Roger Ebert’s new voice
He's been the go-to film critic for me for many years. His writing is just top-notch. And now that he's started twittering, I've been impressed at how good of a twitterer he is. Inventive, funny, and a good spotter of interesting links. Now that he hasn't been able to speak for the last four years, he's finally getting a chance to get his old voice back. A company in Scotland is taking footage from his show and working to put it together into a new voice. The results were debuted on Oprah this week. A pretty good result!
Scorcese’s homage to Hitchcock
via scorsesefilmfreixenet.com I liked Shutter Island fine, although it wasn’t all that it probably could have been. Maybe it was the last 18 months of commercials (at least it felt that long). That said, Scorcese’s commercial above was a great blend of parody and homage to Hitchcock. If you’ve got some time, you might enjoy this above.
On Avatar
I thought Avatar was a fine movie. Good blockbuster spectacle, coherent plot, fine characters, and well-made all around. It was the first movie I've seen with the newer 3D system (as opposed to the older blue and red cellophane glasses). I thought that the 3D effect was pretty good, too, though I don't know that the movie would have felt lessened in any way if I'd seen it on a regular screen. A lot of people have lobbed some criticisms at it for a "standard" or "generic" plot. Sure, it's the same plot as Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves, and probably Read more…
Best Picture at the Oscars goes RCV
But in the Best Picture category — which used to be listed in the middle of the Oscar ballot, but will now be in a separate, detachable section — voters will be asked to rank the nominees in order of preference, one through 10. Those ballots will then be tallied using the preferential system (for a full-blown explanation, click here) in which the film with the fewest Number One votes will be eliminated, and its votes redistributed based on the film listed second on those ballots. Eventually, one film will wind up with more than 50 percent of the vote, Read more…
10 Nominees
Best Picture “Avatar” James Cameron and Jon Landau, Producers “The Blind Side” Nominees to be determined “District 9” Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham, Producers “An Education” Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey, Producers “The Hurt Locker” Nominees to be determined “Inglourious Basterds” Lawrence Bender, Producer “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness and Gary Magness, Producers “A Serious Man” Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Producers “Up” Jonas Rivera, Producer “Up in the Air” Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman and Jason Reitman, Producers via oscars.org So this is what 10 nominees for Best Picture look like. On the Read more…
Three movies
It's ComplicatedMeryl Streep is always fun to watch, and both Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are good too. This movie is light-years better than The Holiday was. But Nancy Meyers is a very uneven writer. Some of the scenes just sing, and others feel pointless. Some characters even feel pointless. Still, when it's on, it's pretty good. Young VictoriaI was disappointed by this movie. It did make me want to read a biography of Victoria, but the movie itself didn't strike me much. Mary called it "pleasant" and I would add the word "enough" to it. "Pleasant enough." Nothing great, Read more…
Up in the Air, Redux
We took a family outing to see Up in the Air again, which wore well on a second viewing. Not only was it fun to see again, but seeing it in St. Louis–where most of it was filmed–was kind of a treat. There was some random hooting when someone recognized a friend, or a location passed off as Wisconsin or Omaha. We also saw it at one of the coolest theaters in town–the Moolah, a converted Shriners Temple with condos, a movie theater, a bar, and a bowling alley. In between screenings, I also read the novel by Walter Kirn that Read more…
“Merry Christmas, Movie House!”
I must confess to feeling a little proud this Christmas morning. About 5 years ago, I approached the board of the Grand Cinema with a proposal. "The tenant in 608 Fawcett is leaving," I said (I'm summarizing here, but this is the gist of it). "I don't know whether we'll stay at the Merlino Art Center or whether we'll look for a new home, but if we want to stay and expand here, we need to have control of the storefront at 608 Fawcett. It's the only space we could easily convert into another movie theater without major structural changes Read more…
“You Missed It”
In 25th Hour Edward Norton gives what is perhaps the best performance of his career in what is easily one of the best movie’s of Spike Lee’s filmography. Norton plays a convicted drug dealer headed to prison for seven years. Before he goes Monty Brogan has twenty-four hours to say goodbye, and he spends most of them coming to grips with his father and friends while venting his anger and frustration at the path he’s taken. via bspcn.com This was an interesting list of films that are the “most unfairly overlooked of the last decade.” First, get ready for a lot of decade-long lists. Read more…
“Master and Commander”
I do like a good sea story, and so I picked up Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander," the first in a series about Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, ship's doctor and naturalist. I really enjoyed the movie from a few years ago (adapted from a later book, but with elements from many of them), and the book was pretty good too. It was a pretty slow read, however. It's only 40 years old, but it feels like it was written at the time it's set (late 1700s during the Napoleonic wars). I don't mind it, but it is dense. Read more…
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