political rape, and a story about father-son relationships, and a story about being too freakish to be a Spartan, and whenever this sort of nuisance would come up the movie screeched to a halt.

Most of the movie was brutal murder and shouting, though. At one point they build a wall of bodies and knock it over onto the opposition. That's a bunch of dead bodies, corpses, raining and tumbling down upon the heads of the living. That is so badass. There's also a point where you know this kid is going to get beheaded, but I hoped they weren't going to be so crass as to actually have him get beheaded, but then he totally does get beheaded! Hilarious.

Where 300 gained in action points it lost in style. The green screened atmosphere was an eyesore. Oranges and greens and reds blasting out at my poor corneas, shaking loose my retinas with their gross brilliance. The first thing I complained about when the movie'd ended was that the clouds were distractingly fake. I was laughed at. Oh, how bitter 300 has made me.

Also, did anyone know Gerard Butler was in movies before 300? Surprised the hell out of me.

This is going to be a struggle, pumping out a series at this magnitude as often as I'd like to. As long as I think I know what I'm talking about, and my fingers can typeitty type I will continue this series. Have mercy on me.

- Eric T. Voigt, Oxen? Oh! Oxen, Ho!

James Cameron Says, Volume Three

2009-11-20T15:23:00.002-05:00

This is our Christmas Edition. James Cameron is kind of like an elf:

"I actually started as a model builder and quickly progressed into production design, which made sense because I could draw and paint."

Much like Santa's drawing, painting long-eared helpers James Cameron brings about joy and laughter to children the world over.

- Eric T. Voigt

Unintentionally Hilarious Trailer Quote Roundup

2009-11-19T17:45:00.002-05:00

Welcome, esteemed members of the board. I hope your lunches were up to snuff. *wait for polite laughter* Excellent. Now, if you'll open your itineraries and turn to page four there should be an outline of the following presentation. No, this doesn't mean you can sleep through it, *pause for chuckles* but it can be used as a quick reference if information is moving too fast, or you catch yourself daydreaming. *allow time for uproarious and unceasing applause*

Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire

Our first bulletpoint covers a trailer many of your children should be familiar with. The quote, which can be found 26 seconds in, is half-grunted half-shouted by Precious' mother Mary (Mo'Nique) and reads:

"You're a dummy. Don't nobody want you, don't nobody need you. School ain't gonna help none. Take your ass down to the welfare!"

Harsh words. Mean, cruel, and uttered with fiery distain at her daughter. In the right hands this quote could send an audience into fits of sympathy for poor Precious. Unfortunately for there are a few variables preventing it from carrying any impact beyond the chuckles it induced.

1) The line comes out of Mo'Nique's mouth. Mo'Nique the comedian. There's unconventional casting, and then there's casting Mo'Nique as an abusive parent. Borderline stupid casting, judging from every word she says through the trailer.

2) To a lit nerd broken English is funny. It just is. And when it's played straight, it can be hysterical. In this case the motivation behind the phrasing doesn't cover up how ridiculous the sentence really is.

3) The somber yet motivational music it accompanies strips the entire trailer of credibility. It'd have been nice if the acting was strong enough to create a tone for the movie, but it wasn't, so a tinkling, swelling song is used to aid Mo'Nique's mission: make us understand Precious is living a tough life.

Precious is a movie I'd like to avoid at all costs. All I have to do is stay away from theatres that force you to see movies you don't want to see. I'm in the clear, but I want it to be understood I do not want to see Precious ever.

Trailers are precious nuggets to help us all prejudge a little easier, and a little safer. Cherish them.

- Eric T. Voigt

James Cameron Says, Volume Two

2009-11-11T21:24:00.003-05:00

I was feeling blue earlier in the week. For a few seconds there I was considering ending it all. But, when I was most in need of a friend, I looked to James Cameron. And he told me:

"I lived in a small town. It was two-thousand people in Canada. A little river that went through it and we swam in the- you know, there was a lot of water around."

Thanks, James Cameron. My best friend.

- Eric T. Voigt, XOXO

Bronson: What Dudes Watch

2009-11-05T23:24:00.005-05:00

I thought Bronson, a movie about an insane criminal who loves to fight, was boring. The camera spends more time lingering on actors walking than it does capturing interesting character moments, reminding me of The Limits of Control but without the magical cinematography. On top of this I felt like Tom Hardy was excellent at playing Charlie Bronson, but that character wasn't compelling enough to carry a film, nor warrant one in his honor in the first place.

The film ambled and dragged. Only in the final fifteen minutes did I think events were cohesive and interesting enough to attempt justification of buying a ticket. My favorite character, the man urging Bronson to pursue art, was introduced and allowed leave within this period of time. I missed him dearly.

Vignettes of Bronson's life turned into strings of bathroom florescent-lit visuals mixed with a distancing of the character too far to be liked or despised. A fourth in I began questioning staying, and checked my watch at one point hoping time really had slowed to a crawl and it wasn't just the movie.

Brief moments of excitement and three or four amusing lines kept the film from completely disappointing me, but I'd call the movie lackluster at best and bad as a whole. And, adding audial insult to the visual assaults, I couldn't stand the soundtrack. No, it was more than that. None of my senses agreed with Bronson. Blech.

- Eric T. Voigt

James Cameron Says, Volume One

2009-11-03T22:52:00.005-05:00

I can hardly wait until Avatar hits theaters. It's the film already earning comments ranging from the ridiculously exaggerated:

"as big [of] a jump for film as black and white to color"

to the annoyingly glowing:

"there were points in the footage where [Sam] Worthington's Na'vi character looked utterly realistic - it was only the fact that you think 'this can't be possible' that brings you back."

I didn't attend Avatar day. I haven't seen the extra dose of footage others have, and I haven't had the pleasure of seeing screaming blue monsters deliver "this is great"s in 3D. Nothing in the trailers has me interested outside of the Na'vi home world and still I'm reading reports on how much of a revolution Avatar is going to lead in the film industry.

In honor of all the hype I'm bringing you a choice quote from writer and director of the uber-film each and every week until opening day, December 18th, 2009. Let's reign in the new guard with helpings of Cameron's wisdom:

James Cameron says "People don't understand that a wild animal is not something that is nice to pat. It can seriously harm you."

Too true. Don't forget: November is Avatar appreciation month.

- Eric T. Voigt

Year One: Too Many Straight Men

2009-11-02T16:25:00.002-05:00

Year One had the potential to be one of the funniest comedies of the year, maybe even the decade. It had a director renowned for great comedies. Writers from 'The Office'? Yes, please. Charismatic leads who, yes, aren't necessarily everybody's cup of comedy tea but put on a good show if that's the show you want, in addition to cameos left and right by long time favorites and fresh-faced newbies? How many cooks did this kitchen need, right?

The answer was "less." The Year One kitchen needed nearly no cooks by comparison to the number of cooks they actually had. It didn't suffer from the funny cooks, though. It was the cook playing it straight who destroyed the souffle.

"Drop a couple comedians into a ridiculous situation and wait for the magic to happen" must have been Year One's mantra. The mantra didn't work. Year One was never graced by the hand of any wizard, or sorceress, or warlock. It was cursed and damned, and I blame the writing. The writing was supposed to be one of the pluses. Way to go, writing.

A script calling for as much exposition as Year One is doomed to be boring. When an action scene takes up an insufferable ten minutes of the movie relying on the comedic timing of its performers something has gone amiss. The most upsetting fault in the script is the many scenes of straight men talking to straight men.

Straight men exist to carry the story forward when they aren't playing punching bags and assisting with punch lines for the heroes of the story: the clowns. Year One had an ample amount of clowns, but clowns consistently overshadowed by the gloomy, boring straights. Whole scenes take place with the straight men setting up story points not even convolutedly contributing to the humor. Look back as far as The Marx Brothers and you'll see that a straight man isn't doing its job if the clowns aren't victoring the straight spoils.

Straight men ruined Year One. Poor comedic timing and a misuse of comedies helped. Harold Ramis should have paid more attention, and the actors should have given a little more effort. They all got paychecks and I'm poor because I wasted my money on them. Why am I talking about it now? Because you're such a good friend.

- Eric T. Voigt

Paranormal Activity: Haunt Her? I Barely Know Her

2009-10-30T01:07:00.008-04:00

Honestly, I didn't think I'd ever see this in theater. I doubted I'd ever rent it. I was willing to admit I may sit down and watch a little of it on television when the time came, or if someone threw a laptop at me and it was playing Paranormal Activity my eyes would allow a second of viewing before my hands jumped up to protect me. Lo and behold, the first day back in Michigan and I'm swept off my feet, plopped into a theater seat three rows away from the screen, and subjected to twenty minutes of previews plus eighty-six minutes of Paranormal Activity. That's the run time in full. Horror movies were "never really my thing" and here I am seeing Drag Me to Hell, Antichrist, Paranormal Activity and countless others all in one year.

I was scared by Paranormal Activity. Yes, I was scared. Lucky for my dignity the level of fear was low and lame. Nothing in the movie had me freaked out any more than hearing a loud thud in the middle of the night coming from the kitchen where loud thuds shouldn't be heard would. I make the comparison because all the 'scary' scenes seem to be the couple hearing unexplained thuds and creaks. The monster in the movie is sound, and it leaves the characters scared witless. It left me ripped off.

I'm proud of Paranormal Activity for being such a huge success. It's something to see to get in the Halloween mood and it isn't boiling over with flesh and gore. That's nearly admirable coming out in a post-Saw I, II, III, IV, V, IV world. The monopoly Saw has retained at the box office during past holiday seasons is appalling, and having a suspenseful ghost movie, meager it may be, is refreshing.

If it wasn't for Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, the lead demon-aggravating duo, I very well may have considered walking out on the movie. Their chemistry as the "engaged to be engaged" victims of supernatural torment held the shakey fright scenes together. Daytime discussions about the ghostly activities, playful banter and outside-voice bickering keep the film interesting and give the audience something to sink teeth into when the thumps and door-slams aren't pulling their weight. The Psychic, played by Mark Fredrichs, was the only weak role. He's a minor character, and I was content letting him read his lines flatly and rush back to his day job.

To say I enjoyed Paranormal Activity is to say something I'm surprised to hear from myself, but I'm saying it. I don't recommend it be the horror movie you spend your Halloween budget on, and I'm hoping The House of the Devil earns my coveted "favorite horror film of 2009" position, but I didn't think I wasted my time and I suggest going out and watching it if there's nothing better to do.

XOXO.

- Eric T. Voigt

Antichrist: The Only Film To Make Me Squeamish While Urinating

2009-10-26T22:45:00.006-04:00

I did it. I went and watched the film dividing critics neatly in half since its first festival premiere. Many loved it and even more despised it. Lars Von Trier probably grinned and nodded a few times. I think Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg were happy enough with things. And then there was me. I beat "Antichrist."

I tried writing a review before I'd finished analyzing what I had seen. This review shows me at my more earnest, after feeling completely wrecked for hours. 1:40AM 10/27/09

The film left me shaken not from the graphic imagery but from the characters' capacity for evil and the consequence of light manipulation. It's making me feel unsafe and insecure inside my own apartment; it potentially made me feel vulnerable in my very life. I didn't feel this way immediately. The film takes what I already settled with and makes different scenes pop out at me with brutal force they didn't carry when I first took them in.

My father has repeatedly told me if his very own mother jumped out at him wearing a mask of the demon faced girl in "The Exorcist," and he knew for absolute sure it was his mother, he'd punch her in the face. He loves his mother. Right now "Antichrist" is jumping out at me, and I have no way to retaliate but to tell myself "it was only a movie."

I worry critics who lashed out and scorned "Antichrist" looked at the plot and the less than pleasant visuals alone. What needs to be appreciated is the discomfort it creates inside the actors' every line and movement, in hand with the straight up astonishing cinematography. The film isn't purely exploitation and mutilation, it is a tempest; an emotional epic. "Antichrist" is haunting me and I recommend it haunt you, too.

- Eric T. Voigt

Retrospective: A Quick Look at Summer 2009 (Part One)

2009-10-20T01:45:00.008-04:00

Summer starts a little bit earlier in Hollywoodland. Once May gets a blockbuster it's Summer this and Summer that. The Summer solstice doesn't start until June 21st, people. Respect the Gregorian calendar. What I'm saying is segue into a post about the year's Summer movies, starting with super hero movies.

As far back as I can remember, which is nine years, Summers have been a playground for caped crusaders being badass. X-Men reminded people that comic book characters weren't just for kids, they were for everybody, especially kids. What followed was a revival in anyone giving a damn about superheroes, with a string of great movies (Spider-Man, X2, Spider-Man 2, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight) and awful movies (Daredevil, X-Men: The Last Stand, Spider-Man 3, Ghost Rider, Elektra, Fantastic Four, Catwoman, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and then some). The bad was pretty bad, but at least it came with a side of good. What caliber of fantastic heroes did we receive this time around?

March, a pre-Summer month, had Watchmen, a near totally faithful adaptation of the graphic novel by Zack Snyder. It was quite a high to come off of, seeing the best anyone could hope for in a book-to-movie translation. A Little Children reunion for the cast, inventive and artful visuals and no giant squids exploding. If this were a true harbinger for the quality of the upcoming hero and heroin movies the world was truly in for a treat. Instead the world got X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Bryan Singer's second X-Men film was incredible. It was one of the first films I can remember getting giddy for months ahead of the release, and I had my dad drive me to the first showing opening day immediately after school. The Dark Knight is the only comic book movie to have surpassed that films greatness for me, and to find out that Wolverine was the most poorly reviewed in the X-Men series, after what I hear was a lazy to dumb third installment by enemy of the blog Brett Ratner, to hear the once revered name of X-Men has been tarnished twice over and worse so every time almost wrenches my heart. My sources express that Wolverine throws out story lines established in earlier films, and even remade some of X-Men and X2. I'm appalled. There wasn't even another superhero movie afterwards to help cushion the blow, only bad action movies to act as salt on our wounds.

I don't want to name names or pick on undeservers but McG and Michael Bay were the worst thing to happen to blockbusters this year. I'd say Steven Spielberg should have given us a new Jaws, or anything better than Transformers 2, like I trust he would have in the old days but I can't because Spielberg actually produced the new Transformers. As for Terminator Salvation it appears McG made a lot of promises he couldn't keep, and who were we to not trust the director of the classic Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle? Along with these train wrecks of sequels was Angels and Demons, reported to be more boring and worse scripted than The DaVinci Code, which took the cake in cinematic laziness.

The one good to come out of the action genre was J. J. Abrams' Star Trek. It was exciting. Fun. The action was staged well. The acting was earnest. How hard was it for the other action directors to conceive interesting and explosion-packed films? Judging from the aforementioned, and the trailer for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra it was so hard they didn't even try.

This concludes part one of A Quick Look at Summer 2009. Next time I'll cover comedies, or what passed for comedy this year, and dramas. Oooo. Dramas.

- Eric T. Voigt, XOXO

Rule #1: Cardio

2009-10-18T19:20:00.002-04:00

Yes, it's been a while since I've written, but on the dawn of a new school year it's been a while since I've seen a movie. So finally I've made it to theater! A glorious day of celebration. And the film I enjoyed? Zombieland.

In a season of apocolyptic films, it was nice to see one that didn't take itself so seriously. My own personal love for Jesse Eisenberg escalated the second the film started, the subtle humor presented in his squaemish character (which from what I've seen is his real life persona) making him adorable and relatable. Woody Harrelson's scene in the amusement park, locking himself in the stuffed animal booth surrounded by zombies was totally bad ass. Even Abigail Breslin wasn't nearly as annoying as I supposed she would be.

But the cherry on the sundae was Bill Murray. I literally let out a squeal of joy when he walked on the screen. When actors can make fun of themselves (Murray's last regret being "Garfield") that can make a film truly great.

The only controversy lies within zombie purists. The zombies in this movie were awfully quick on their feet, something that is not typical in zombie-lore. To believe that these zombies would be able to wipe out all but four people, they had to be fast moving I think. Whether you are a purist or not, it only makes sense.

Though I loved the film, the greatest experience that came out of that theater was the giant pop out poster for Fantastic Mr. Fox. That is sure to be yet another film where Bill Murray doesn't dissappoint.

Don't let school keep you out of the theaters!
***Brianna Wellen

Something Unsettling

2009-09-20T02:21:00.004-04:00

I've watched less than one-half of a bootlegged copy of a Tyler Perry-directed movie and it was enough to last me everyone on Earth's lifetime. Tyler Perry makes approximately one feature length film a year, nearing two a year, and someone decided that instead of marketing the character Madea everyone already recognizes as the comic relief in his half-drama-half-what-might-be-comedies they might as well reference a 70s classic.

Apt comparison. Apt.

New Moon Trailer: Rise of the Lycans

2009-09-14T13:25:00.003-04:00

Did the werewolves in Underworld ever frown on being named for fungus and algea symbiotically living together? Probably. Bet the Twilight werewolves like being hunky Native American boys over pale vampire-hunted weirdos. Bet the second Twilight movie likes looking wildly more ambitious and satisfying than the first one.

Newer New Moon Trailer

It's chilling to see competent film making applied to Twilight, but this trailer shows all the markings of a somewhat interesting, at least half-gripping movie. The special effects for Edward haunting Bella are worlds ahead of anything from the first one. There's actual suspense being built, and characters interacting in meaningful ways. It spooks me. Looks like Catherine Hardwicke screwed up big time, and a mediocre movie can be built out of pure shit. Or this is just a well cut trailer, and the second film is going to be just as pathetic as the first effort.

- Eric T. Voigt, Just Curious

IMDb's Terrible Writing

2009-08-28T12:38:00.001-04:00

An excerpt from the Jean-Pierre Jeunet biography page, on his film A Very Long Engagement:

It had been one of the most important budgets in French film history and eventually had a good international success and many nominations and awards.

WHAT?

- Eric T. Voigt

Inception Trailer: Lets Go!

2009-08-24T12:28:00.002-04:00

I watched it. I watched it twice. Then I decided I'd go get lunch, and watch it again later. It doesn't show nearly enough to satisfy any part of me, so therefore shows more than enough for my interest in Inception to spike through the roof. Here:

Inception Teaser Trailer

Hans Zimmer's score, which is a few industrial buzzes mixed with strings, rocks the soul. DiCaprio staring at things worriedly makes me feel for him, and I don't even know what peril he's in. Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a hallway fight? Comparisons to The Matrix are unwarranted. This is a different beast. This lives in the realm of something bigger. Something better. I can't wait to see the film, and I want a longer trailer.

- Eric T. Voigt

Inglourious Basterds: King of the Jews

2009-08-21T23:54:00.005-04:00

One word struck me bluntly across the back of my head about thirty minutes in: dialogue. Inglourious Basterds won me over with everything it had to offer; the kicker was the engaging, thoughtful dialogue. I was once told if I cared so much about dialogue I'd be better off leaving film and going into radio. Needless to say I was appalled. Lucky me Quentin Tarantino provides the finest examples of dialogue's importance time and time again.

All of his films carry a certain special magic in the character interactions; Basterds goes not just the extra mile with that, it goes all the way to the moon and back. The level of tension, humor and horror stem from the dialogue, and blossom explosively across the screen. I could hug it I liked it so. Favorite dialogue-heavy portions of Basterds include the opening sequence, a sequence in a restaurant, and a sequence in a basement/tavern. It wasn't the bullets and blood that drove this, it was the carefully placed words.

What dialogue would be worth anything without actors to dish it out? The talent in Basterds is strongest in its writing, and its acting. Massive piles of buzz surround Christoph Waltz and his portrayal of "The Jew Hunter" Hans Landa, and it's earned in full. Some speculate he'll be up for a Best Actor nomination, and I'd push for him to win the award twice. He was very, very good. Calculating, cruel, but human at the center of his black heart. Without a doubt my favorite performance of the film.

Brad Pitt as Aldo Raine is entertaining, his Nazi-bashing quips and wartime tomfoolery giving a healthy dose of humor, but Pitt's ham-filled performance is lacking nothing but subtlety and nuance. They're supposed to be missing, sure, but it'd have been nice to see them. No need to worry, though, because Melanie Laurent (Shosanna Dreyfus) playing the admirable revenge-minded Jew-in-hiding, Michael Fassbender (Archie Hicox) starring as a charming but obviously British Basterd ally, and the rest of the Basterds more than taking up the slack that Pitt may provide. Smaller roles like Sylvester Groth as Joseph Goebbles and Jacky Ido as Shosanna's lover Marcel were equally strong, and Daniel Bruhl (Fredrick Zoller) leaping between cute, annoying and deplorable was quite excellent.

Tarantino has always been praised for his soundtracks, and I never gave this much thought until Basterds. Excluding an almost poorly chosen David Bowie sounding like Johnny Cash track the music, anachronistic as it is, fits seamlessly, and helped keep the more jarring hard cuts from taking the audience out of the picture. I've heard the film criticized for sloppy editing. I disagree. Tarantino is no slouch, and intends exactly what is seen.

Speaking of what is seen, Robert Richardson's photography kicks about as much ass as the Basterds. From cold colors to flaming theatres and laughing faces stretched across smoke Richardson captures it all crisply and handsomely. Wide angles dropping off into out-of-focus haze, sharp close-ups of delicious desserts, all magnificently on display.

Story and action/violence don't take a back seat in Basterds as much as I'm making them out to. The story is compelling and mapped out masterfully, I thought. The action sequences are nearly too much to bear. In a particularly tense scene involving a finger and a bullet wound I found myself writhing uncomfortably in my seat. Even when the violence is played for laughs it certainly doesn't downplay how terrible it is and drives home hard the horrors of war. Until the last moments of the film, that is, in which we're supposed to revel at a theatre full of Nazi's being massacred.

Revel I did. Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is my favorite film of 2009 thus far, and I don't think its going to drop very far from that position come the end of the year. Bravo for rewriting World War II the way we wish it had gone. See it.

- Eric T. Voigt, Nazis Are the Worst

Prediction: Avatar Will Blow Our Minds (By Not Being Mind-Blowing Enough)

2009-08-21T13:26:00.003-04:00

James Cameron thinks he's so tough. He's going out there, telling us he's revolutionizing cinema, making 3D much more than a gimmick, and telling a good story while he's at it. Who does he think he is? An audacious director? A blow-hard? All of the above?

San Diego's ComicCon premiered about 25 minutes of Avatar, Cameron's sci-fi epic, and garnered reports ranging from "this is the best thing of my life" to "meh". Just yesterday the first trailer debuted. The world went nuts. All the blogs were buzzing. Nerds shook hands with theatre projectionists. I shrugged, and went back to reading the description to Inception's soon coming teaser trailer.

Avatar Teaser Trailer

The music is terrible, the one line of dialogue is puzzling, scenes aren't cut together well at all, and the sense of wonder and mystique intended wasn't executed like I think it hoped for. James Cameron thinks he has a masterpiece on his hands, when I think he has a pretty conventional fantasy film on his hands. I wasn't, and am not impressed yet.

Except by one thing: that was almost entirely computer generated. The Na'vi have a rubbery look to their skin in a few clips, and the more monstrous beasts feel 10,000 BC caliber, but the environment is just as fake and looks as believable and real as the trees right outside my window. For that I'll go see it. And for the event of it all.

- Eric T. Voigt, Buh Duh Duh

Darren Aronofsky: Miracle Worker

2009-08-20T20:14:00.007-04:00

I haven't written in a while. My thoughts have either been too scattered to get down completely, or the films I've watched haven't stirred up enough gumption in me, or I've been busy working/making up for lost time in the real world. I've been gone. What could possibly bring me out of hiding? This:

Natalie Portman is going to have sex with Mila Kunis in a Darren Aronofsky film.

If I ever needed a sign telling me that my interest in film is a completely valid obsession it would be that sentence. Natalie Portman is going to have sex with Mila Kunis in a Darren Aronofsky film. I know, I said it already, but I'm... I'm just so happy.

Darren Aronofsky is on the fast track towards my valued "favorite directors" circle, his The Wrestler one of my 'Best Film's last year, and his other three films satisfying me quite a bit more than others this Summer. To hear that he's going to have Natalie Portman, one of my favorite actresses and one of the most attractive I've yet seen, having sex with Mila Kunis, who isn't a great actress but is still way cute, warms my heart and other various organs to no end.

Am I getting this through clearly enough? Here. Let me help.

Natalie Portman

is going to have sex with

Mila Kunis

and that

awesome.

It's like the perfect melding of film geek porn and real porn!

- Eric T. Voigt, Hoorah!

New York, You're Alright

2009-08-07T15:07:00.004-04:00

Yeah, you heard me.

It looks like what "meh" sounds like. Speaking of sound, why does it seem like someone dropped an outdated boombox into a fish tank playing "1901" at half volume, recorded it, then edited it under the trailer? Ew!

Overall though, I will probably maybe but most likely not be seeing this in theaters. I don't really need to see "meh" for 90 minutes.

Alex Deaton - bbbooorrreeeddd

New Where The Wild Things Are trailer!

2009-08-06T16:27:00.003-04:00

Here!

Please download in HD. For your own good.

Alex Deaton - 's heart is currently melting

Funny People: Dick Jokes and Death

2009-08-01T00:08:00.007-04:00

Alright, alright, I'll say it: Funny People was pretty good. My expectations were basically met, and Judd Apatow seems excruciatingly pleased with the end result. The movie had a swell number of laughs, and managed to swing the tone from 'humor' to 'somber' well enough, but when it didn't it destroyed itself.

Anyone familiar with the director's cut of The 40-Year-Old Virgin has the right to agree with me when I say Apatow doesn't quite know what's worth keeping in a film, or even what needs to be captured on film in the first place. Funny People suffers from one thing especial, and that thing is time. A few scenes dragged on a bit past their stay, and about 30 minutes from the end my mind started to wonder. I was yanked back in, but I want to be fully engaged when I'm watching a movie, and with this I was not.

Leslie Mann was also a problem. I thought she was the absolute least sympathetic character to ever snag the coveted 'love interest' role. Adam Sandler's George Simmons is supposed to be madly in love with her, and she with him despite her established married life, but their chemistry is all over the place, and the motivation behind all her feelings felt half there, half unformed. The whole triangle she, Sandler and Eric Bana had going on was a failure, and with a few cuts it might have seemed more comfortable, and more realistic.

Seth Rogen owns the film, by the way. His performance is definitely worth having seen. The whole movie is worth seeing, as it managed to be adequate, but it left me with one gnawing question: is Apatow less funny than his collaborators? Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express, all with his producing hand but no writing or directing, run circles around Funny People comedically and emotionally.

Maybe he's writing at a different level of maturity, or maybe he thinks he is, but Funny People, though it hit the spot, didn't hit it hard enough, and has caused me to type "but" quite a bit. Well done, but not the best done.

- Eric T. Voigt, Beats

Fantastic Mr. Fox: It Happened

2009-07-30T15:48:00.006-04:00

I have no idea what this comic means, but it happened.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is here.

TRAILER

Time for me to have a joy-filled heartattack.

A Coen Brother trailer, then a Wes Anderson trailer. In the same day. It's like karma or something. Fantastic Mr. Fox looks and sounds every bit as awesome as I imagined it would be. Heavier on the slap-stick, heavier on the child-friendly. George Clooney's voice fits great, Bill Murray sounds like he's going to be the tops, and I'm already ga-ga for Jason Schwartzman's character Ash. Terrific. Or dare I say it: fantastic? No. No, that's stupid.

- Eric T. Voigt, Attacked

A Serious Man, October 2nd, 2009

2009-07-30T10:41:00.007-04:00

It is now trailer time.

A Serious Man Trailer

Happy-go-lucky? Care-free? A laugh riot? Definitely.

If Joel and Ethan Coen decided they were going to make five feature films every month for the rest of their lives it still wouldn't be enough. I appreciate one a year, don't get me wrong, but there should always be more. More of their bleak worlds and tender humor. More scoring from Carter Burwell. More shooting from Roger Deakins. Give me more.

But this'll hit the spot nicely.

- Eric T. Voigt, Rushin' It

News Which Sadly Caused Me To Gasp From Excitement: Ray Tintori Directing a Spike Jonze Production

2009-07-28T23:19:00.007-04:00

Spike Jonze directed Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, presented The Fall and produced Synecdoche, New York, on top of just having finished Where the Wild Things Are. One of my favorite film makers, responsible for so many good things in and coming into this world.

Ray Tintori directed two short films: Death to the Tinman and Jettison Your Loved Ones. He also directed a few fantastic music videos for MGMT, The Killers and Chairlift, and co-wrote the adorably post-apocalyptic short Glory at Sea. I wrote a short article a while back on how enthused I was about him, and in what dire need the world was for a full-out feature from the boy.

According to /Film, who almost never lies to me, Spike Jonze bought up the rights to a book by Shane Jones called Light Boxes, and Ray Tintori is set to direct it.

When I heard this news I looked like so:

And as the news sank in I looked like so:

I rule in favor of this news. All opposed? Is this how court works? Regardless, Ray Tintori is directing a Spike Jonze production of a book "about a mysterious town that endures a long, deadly winter. Told in short bursts, the story concerns the war the townspeople bring against February, an oddly real and powerful character" says Amazon.com. Even better was the Wikipedia synopsis: "a fantasia about a war waged by a group of balloonists against the seemingly endless month of February." This is going to rock out with the power of fifty cocks out.

- Eric T. Voigt, Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm Pantless

MMMMM #3

2009-07-28T21:42:00.002-04:00

Time for me to get girlie. One of my favorite movies of all time is Pretty in Pink, because A) it is a girlie love story of a movie, B) it is a classic 80's John Hughes with the bolo tie fashions I've grown to love, and C) it has an amazing soundtrack.

The greatest part of the film which causes me to rewind and watch over and over again is Duckie's lip-synced rendition of Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness".

Jon Cryer (whom has since disappointed me) was perfect as the nerdy cool guy, the "hipster" of his day, and admittedly caused me to swoon. There's just something classic and wonderful about dancing around a record shop to one of the greatest voices of all time that makes me wish I worked at Trax after school.

Anyone who listens to "Try a Little Tenderness" without dancing around where ever they happen to be at that time is either crazy or just has really good self control. And a tip for filmmakers, throw an Otis Redding song in the mix, and I will love your film unconditionally no matter what. Tip of the hat to you John Hughes, tip of the hat.

***Brianna Wellen

A 100% PROFESSIONAL REVIEW OF 'THE HURT LOCKER'

2009-07-28T00:16:00.004-04:00

It was good. Really good. There were explosions. And suspense. Also, good performances and philosophical discussions. In a war movie! (I know!)

Go see it.

Special Alert!

2009-07-25T17:06:00.003-04:00

I hate to do this, but the very special interview with Ted Borodaeff, the mime from Transformers 2 was pushed a few posts back, even though it was just finished today. So scroll down a bit!

-Kevin Kern, seriously considering not contributing to this blog anymore so read that interview and make it count

I Seriously Thought Eric Would Have Posted These By Now

2009-07-25T16:52:00.013-04:00

UPDATE: There's a whole new gaggle of photos I don't want to upload, so I'll just link to them.

Here

But I guess I can do it for him. More Fantastical Foxy-Woxy photos that make the first one look, creepier?

We all remember this interesting little picture, don't we? It's a little wider this time around and doesn't have that obnoxious watermark. Alright, soak it in.

Are you ready? Here we go!

Ahhhhh, this is what I've been waiting to see. Animals in ski-masks? Mr. Fox sporting a double-breasted corduroy blazer? Sign me up.

And finally

Oh, Mr. Fox, you sly sly devil, you. You sharply dressed vegtable-stalking, coy-talking, upright-walking sonuvabitch. Can't wait to see you on the big screen.

Alex Deaton - Likes Wes Anderson, but doesn't have a blood-sacrifice shrine in his closet like Eric and Brianna

I Don't Want More Tron, Grandma

2009-07-25T01:37:00.005-04:00

Flashback to the Summer of 2006. On a hot, muggy day a boy crouches near his small, inadequate RCA television and eyes the cover of Disney's Tron skeptically. He looks towards the tower of other DVDs checked out from the library: Reservoir Dogs, The Godfather, Barton Fink. He turns to Tron but once more, grimaces, and pops it in. The teen sulks back to the couch, possibly shirtless, and begins watching what was apparently revolutionary in 1982.

The child fidgets and yawns through roughly 24 minutes before shutting it off in a vengefully bored stupor. Cut to three years later. The boy is now a boy, but in college, and has spent a great deal of his life trying to set aside the disappointment and shame earned from the viewing of the first Tron. He is almost brought to tears when he realizes he must refer to Tron as the first, because he has unfortunately learned that over two decades after the original's release a sequel is in the works. I am that boy.

The least exciting/most exciting moment in Tron

I didn't like Tron even a little bit. It tore out my joy like it had something to prove. The story was about as gripping as faulty velcro, and the acting was as good as faulty velcro. The special effects made me sad to be alive. The world felt so vast and artificial it tricked me into thinking I had agoraphobia for 5 full minutes. The knowledge that Tron Legacy is coming feels like icing on a cake of cement. I hate eating cement.

The sneak peek at what Tron Legacy has to offer shows off just how far light-cycle races haven't come, how ugly new technology can be, and a creepy demonstration of Jeff Bridges ability to kill a man with a frisbee. I want this movie like I want a hole in the back of your head. Enjoy.

Tron Legacy Teaser

- Eric T. Voigt, Computer Worlds Are Laaaaame

Nicolas Cage Is A Dish Best Served Cold

2009-07-24T19:46:00.007-04:00

Take a look at this face:

That's Nicolas Cage. He's starred in over fifty films, and has seven projects in various levels of production deep into 2011. He's also one of the most disrespected, criticized, laughed at, mocked, harassed, and derided men in Hollywood. Did I mention he gets made fun of? With such bad-mouthing you'd think he was Carlos Mencia. And that guy sucks.

Why is a man who has worked with the likes of Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott, earning himself more money than you or I will ever dare to think of thinking about, considered such a bad actor? It's because Nicolas Cage is a very specific breed of actor who should star in very few movies.

For some reason or another Cage has been pegged as the go-to guy for adventure thrillers. He's forced to play the hero, and the every-man sort of hero we're all of us supposed to get behind. It's a very common archetype. There's a problem with this:

Nicolas Cage isn't an archetype; he's Nicolas Fucking Cage!

Time to play Good Cage, Bad Cage, where I'll explain why Cage is so good when he's good, and the worst person alive when he's bad.

Good Cage:

In 1987 Nicolas Cage was given the honor of playing leading man H. I. McDunnough in Joel and Ethan Coen's sophomore film Raising Arizona. He played the hell out of it. He wasn't an anti-hero, but he wasn't someone worth rooting for. He was a dirty, fairly stupid hillbilly who just wanted to make his wife happy and raise a baby that wasn't his. Watch him escape the cops! He was off the wall, but he was adorable, and Raising Arizona shines as a beacon of hope to all those who would otherwise write Cage off. The amount of lunacy he exuded perfectly here would be his downfall in later years. Take, for instance, Gone in Sixty Seconds.

Bad Cage:

So now he's a car thief. A step down from Huggies. And is that Robert Duvall? Before this wasCon Air, and Face/Off, and although I've never seen those I've heard rumor they're terrible, and along with them Gone in Sixty Seconds was a good start to Cage's dangerously stupid run of career moves. Who makes a movie with Dominic "Swordfish" Sena? Watch him talk to his car and escape the cops! Seriously, what the hell is going on with everything in that scene? It isn't even so much his acting in this, but the fact that he was in this movie, that makes this such a Bad Cage. People think his hair is bad now? Anything is better than blonde. IncludingAdaptation.

Good Cage:

Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman are so hardcore they decided to cram TWO Nicolas Cages into Adaptation. That's right, not only does Nicolas Cage play Charlie Kaufman, he plays his/Charlie's own twin, who doesn't actually exist in real life. Blows your mind. Watch him get pissy about film! See, the mark of a Good Cage isn't that he happens to stumble into a decent film, it's that he adds to the film's decency. Which he does here. What a Bad Cage does is either totally destroy a film, or simply fill the shoes that anyone else in the entire world could have filled. Like in Next, World Trade Center, Bangkok Dangerous, and National Treasure 1 and 2.

Bad Cage:

I think National Treasure is where Cage decided if crime thrillers weren't going to ruin his credibility fast enough it was time to give action adventure movies a chance. It worked wonders. Not only did Cage sell out to Disney, he also kind of took exactly the same role Tom Hanks would later in The DaVinci Code: guy knowledgeable about stuff getting involved in ridiculously dangerous adventures pertaining to their field of knowledge. I wish that was more succinct. Watch him become part of the scenery! He continues down this path in Next, World Trade Center and Bangkok Dangerous sort of, but what gets people really riled up about Cage is The Wicker Man.

So Bad It's Awesome Cage:

Okay, if someone hasn't seen The Wicker Man compilation now is the time to do it. Please, please, hold your applause. There isn't much to be said about The Wicker Man performance aside from this: fuh? I don't know if anyone knew what they were doing when they were working on this project, but if they did know what they were doing they were very mean people. And the same can probably be said for Ghost Rider.

Bad Cage:

Watch him try to play a superhero! Nicolas Cage doesn't get it. He shouldn't save people. He should just be. That's what he's best at. In Raising Arizona he was. In Adaptation he was. Twice. And he was, and very much so, in The Weather Man.

Good Cage:

Why couldn't he play a superhero with a bow? Because when Cage is a leading man he should be an average person with minor problems, or an insane person, but he shouldn't be a brave and heroic person without any problems. It's too easy, and that ruins him. With The Weather Man Cage's character isn't even well liked. Watch him fail! He's weak and unconfident, his family sort of steps all over him, and he's awesome in it. Give him some problems and he'll work wonders. Just remember how badass he's going to be in Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Calls New Orleans.

My points here all add up to one thing: Nicolas Cage, when not playing a hero and when backed up by ample directing and writing, can and will give a great performance. For every Knowingand 8MM there is also an Adaptation lurking in the shadows. Plus I've heard nothing but good things on his role in the upcoming movie Kick-Ass, and he gets to work with Michel Gondry and Seth Rogen in The Green Hornet. I've got my fingers crossed for a solid Cage in both of those.

- Eric T. Voigt, Found Listening to The Knife While Watching Nicolas Cage Enjoyable

NEW FOOTAGE FROM "WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE"

2009-07-24T17:38:00.005-04:00

GO NOW WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

HERE, DAMMIT!

There you go, and yes, you are welcome.

Alex Deaton - Only slightly excited.

The Anticipation Builds

2009-07-23T23:09:00.002-04:00

After a hiatus from the blogosphere I bring joyous news of Funny People. I have seen the behind the scenes special and I am craving for next week to be here.

The scenes that will be seen in the movie of stand up comedians are actual stand up routines written by the actors for their character. Was your mind just blown? They took a show on the road picking up a few real comedians on the way such as Sarah Silverman and David Spade. So all that stand up footage, real stand up. As an amatuer in the film making world, I'm not sure if that's done often, but I appreciate it regardless.

I'm really liking the concept after seeing a few interviews of how much of Adam Sandler's character is based on Adam Sandler himself. It will give a nice retrospective and insight to him, a deepness we've seen in movies like Reign Over Me and Spanglish while keeping the goofiness that made him famous. I'm excited to see Seth Rogen keep on keeping on in the same personality that I love so dearly and I'm extra excited to see Jason Schwartzman. For a special treat before the movie is out please HULU "Behind the Scenes with Mark Taylor Jackson" and watch the coinciding videos to see Jason Schwartzman as his Funny People character in the uplifting TV show "Yo Teach!". Love it.

So cinemaphiles, I better see you all in theaters next week for Funny People. Because if this movie is only half as good as what I hope, it will be amazing.

***Brianna Wellen

An Interview with the Quietest Thing About Transformers 2

2009-07-22T02:06:00.023-04:00

Recently, Eric wrote a review of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, and in it he mentioned a mime. The mime in question (Ted Borodaeff) responded to the review in the comments section, and since then I've interviewed him (via e-mail) about his experience with the film.

KK: How did you land your role as the mime in Transformers 2?

TB: I was called by the Philly casting director for Transformers 2 Heery Casting and asked to submit first off a photo of me as a mime. Then I actually went in and they took photos of me done up as a mime. Pics were taken by Jason Loftus CSA. They were then submitted to The director of Transformers 2: Revenge of The Fallen. I don’t know how many were submitted as some were in mime poses, and about a week later I was asked to work on the film. I actually am a trained MIME. There are people in the business that actually know that. I also don’t know how many if any others were considered, but I would assume they were.

KK: How much did you know about the film and its director before showing up to work?

TB: Before showing up for the film, I knew about Michael Bay from his prior work, Transformers and Pearl Harbor and of course Bad Boys. I also actually knew of him as he had done music videos. I am sure he knew nothing of me. I knew of him because of Meat Loaf and Tina Turner really. Then his movies. I also knew him vaguely as an actor.

As to the script I only was told I was in a scene where ultimately I would be chased away. As I knew before and after, you get to know very little of his film before the filming begins and even in a scene you know only what you need to know, thus attempting to keep it from leaking before the release of the project.

KK: In the comments section for an earlier post on this blog, you mentioned that your part was very brief following the edit. How did you envision the scene before you saw the finished product?

TB: There actually are a number of copies of the film online, which strikes me as being odd that they were not deleted by Paramount or Dreamworks, but in this day and age they may have leaked them. But obviously someone inside did as I just watched a version where I am from 64 minutes 55 seconds to actually 66.08 seconds.

In this edit I am right in Kevin Dunn’s face and he says he will f’ing punch me and he says mimes freak me out then I go off and perform around the café, with cameras on me I believe most all the time. In this edit you see me a couple tables away also miming a rope from the sky so to speak as I am lowered to the ground.

In the theater Kevin Dunn said, "will you get out of here?" and Julie White said, "Mimes freak me out."

I actually thought the scene would be at least a couple minutes, as we shot lots of footage. I envisioned the maitre d' serving them lunch as he did. I envisioned me at the table taunting Mr Witwicky. I was not really taunting, but when he threatened to hit me it was like you wouldn’t do that to a mime and I stuck around until Mr. Bay said I should leave. In this edit Kevin and I were almost touching noses. He [Kevin Dunne] emphatically told me he liked a couple of the takes very much. As a mime we not only show facial expressions, but they do hopefully reflect the inner soul.

Then as I said I went to the next table with an incredibly beautiful woman whom I was sure would be in the final edit, therefore so would I be in more of the scene.

Next I went in front of the 4 piece orchestra who had been brought in I believe from Cleveland School of Symphony or something like that. Rather well known school really.

There was more going on between the Witwickys before the next big scene which I don’t want to divulge for those who have not seen the film. I hope the unseen footage makes the DVD. So to answer the question succinctly, at least 1.5 minutes or so. And in this film 1.5 minutes would have been long for anyone but the robots and the main stars.

Even in the brief scene. I am rather noticeable and even more so on IMAX.

KK: In that same comment, you mentioned you were a student of Marcel Marceau's. What was it like working with such a legendary figure?

TB: I was with an acting coach in 1999 while I was still an active Certified Public Accountant and she received a call from an international businessman who needed a silent clown for his brother's wedding. Specifically, he was the best man and ultimately he told me he needed me to mime his speech to his brother and his wife. I realized I knew nothing about being a mime. I rented the film Les Enfant du Paradis from 1945 with Jean-louis Barrault and Etienne Decroux. Decroux was a teacher of Marceau. I watched and the practice of walking in place and some of the other physicality needed to be a beginner. I had been and still was a martial artist and teacher of [martial arts]. I had studied gymnastics and had decent knowledge of my body. I performed for 250 people. That man paid me triple what I asked for as he said it was incredible. I felt like I knew nothing and needed to know more.

True story: two weeks later I was studying with Marcel Marceau in New York City and then in Ann Arbor Michigan, then with two of his incredible students, Greg Goldston and Victoria La Balme. Marcel Marceau was the living master really. In private conversation he as well as I believe there is a much higher master. He was one of the most endearing, giving and funniest men I have ever met, both to myself and everyone else. I learned much from him, but I also learned something I had to break through and that at first was almost preventing me from performing. Then I realized he was my teacher. I am not Marceau. I am also a dancer. I was asked a week ago if I could dance like Michael Jackson. I had to say, "Michael was really beyond words to me but I am not Michael." Marceau was a genius in many many ways. To myself a real giver of light. I had seen him 50 years ago when he was first on The Red Skelton Show if you know who he is.

I would never in a million years have thought I would study with Marceau or be a Mime in a Hollywood film or perform as a mime like character at The Blobfest in Phoenixville, Pa celebrating the movie The Blob or be working on a new silent show. I also went to the UK and studied what we call corporeal mime with two disciples so to speak, the last two assistants to Etienne Decroux. Marceau always said, I can teach you technique or try to, but I can not teach you how to act. That does come from us."

KK: How did Michael Bay behave on set?

TB: Michael Bay was rather focused on his work, and not to be out of line, but I bet he was focused on a few of the extras, as was I. He was rather to the point with me. He referred to me as Mr. Mime, which is my name in the script. He very succinctly told me what he expected of me in the scene, talked more at length with Kevin and Julie then let the cameras roll. After the first take he gave me an adjustment, was rather easy with it and had nothing more to say for the next number of takes. Kevin Dunn gave me a little direction of his own as I am right in his face. Almost touching. He also let me know he liked what I did, especially in one of the takes. It had to do with the internal being expressed in my face. Julie White was rather quiet doing her job. It is my interpretation, but there was a piece of clothing Judy Witwicky shows her husband in the scene. It does not make the cut. Michael Bay did comment on whether or not it exceeded the budget. Is that an astute businessman or is it a penny pincher on a mega million dollar project? I haven't the answer. But since I have yet to be upgraded, I have my prejudices. All in all he seems to be rather focused on the order of the day. He has a lot to keep together. It was really rather cool to work that close with him.

KK: What do you think of the film as a whole?

TB: The film was mindless. The film was action packed. The film had way too much US military. The film went on way too long about pot brownies. The film really had nothing to say to me. All is cured because Megan said the L Word. Damn most of the world hasn't a clue what love is anyway. It's just another 4 letter word. I need, I want, It's mine, you're mine. I want to f you, there are many more for it. Things like the soldier in football paint...weird. BUT BUT BUT I have a short attention span and I did see it twice. Once on IMAX once on the regular screen. THE FILM HELD MY ATTENTION>> MADE ME FORGET ABOUT LIFE>> I DID NOT JUDGE IT WHILE IT WAS ON>>IT REALLY ENTERTAINED ME> IT DID ITS JOB> WAS the acting good? Great? I think that answers itself. Some special effects could have gone further really. But this is retrospective critique. I could actually watch it again. It definitely is no Gone with The Wind, MIRACLE IN MILAN:(WATCH IT IF YOU HAVE NOT>ONE OF MY ALL TIME FAVORITES) It was not Fellini or Bergman nor could Michael Bay Ever Ever be. He is no Scorcese, He is no Tim Burton. I'd still see it again on DVD on A big screen TV.

KK: Do you have any upcoming projects we should look out for?

TB: I am working on a silent show, Dance Mime Silent Clown.

MMMMM 2nd Edition

2009-07-17T11:02:00.004-04:00

This moment is memorable not because of a film it was in, but because of it's association with one of the greatest and most interesting directors of our time. I'll let you take in the moment and let it speak for itself for a moment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ULVQOneeZE&feature=fvw

Spike Jonze and Fatboy Slim. An obvious combination really once you view the video. This quirky director danced in front of this movie theater often to Fatboy Slim songs (or at least one time other than this) and it earned him Fatboy's favor. After shooting this amazing "dance attack" as I like to call it Fatboy Slim made this his official music video for the song. Well done Spike Jonze, well done.

***Brianna Wellen

MMMMM

2009-07-16T01:05:00.006-04:00

Music and movies go hand in hand and the greatest film makers can balance the two so perfectly that even if a film itself is wretched, there may be a scene worth salvaging because of the marriage of image and sound. So let me introduce to you ladies and gentlemen my new daily segment, Most Memorable Music Moments in Movies. (this is a working title, suggestions are welcome)

Wes Anderson's films are breeding grounds for this segment, so let me begin with The Darjeeling Limited. The undeniable Anjelica Huston says it all as she sets the scene, "Maybe we could express ourselves more fully if we say it without words." Cue The Rolling Stones, and "Play With Fire" begins to play.

The song, so full of threat and melancholy yet such a pleasing melody all at the same time, perfectly reflects the mood of the scene to a point where I found myself right in the midst of it all, sitting at that table. This set of actors, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, and Huston wore their character's emotions so strongly in their eyes, the face on shots really are silently fully expressing themselves without words. I would almost dare to say that I have never been more impressed by silent acting than by this scene.

"Play With Fire" was to me the first time I heard it, an average song by The Rolling Stones, a band I had never cared for much before. This scene placed an entirely new depth of emotion behind the song, a true human connection that causes me to become completely lost in the song and feel and undying urge to watch The Darjeeling Limited. And that my friends is excellent filmmaking.

Happy movie watching cinemaphiles of the world.

***Brianna Wellen

WMCA Volume Nine: Cougartastic

2009-07-15T13:17:00.005-04:00

Today's What Miserable Cover Art features artwork that's downright oxymoronic paired with the title:The people at Disney confused the word lonesome with the word badass. That isn't a lonely cougar, that's an awesome cougar nonchalantly casing joints from the comfort of his bright yellow truck, nodding at the rest of the mountain critters as he drives by, an air of sophistication and superiority practically exploding from his fur.

In fact Disney may have confused Charlie with badass, too. If the title read Badass, The Badass Cougar I wouldn't see any reason to fret. It's just a huge stretch of the imagination to see anything gloomy in this handsome devil.

And Badass needs to find friendship? Who do you think is driving the car? Probably fifty-five close friends. I bet a lot of them are hot cougaresses, too. What Badass here is doing is being the best. So now, with all the corrections, this cover should read Badass, The Badass Cougar. Being Awesome Is The Only Thing To Do.

Neat.

- Eric T. Voigt, Shootin' Up

WMCA Volume Eight: Upsetting

2009-07-14T17:25:00.003-04:00

The most disappointing collage ever:It- there- but... *sigh*.

- Eric T. Voigt, Flabbergasted

News: Extended Fantastic Mr. Fox Cast

2009-07-14T10:44:00.009-04:00

I'm obsessive. I check the IMDB pages of Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Joel and Ethan Coen, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman at least once every one and a half weeks. I wonder who my favorite film makers are, right? Upon checking Wes Anderson's, and looking into the development of Fantastic Mr. Fox I found a newly fleshed out cast list.

This is one of those things that makes the geek center of my brain go crazy. Finding this casting information reminded me of the excitement I felt upon seeing the very first screenshot from The Life Aquatic way back in 2004. It was like unwrapping a Christmas gift I'd been hoping, and begging and praying for all year long. Behold the cast, many recycled from projects before:

George Clooney as Mr. Fox, an Anderson virgin
Meryl Streep as Mrs. Fox, also a virgin
Michael Gambon as Franklin Bean, The Life Aquatic
Bill Murray as Badger, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited
Owen Wilson as Coach Skip, Bottle Rocket, Rushmore (writer), The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited
Helen McCrory as Mrs. Bean, virgin
Willem Dafoe as Rat, The Life Aquatic
Jason Schwartzman as Ash, Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited
Adrien Brody as Rickity, The Darjeeling Limited
Anjelica Huston, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited
Brian Cox as Boggis, Rushmore
Roman Coppola as Squirrel, The Darjeeling Limited (writer) and second unit director for others
Garth Jennings as Bean's Son, virgin (writer of Son of Rambow)
Jarvis Cocker as Petey, virgin
Wallace Wolodarsky as Kylie, Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited
Mario Batali as Rabbit, virgin
Eric Chase Anderson as Kristofferson, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic
James Hamilton as Mole, still photographer for others

Listed on a fansite The Rushmore Academy are a few other credits. The list confirms the IMDB list, except for Brian Cox's role, and includes Wes Anderson voicing Weasel, Hugo Guinness voicing Nathan Bunce, Stven Rales voicing Beaver and Jeremy Dawson voicing Beaver's son. All those names can be found attached to crew roles in past Anderson films, so it doesn't seem like they'd be lying... or does it...

Yep. Excited. So much. Mmmm good.

- Eric T. Voigt

WMCA Volume Seven: "Only This Time I'm Gonna Stick My Tongue In Your Mouth, And When I Do That I Want You To Massage My Tongue With Yours."

2009-07-13T23:32:00.005-04:00

I'm going to title each What Miserable Cover Art a line from a film. It could be from any film, whether I like it or not, and it could be vastly significant, or completely nonsensical. And if anyone can guess correctly which movie the line is from the guesser will win exactly one prize.

Moving on, I'd like to acquaint everyone with The Bourne Ultimatum's DVD cover. Say hello, everyone. Say hello, Matt Damon:

Dreadfully drab. A drab blue. And kind of blurry, because fast paced cutting and high-speed action is the Bourne series' thing, and that really comes through in a still picture. It doesn't so much look like he's moving as it does the background was quickly pulled to the right.

By this, the third in the series, I think we're expected to understand who Jason Bourne is and why he looks so determined, and has a gun. Bourne kicks ass and takes names without knowing his own, and that's why we like the big lug, but this cover doesn't conjure up feelings of admiration, it conjures up feelings of pity. He looks lonely on that sparse cover, and his face has managed to pull off determined and goofy in a stellar one-two expression punch.

Note the blurb dolling out lofty praise, earning the film's credibility, comes from Maxim. It's hard to read but trust me, I held the box in my hands today, I know it says Maxim. I've never thought of Maxim having the authority to decide which action movie is better than another. I've never thought of Maxim as knowing what action movies were coming out even one decade ago, let alone decades. That's more than twenty years of action movies Bourne is beating out by their standards.

Let Action Movies Are Awesome Weekly give The Bourne Ultimatum its blurbs, and let Maxim tell me if she is worth ogling:

Maxim says yes.

The Bourne Ultimatum doesn't have a terrible cover, but it doesn't have a cover worthy of its charm. I saw this baby in the theatre. I saw its younger brother Supremacy in the theatre, too. A movie with such class and might should have a cover with glitz. The film doesn't have anything to prove, but with a cover so lame it seems like it has negative proving power.

Good movies should have good covers. Is that so hard to see?

- Eric T. Voigt, Silky Smooth

Tom Cruise: Intense Profile

2009-07-13T19:04:00.008-04:00

I don't have anything smart or funny to say. "Do you ever?" Shut up! It's just that I noticed this, and it made me smile, and frown, and then I posted.

Firm Cruise

Mission Intense Cruise II

Minority Cruise

Mission Intense Cruise III

Diversity is overrated.

- Eric T. Voigt, Kinda Lazy

WMCA Volume Six: "You Blew It Up! Damn You! God Damn You All To Hell!"

2009-07-12T23:47:00.003-04:00

A good half a year back we accused The Haunting in Connecticut to have the worst poster ever. It must not have noticed, because said poster is now the image on every DVD and Blu-ray copy all across this great United States of America. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, worst to worst:

I'm really hard pressed to think of anything worse than this. A kid, obviously experiencing some mild discomfort from his wool jacket, vomiting solid gold in space, set against a nondescript stone wall, proclaiming proudly "based on true events." Get a hobby, The Haunting in Connecticut, and stop bothering the rest of us with your despicably half-assed marketing. I had to look at this every day I walked to class for about two months, and now I have to fear finding it in my local Target, Blockbuster, and maybe even on Netflix? You're the worst.

If The Haunting in Connecticut received the poster-to-cover treatment I would like to put in a request for The Hurt Locker:

Mmm mmm. Now that's what I'd like to see every day for two months.

- Eric T. Voigt, Can't Stress The Displeasure Enough

Castrating Trailers

2009-07-12T12:20:00.005-04:00

A physics lesson: movie studios enjoy making money. They make money for fun, and they make money to survive. They release movies to make money. A movie makes money for a studio when people go see the movie in theatres, buy copies of the movie, or sell the rights to the movie to other money-hungry entities like television stations, publishing companies, and smaller studios. If a lot of people see a movie that movie will make a lot of money in turn. The more money a movie makes the more money a studio makes.

Why do people see movies? To be entertained. How do they know they want to be entertained by a certain movie? If they hear from people they trust that they'll like it, or if they see clips of the movie that amuse or enlighten them. What is an easy way to see many brief glimpses at a movie? Through the art of the trailer, anywhere from one second to over three minutes long, revealing moments from a movie that are meant to encourage people to become interested in the movie, and pay money to see more of it. Physics.

Certain trailers are cut to appeal to certain audiences. A trailer made for, say, Away We Go is cut together to indie music, and presents scenes from the film that are amusing and touching, so you're already invested in the characters and hope to see more of the same in the full feature. A movie like Transformers 2 shows off the flashy computer graphics and massive explosions because they want people to come to the movie to see giant transforming robots beat the hell out of each other. They don't show the 30 minutes of exposition and military jargon because no one wants to see a movie for that. I'm being longwinded, but stick with me, I'm going somewhere.

Jennifer's Body was written by Diablo Cody, directed by Karyn Kusama, and stars Megan Fox. It has two trailers: the Red Band trailer cut for a more 'mature' audience and the Green Band trailer cut to appeal to tweens and the general public. The Red Band is allowed to have more profane language, bloodier violence, and had the power to sell the movie. See for yourself:

Jennifer's Body Red Band

Jennifer's Body Lame Band

The Green Band Trailer is not only safer for children, it is safe from anyone who could have been interested in the movie's Red Band aspects. The Red trailer included a sense of humor, a better, more elaborate look at the story, better music, and what I hope was a sound representation of the movie. The Green plays up the horror, sticks with the generic suspense music before shifting into watered down heavy metal as opposed to the fun energy The Waitresses' "I Know What Boys Like" brought in the Red, and the trailer makes the film seem boring.

I'm not a Diablo Cody defender. I thought Juno's gotta-be-hip-gotta-be-witty dialogue was tiresome and barely funny for most of the movie, and think despite a few good performances wasn't able to lift itself out of the screenplay to become a good film. Sure, sure, she isn't to blame for the sets, or the music, or the direction, but she had a heavy weigh-in on the film. As for Jennifer's Body, I'm interested. I was interested in Juno, yes, but the dialogue seems to flow better in this, a campier, self-aware film than Juno ended up being. I think it has what it takes to be at least pretty entertaining. At least, that's what the Red Band trailer is having me believe.

The Green Band trailer for Jennifer's Body is an out-and-out castration of the first. It slices it open, and leaves it shriveled and impotent. Had I seen the Green before the Red I'd have had absolutely no faith in the film. It doesn't look funny, it doesn't look smart, it doesn't look good, damn it. It looks like I'd never see that in my life, that Green Band's interpretation. How is that a smart marketing move? See, I'm connecting what I said earlier to what I'm saying now. I think the release of such a soulless trailer next to the meatier, interesting trailer is a god awful plan. Most people, at least most people who would want to see the movie, wouldn't appreciate the Green anywhere like they would the Red, but many of those people will never see the Red Band trailer if they don't frequent film sites, or see any of the shit Fox has to release the Red with.

There are plenty of films that have released perfectly adequate Red and Green trailers. Funny People and Observe and Report, recently. Most anything produced by Judd Apatow, ever. Why did this have to happen to Jennifer's Body? And why is it that she isn't alone in this treatment?

I saw the Green Band trailer for The Goods and nearly spit at my computer in disgust. It didn't look funny, and it felt like it had the potential to suck humor out of the world, leaving giant holes of sadness and anger where the once was mirth and joy. Then I watched The Goods according to Red Band, and things got better.

The Goods Red Band

The Goods Painfully Bad Band

Sure they both have severely unfunny Pearl Harbor jokes, but the Red Band tries to make something of it. I may actually see The Goods thanks to the Red Band.

What are marketers thinking with this craziness over here? Give the people a fair look at both movies, not vastly different, good versus bad trailers. I've made my peace. You have three days.

- Eric T. Voigt, Knows What He's Having

WMCA Volume Five: I Wish It Was Just Anachronistic

2009-07-12T10:26:00.006-04:00

Kids have the darndest covers:

For a design I'm pretty sure was put together on a computer it represents the basest internet understanding. It gets that websites are found on computers, and that www. and .com play a role in the matter. The phrase 'download' is at least in its vocabulary. Unfortunately none of this knowledge managed to come together in a way that resembles anything you'd actually find in a website. What website used for downloading ghosts would be titled 'idownloadedaghost.com' when 'downloadaghost.com' makes for what the site is actually used for. Otherwise it could be a blog for people who have downloaded ghosts in the past. And the giant arrow pointing to a clearly labeled download button is ridiculous. Either put the download button in a better location, or let the button do the talking for itself.

I imagine the process of downloading a ghost wouldn't involve a ghost being sucked into a computer screen, rather it would allow you to export the ghost whenever you pleased after you'd completed the download. This ghost is being sucked into, not blown out of, the computer screen. How lazy is it to have three designs for a ghost on the same cover, two of which are making the same hand gesture? My vote is 'very lazy'.

Isn't the capitalization wacky? Isn't the background not cringe-worthy? Wouldn't any child of moderate intelligence want to pick that up and put it in their DVD player? If any toddler is spotted showing the remotest interest in this case it should be smacked across the mouth, and swiftly, to deter future idiocy. Covers like this need to be strung up by their pinkies and raked.

- Eric T. Voigt, Finished Some Nice Cold Pizza