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Showing posts from January, 2010

Review: A Single Man

Colin Firth plays George Falconer —one of the coolest film names ever by the way —a repressed man who has woken up without his lover Jim (Matthew Goode) by his side for months. A phone call from one of Jim's cousins makes his new reality clear: Jim died in a car accident outside of Denver. George will not be allowed to come to the wedding, family only of course. This revelation shatters George's life, but Firth plays it with the quiet dignity he is renowned for. So now the man who was only allowed some small semblance of happiness must go about his life not allowed to grieve his loss without being discovered. This would be harder for many people, but every morning George cinches his tie knot he separates his passions from his brain. Every morning he goes into work he becomes an unfeeling machine, only passing the time until the Cubans nuke us to kingdom come. Months pass and George contemplates suicide, that is until Kenny (Nicholas Hoult) one of his young s

The Vault: The Limey (1999)

Much like when Pam Grier and Robert Forster were casted as an extension of their life-long roles in Jackie Brown Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda dust off their counterculture roles again for Steven Soderbergh's The Limey . Terry Valentine (Fonda) is a record producer, and an aging lothario who, "took the whole '60s Southern California zeitgeist and ran with it." Sadly what he ran with it into was a wall. In his efforts to keep making vast amounts of profit dealing drugs, he separated himself from the venture altogether. But when Wilson's daughter threatens to make that link between Valentine and the drugs, he kills her. When we first meet Wilson (Stamp) he is flying to Los Angeles, he has only been out of prison for a short time but after this he doesn't care if he goes back for life. Wilson has just found out that his daughter has died. Wilson is angry and Wilson wants revenge.  There is a scene in The Limey where after doing some tough talk

Miramax Closed

Disney will be closing the doors on indie innovator Miramax for good today. It's hard to say whether this is indicative of where indie film is going or just the bad business practices of Disney, but it is gone. Here are some of the films Miramax left us to remember them by: Pulp Fiction , Clerks , Spirited Away and Doubt .

I'ma Get Medieval on Your Ass

I only own about four film posters in my house, but if more theatrical sheets look like this I might have about thirty. More minimalist posters for Quentin Tarantino's work for purchase here .

SAG Winners

Last night Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds took Best Ensemble Cast to my surprise, I thought for sure The Hurt Locker or Precious would take that prize. Otherwise the Screen Actors Guild Awards were fairly predictable with Jeff Bridges taking Best Actor ( Crazy Heart ), Sandra Bullock for Best Actress ( The Blind Side ) and Mo'Nique and Christoph Waltz for their Supporting roles ( Precious & Inglourious Basterds ). And for you fellow Mad Men fans out there they took home the award for Best Drama Ensemble.

First Official Inception Photo

If you have seen any footage from Inception -  and if you read this site you probably have -   one would assume this screencap is of Leonardo DiCaprio's character after putting a silencer on his pistol in the kitchen. Beyond that I have no clue. (Courtesy: Warner Bros.)

The Vault: Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991)

Prison exploitation films are renowned for their depictions of graphic violence. Ricky-Oh: The Story of Ricky is a kung-fu / gore film that takes graphic violence to a comical extreme. Far from being your typical boring gorefest, Ricky-Oh has a respectable 7.1 rating on IMDB, and an Avatar -beating 89% on Rotten Tomatoes. The film was made in Hong Kong during Jackie Chan's heyday there. Ricky-Oh 's star, Siu-Wong Fan, has nothing near Chan's skill, so the film makes up for this with a lot of super-powered fighters and cheesy effects. The gore shots are generally only shown for less than a second. It was a good editing choice because the low production quality of the film precludes convincing visuals. It works better letting the viewers imagination fill in the details. I just watched it last night, and haven't enjoyed a film as much as 'Ricky-Oh' for quite a while.

Like We'll Forget

UPDATE: Andrew Garfield ( Boy A, Red Riding Trilogy ) has officially been announced as the new Spider-man. And  500 Days of Summer director Marc Webb will take over the new trilogy. Sony has announced, after several weeks of a head-butting contest between the studio and Raimi, that Spider-Man 4 will be shelved and the Raimi-directed Spider-Man franchise as we know it is dead. The reboot, which will be scripted by James Vanderbilt, will return Peter Parker to his high school roots where he comes into very close contact with a radioactive spider and yada yada yada. Do we really need this rebooted less than ten years from the origin story? Well I hope Sony has realized they created a precedent. Whenever this series fails - I'm assuming immediately - they will go right back to the beginning every time. The audience cared where Peter Parker's character was going, we grew up with him. You can't identify with a perpetual teenager. I can only hope that Robert Pa

Back Coco

Inception Bigger Than The Dark Knight

According to Christopher Nolan himself, from his interview with the LA Times: “It’s something that we had been talking about on and off for seven or eight years," Thomas said. "Coming off of the ‘The Dark Knight,’ the only thing we really knew is that we wanted to do something more personal. It seemed like the right time to do this. The fact that it’s really just an enormous movie -- that wasn’t ever really a factor in the decision. This story lends itself to a movie of this size." A four dimension film? Well you can't say that Nolan has become complacent in his post Dark Knight career. The opening shot of Paris folding in on itself could have confirmed that, but the question will be how will the film perform with its large budget.

Lady Snowblood and Tarantino's Kill Bill

Tarantino freely appropriates and riffs off of cult cinema classics in his work. The first half of his 2003 film in two parts, Kill Bill Vol. 1 , is a story of revenge that refers to (and borrows from) the Japanese revenge classic Lady Snowblood . Some examples of this follow: As is common in many martial arts films, both movies feature a sequence showing the protagonist ringed by aggressors, fighting each in rapid succession. The fight scene in Lady Snowblood is more similar to the upstairs fighting scene in Kill Bill , but the overhead shot above ties nicely into my next point: The climax of each film is in a remarkably similar locale. Each crescendo plays out in a dance hall ringed with an upper balcony and with a similar grid design on the floor. And of course, both films feature a multitude of severed limbs. ( aside: Fitz previously wrote about Tarantino's effective use of not showing the most violent act in Reservoir Dogs , instead relying on th

Scott Pilgrim and The Flaming Sword

No, this isn't a Harry Potter spin-off but it could be assumed from the first official production photos from Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World .