Hollywood

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I’ll give you this, Lost-ies: the first season was pretty good. By the end of the second season, however, I was annoyed. I’ll give it credit for trying something different–and I use “different” here in the strictly value-neutral sense. “Different” is only different until it suddenly isn’t. Read the rest of this entry »

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Normally, I look forward to screener season. Woohoo—free movies! At least once a year, for a few weeks, my SAG dues seem to deliver a tangible benefit.

Last night was my first viewing of any of the four screeners I have (thus far) received, and it was not an auspicious beginning. Up in the Air looks like it might be a pretty enjoyable movie. Might be, that is–I couldn’t say for sure, because the DVD I got is either a faulty reproduction or some kind of Special Jigsaw Puzzle/MadLibs/stoned Director’s Cut edition.

Minor plot spoilers hereunder
But if you read it anyway, you’ll know how I felt.

Up-in-the-air_collageMy DVD’s rendering began with a phone call scene between the George Clooney and Vera Farmiga characters, in which she reprimands him for having transgressed the boundaries of what apparently had been their rather casual relationship. Cut to George in the office of his boss Jason Bateman, who lets him know that someone named Natalie has quit. Cut to George receiving his 10-million-miler status card during a flight, complete with congratulatory announcement from the flight attendant and a special sit-down visit from the pilot (Sam Elliott). Cut to aforementioned Natalie character (Anna Kendrick) taking a picture of George holding a cardboard cutout of his sister and soon-to-be-brother-in-law in front of the St. Louis Airport terminal.

“Wow,” I thought, “they’re really going all-out with this whole non-linear narrative thing. But why are the edits so abrupt? Like, with some of them coming in mid-sentence?” Read the rest of this entry »

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Jeff Chen recently asked, “Since everybody else is making lists of their top ten films of the decade, does that mean I have to, too?” I wouldn’t presume to speak for him, but my own answer to the same rhetorical question is a sheepish “yes.” Jeff ended up making his list, too, although I don’t know how sheepish he felt about it.

Anyway, here are my top ten…nah, screw it—twelve favorite movies of the decade just completed, i.e., 2000-2009.

  1. dogville_thumb

    Dogville (2004)

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    REVIEW WITH WHICH I GENERALLY AGREE:

    Mike D'Angelo, The Man Who Viewed Too Much»

  2. lives of others

    Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) (2006)

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    RWWIGA:
    Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times»

  3. capturing the friedmans

    Capturing the Friedmans (2003)

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    RWWIGA:
    Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader»

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“Inevitably, [writer/director Lars] Von Trier’s spartan aesthetic has American critics citing Our Town, but in both method and spirit Dogville has much more in common with Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan (written in Denmark, ironically), another sorrowful disquisition on the mercenary aspects of human nature. Anything this ostentatiously artificial demands to be read as allegory, of course, and charges of anti-Americanism aren’t entirely groundless — certainly the film is very, very critical of the way that the U.S. treats its underclass, and to argue that Von Trier isn’t entitled to feel that disgust without having set foot in the continental 48 is patently absurd.”

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[Writer/director Florian Henckel] von Donnersmarck has set his film in the East Germany of 1984, five years before the Berlin Wall collapsed. It was a time when the terrifying Stasi, the secret police, made it their business to use an extensive network of spies and surveillance to know every secret thing about their citizens.

Unlike other German films, most notably 2004’s landmark Goodbye, Lenin, Lives is hardly an exercise in what’s called “Ostalgia”–nostalgia for the good old days of the East. Instead it is an inside look at how a surveillance society, set up to discover and prey upon human weakness, has the ability to make everyone a potential suspect and destroy everything it touches.

The Lives of Others does all this beautifully, but it is too well-acted a film, too meticulously plotted and carefully directed, to be satisfied with that alone. It’s also finally too smart to be content with telling anything like a familiar story.”

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“If Capturing the Friedmans were less shapely and less of a masterpiece, I’d find it less troubling. Both times I’ve seen it I’ve felt that by the end practically everyone associated with the film seems tarnished in one way or another: the ostensible subjects (the Friedmans, an upper-middle-class Jewish family in the Long Island town of Great Neck), the members of their community who helped destroy much of their lives, the filmmakers, and the audience. We’re all tainted by the graphic exposure of family wounds, diminished by what we think and feel–and by what we don’t think and don’t feel.”

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The moment you’ve all been waiting for has arrived. Here it is, the thrilling conclusion of the quiz from Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule which I began in the post before this one. Let’s get right to the action:

  1. Best Film of 1979.
    Absolutely, definitely, and unequivocally Manhattan.

  2. Most realistic and/or sincere depiction of small-town life in the movies.
    The one that made the biggest impression on me was All the Real Girls.
  3. Best horror movie creature (non-giant division).
    Read the rest of this entry »

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Last July, following his triumph of conceiving what may be my favorite name of a blog ever, cinephile Dennis Cozzalio devised this cinematic quiz-tionnaire for a post at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. Though I am, as is often the case, way late to the party on this mini-meme, I’ve never let that stop me. Anyway, enough prelude.

  1. Second-favorite Stanley Kubrick film.
    Second-favorite? Dr. Strangelove.
  2. Most significant/important/interesting trend in movies over the past decade, for good or evil.
    The takeover of Hollywood studios’ production slate by the parents-with kids or “family” film genre. In the last few years I’ve been going to the movie theatre less and less often, mainly because there are fewer and fewer movies showing there that I’m interested enough to pay $12-$14 to see. Nothing whatsoever against parents, or kids — I love kids. However, I figure that as long as I don’t have children of my own, I should see as many grown-up movies as possible in case I do end up with kids somewhere down the line. Unfortunately the studios aren’t making movies for people like me anymore. They’re making Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Or, for the older end of their target demographic, Twilight.
  3. Bronco Billy (Clint Eastwood) or Buffalo Bill Cody (Paul Newman)?
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