Archives for posts with tag: movie

Already Added To My Netflix Queue

February 4, 10 //
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From today’s Very Short List:

But be sure not to miss Endgame, the fantastically suspenseful movie that chronicles the bizarre circumstances that led to Mandela’s 1990 release from prison (available on DVD 2/9).
Endgame, from British director Pete Travis, centers on the unlikely gatherings that eventually brought South Africa from white minority rule to its first democratic elections, in 1994. The extraordinary situation involved a British businessman who risked his life and his career to broker a series of talks between the president of the African National Congress (superbly played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) and, through an Afrikaner philosophy professor (William Hurt), the National Party. Though many shots feature the frustratingly common “shaky camera” style, the film is worth seeing for its standout performances, crisp dialogue and intimate perspective on an improbable moment in history.

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And speaking of Alice In Wonderland….

January 27, 10 //
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….the Twins….the Twins!

It’s a salad of Tim Burton and Jean-Pierre Jeunet with a touch of Edward Gorey dressing.

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My Present To You

December 11, 09 //
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I’ve been traveling and working so much lately, I didn’t have time to gift wrap this. But I thought you could use a little piece of perfect to get you through the end run of the year. This movie clip is clearly one of my favorites, with pitch-perfect art direction, outstanding casting, and sick-sick dark humor. I love it.

It’s a story from Woody Allen’s dark, self-reflective comedy, “Deconstructing Harry.” Underrated in my book.

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So Good I Can’t Stand It

October 19, 09 //
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Somebody over at Spacesick has created a series of stunning faux novelization covers.  They’re called the “I Can Read Movie Series” and they feature Saul Bass-style renditions of supposed books based on movies.  These should win some kind of award – I don’t know what other than my ILoveYouILoveYouILoveYou medal.  The creases, the faded covers, the smudged dirt, the pitch-perfect design – including the headers and the type….stop it.  It’s too good.

Make more.

Behold these samples and find the rest here:

BigTeen WolfCaddyshackClose EncountersSixteen CandlesWilly WonkaEdward ScissorhandsGremlins

via my favorite person in the world

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Where The Wild Things Will Be

September 2, 09 //
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HotRod sent me a link to a fantastic article about the journey of Spike Jonze and the upcoming release of Where The Wild Things Are. So far my favorite line in the article:

Catherine Keener, who was nominated for an Oscar for her work in “Being John Malkovich” and who plays a divorced mother in “Where the Wild Things Are,” told me that her 10-year-old son, Clyde, once asked her why Jonze didn’t live with his parents; apparently Clyde didn’t realize that Jonze was an adult.

Interesting:

He hadn’t set out to make a children’s movie, he said, so much as to accurately depict childhood.

Something to write on your office wall:

“I realized only then that it happens millimeter by millimeter,” he told me. “If you compromise what you’re trying to do just a little bit, you’ll end up compromising a little more the next day or the next week, and when you lift your head you’re suddenly really far away from where you’re trying to go.”

heh heh:

After about an hour, Malkovich asked Jonze if he was American. “I thought he was Czech,” Malkovich told me. “He had such a funny way of expressing himself. It sounded like he’d learned English as a second language.” Nevertheless, Malkovich said, Jonze was “funny and charming and strange, and he seemed to desperately want to do this film.”

Poignant:

To borrow a phrase that Sendak once used to describe his best-known creation, Max, Jonze inhabits a world in which one can “skip from fantasy to reality in the conviction that both exist.”

Link to the New York Times Magazine article

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Looking forward to this

July 3, 09 //
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And by the way – how great is Joseph Gordon-Levitt? Brick, The Lookout, Mysterious Skin…I think he’s going to be in my Inappropriately Young Crush file.

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Hands down…the stoniest movie EVER

July 2, 09 //
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File it under: iPhone Apps That People Really Need

July 2, 09 //
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The logical step has been taken. The wonderful website RunPee has been turned into an iPhone app. And it’s even better than the web version. (though I love the animated header with the “n” running off to pee.) If this is your first exposure to RunPee: its a site that lets you know what parts of the movie you can skip in order to go to the bathroom. The new app takes it a step further since it’s actually happening in situ.

When the movie starts, you start the timer on the app and it’ll let you know when you can get up and go, and even provide you with a summary of what you’ve missed. Bonus – it tells you whether you should stay through the credits or not for bonus footage.

Love it!

It costs 99¢ at the app store.

runpeeiphone1

via Mashable

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So Roger Ebert is NOT a fan

June 22, 09 //
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From his review of Transformers II

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.

The plot is incomprehensible. The dialog of the Autobots, Deceptibots and Otherbots is meaningless word flap. Their accents are Brooklyese, British and hip-hop, as befits a race from the distant stars. Their appearance looks like junkyard throw-up. They are dumb as a rock. They share the film with human characters who are much more interesting, and that is very faint praise indeed.

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Perfect scenes in movies, episode 1

October 26, 08 //
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“Perfect” in a scene is a much more condensed, and satisfying slice of perfect. Perfect dialogue, perfect casting, perfect performance, perfect narrative arc, perfect lighting, perfect set direction, perfect visual tone, perfect costuming, perfect camera angles, perfect editing, and perfect sound. A scene like this provides me with an excellent high. (Radiohead concerts & Prince performances, by the way, fall into this “excellent high” category. Specifically Radiohead at Santa Barbara Bowl, 2008)

I’ve been working on a side project. For two years, and now the deadline is less than a month – and we’re in a panic. Almost all we do right now is work on the book. In about two weeks, it’ll be all that we do. So to say I’ve watched two movies in the past week is actually a big deal. To say that I’ve watched the same movie twice is actually a bigger deal.

But I have never enjoyed a Woody Allen film so much and I think it’s incredible that I never hear people talk about “Deconstructing Harry.” That’s actually why I watched it twice. To see if it really was as good as I thought. It really is. Very dark humor. Really imaginative set ups. The screenplay is killer. And some of the characters are just seriously outstanding.

(Except one. Judy Davis is so maddeningly cartoon-ish she almost ruins the movie. But once you are firmly past her first soap operatic performance, everyone else nails it.)

Onto the perfect scene – it is so good it makes me clutch my hands in tiny fists and shake them like I’ve won a pony. It’s the scene with the two old Jewish ladies. If you’ve never seen it, I’m not going to tell you anything about it. Because the best thing about this scene is that you are completely unprepared for every second that reveals itself.

Those of you who have seen it – how about those actresses? Are they actresses? Because I don’t know how anyone could’ve “acted” those parts. And if they weren’t actresses…the dialogue! How could they have delivered that so perfectly?? I loved everything. Their clothing. The set design of the bar mitzvah before we see them again at the apartment. Her husband! Good god where did they find him?

Rent the movie. The whole movie is exceptional. But you’ll know what I’m talking about when you get to this awfully perfect moment.

And just a quick bonus: the scene between Woody Allen and Billy Crystal? When they are talking about sleeping with women? If I ever wrote dialogue like that, I would seriously fall in love with myself.

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