These are what we call art films. I don’t know if you know what those are. They’re films where you work very, very long hours for no money and…all we get is this trip to Cannes
Serious questions:
Has Bill Murray just stopped giving a fuck? If so, he’s now my hero.
“So, if he was ‘in control’ the enitre time why did he try to kill her? Was he just trying to fuck with her and kill everyone in the process?”
-A friend’s random observation after watching Avengers Assemble
Ratcatcher
Lynne Ramsay, 1999
The generally atrocious and psychologically ludicrous We Need to Talk About Kevin didn’t inspire confidence for an auspicious directorial debut (Lindsay: “Should we have a shot of cherry brandy for every bit of clumsy symbolism?”). But, though low-key childhood coming-of-ager is far from untrammeled territory, its working class seventies Glasgow and twelve-year-old protagonist feel authentically vivid – begging the question even more keenly, why the actual fuck is Ramsay’s next project MOBY-DICK IN SPACE?
via: caramelsandkerosene
*Editor’s note: While I don’t agree with their view of We Need to Talk About Kevin (which I found to be a borderline inappropriate dark comedy with two fantastic leads. It was also incredible to just look at.), I’m also in the camp that’s scratching their heads concerning Ramsay’s Moby Dick in space…
Source: caramelsandkerosene
Can we talk about how much of an influence Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue was on Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan?
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Can we talk about how much of an influence Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue was on Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan?
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Can we talk about how much of an influence Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue was on Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan?
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do you ever watch a movie so bad you worry the characters and writing are going to get into your head and really mess with your personality? like some kind of bad brain aftertaste? i don’t know what’s with this one, Tiny Furniture, but man it’s just not going anywhere and every character is the worst.
via: wellalright
*Editor’s note: This is why I’m probably never going to watch this one…
Source: wellalright
Coming out of the new Tintin film directed by Steven Spielberg, I found myself, for a few seconds, too stunned and sickened to speak; for I had been obliged to watch two hours of literally senseless violence being perpetrated on something I loved dearly. In fact, the sense of violation was so strong that it felt as though I had witnessed a rape…
As it is, the film has turned a subtle, intricate and beautiful work of art into the typical bombast of the modern blockbuster, Tintin for morons, and the nicest things one can say about it are that there’s a pleasing cameo of Hergé himself in the opening scene, the cars look lovely, indeed it is as a whole visually sumptuous, and (after 20 minutes or so of more or less acceptable fidelity; and the 3D motion-capturing transference of the original drawings is by far the least of the film’s problems) it usefully places in plain view all the cretinous arrogance of modern mass-market, script-conference-driven film-making, confirming in passing that, as a director, Spielberg is a burned-out sun. A duel between dockyard cranes? Give me a break. Oh, and the opening credits are nice and witty. But this only confirms a maxim that I have recently formulated: that the closer in spirit the title sequence is to the original from which the subsequent film has been stolen, the more of a travesty of that original it will be.
Via Nicholas Lezard
*Editor’s note: Does this mean we should stop being excited?
Why professional critics are needed.
In an age in which anyone with opposable thumbs and a broadband connection can publish a film review on the internet, it’s often asked whether we still need professional critics. And there have certainly been dark moments when I’ve asked myself if there’s any point in going on – many of them during a screening of Sex and the City 2. If all that film critics did was watch films and grunt “yay” or “nay” afterwards, we would be obsolete, and deservedly so. But I don’t think that’s what the job is about. A verdict on its own is worthless: if you didn’t enjoy a movie, no review is going to convince you that you actually did. Film critics, in my view, should watch films and then write about them in a way that is honest, well-informed and entertaining. We should tell you what a film is about, put it into context, explain what we think works and what doesn’t, and do all this in a way that is pleasurable to read. That’s it. If my taste broadly lines up with yours, that’s a bonus, but I’d rather you enjoyed reading my reviews and disagreed with every word than think I was right and boring. The only person to whom critics owe any loyalty is the reader, but the pros can lose sight of this in two important ways. Some are contrary or elitist by design, writing mainly for other critics. Others, either because of an existing acquaintanceship or because they fancy themselves a “friend to the stars”, imagine the subjects of their reviews reading them and write accordingly. Happily, on these two counts I’m unimpeachable: like the vast majority of cinemagoers, I’d sooner watch great junk than bad art, and nobody in the film industry likes me. So now, hopefully, you know a bit about me. It is both a pleasure and a privilege to be your new film critic – in fact I’m so pleased, I’m going to fold up today’s paper and store it in a polythene sleeve, on top of my DVD cupboard, beside the copy from 1997. But before I do, I’m going to check the Letters to the Editor column. Because on the off-chance there are any ambitious 14-year-old correspondents in there who might dream of becoming a critic for this very paper, I’m going to ask for their contact details, so I can get in touch and offer the following piece of heartfelt advice that will, with any luck, steer them in the right direction. Stay the hell away from my job.
I don’t think you should feel about a film. You should feel about a woman, not a movie. You can’t kiss a movie.
Source: kidsintrouble
These females aren’t only more sympathetic than their male counterparts; they’re a lot steamier. “The aggressive sexuality is part of the draw,” says Swimfan’s Christensen. In most crazy-chick flicks, the female protagonist doesn’t just lose her mind; she loses her clothes. And sometimes she loses her sexual orientation as well. In Chloe, Amanda Seyfried stalks Julianne Moore and winds up in her bed. And most of the Internet buzz around Black Swan centers on the fantasy scene where Nina and her frenemy, Lily, stage a bedroom ballet. That’s a major reason why 45 percent of Black Swan’s audience is male, a fact that surprised even Nancy Utley, president of Fox Searchlight, which released the Darren Aronofsky film. When asked why men are so attracted to crazy chicks, Mila Kunis, who plays Lily, lets out a laugh. “I can give you a bulls—t answer,” she says during the phone call. “I actually don’t know. I think girls want stability and understanding, but I think…” She’s interrupted by a noise in the background. “My father is changing a lightbulb. All my lights in my house went off at the same time. Dad, why are men attracted to crazy women?” She pauses. “He’s thinking.” She pauses again. “He won’t say it. He censors himself around me. Dad, is it dirty?!
At this moment of awards-giving and back-patting, however, we can all agree to love movies again, for a little while, because we’re living within a mirage that exists for only about six or eight weeks around the end of each year. Right now, we can argue that any system that allows David Fincher to plumb the invention of Facebook and the Coen brothers to visit the old West, that lets us spend the holidays gorging on new work by Darren Aronofsky and David O. Russell, has got to mean that American filmmaking is in reasonably good health. But the truth is that we’ll be back to summer—which seems to come sooner every year—in a heartbeat. And it’s hard to hold out much hope when you hear the words that one studio executive, who could have been speaking for all her kin, is ready to chisel onto Hollywood’s tombstone: “We don’t tell stories anymore.
Total Film Office Talk…
Dan: So you want us to work from 7am til 12am.
Sam: Correct.
Dan: Do you mean am, or pm?
Sam: AM, as in midnight.
Dan: You think we should work til midnight?
Sam: Come on, Dan, it’s not like we’ve got anything better to do! Your girlfriend is in Australia and my girlfriend doesn’t fucking exist!
Source: totalfilm
