I wonder what percentage of sales of Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist in the South are from naive Christian fundamentalists.
December 2010
10 posts
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Things I almost tweeted about James L. Brooks' new film How Do You Know
How do we know that James L. Brooks’ new film How Do You Know is not just an overlong series of rhetorical questions?
Today Crest announced it will temporarily rename its Whitestripes line of teeth whitening products to How Do You Know-strips.
The chief reason James L. Brooks’ new film How Do You Know went overbudget was so that they could use CGI to add minority actors in post-production.
The thing I don't understand about The Terminator
Why would Sarah Connor care about her future son John Connor sending Kyle Reese back in time to impregnate her when he has already done that? Is time not linear in The Terminator mythology? Do I need to watch Terminator 2 to understand this? Should I be admitting I just saw The Terminator for the first time tonight?
“I saw the writing on the wall when we were told to cut back using FedEx and messengers and informed that we’d no longer have free bottled water at the office,” recalls a former department head. “But there was plenty of frivolous spending, too. Jessica Simpson’s hair, makeup and entourage alone cost so much, it was ridiculous.”
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Who Destroyed Epic Records? - The Hollywood Reporter
There is some historical precedent here: I believe Gorbachev’s decision to end the Soviet Union’s free water bottle service presaged that government’s fall.
Some observations from moviewatching in 2010
- I Love You, Phillip Morris and A Prophet shared the roughly same amount of unnecessary prison cliches, but the latter was apparently more artful because it was overlong and in French (and tonally consistent).
- The Social Network is not a condemnation of Mark Zuckerberg—it’s a portrayal of what Mad Max would be like if he had Asperger’s; Eisenberg is even a greater badass than he was in Zombieland. On the other hand, the titular character in Greenberg was an ass who could not relate to people.
- I felt sort of like Armond White at Toy Story 3’s ending, genuinely baffled about why anyone would have an emotional response. Pixar’s desire for ham-fisted pathos somewhat undermined Toy Story 3’s greatness as a caper film.
- The only good things about Inception were the scene where everything in the dream exploded into bits and a minute of the weightless action sequence; everything else was average-to-bad. It would not hurt Christopher Nolan to learn about the concept of “editing.”
- How to Train Your Dragon was better than Toy Story 3, possibly due in large part to Roger Deakins.
- It’s amazing how much Marvel fucked up
Iron 2 ManIron Man 2 by shoehorning that pointless Avengers setup into the film. Couldn’t they have saved that shit for Captain America, a film with a release date closer to the Avengers film and which no one may want to see? - If I am going to be subjected to that fucking Smurfs trailer, the movie should be subsidized because I should not have to pay to hate myself for sitting through the fucking Smurfs trailer.
- Black Swan made me wonder if Aronofsky could make any subject enthralling. Could he make the definitive knitting club film?
- Get Low would have been 1.5x better without Bill Murray.
- I don’t remember how many films I saw this year with Jonah Hill in them.
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World—which I think may have been my favorite film of the year—unexpectedly reminded me quite a bit of Waltz with Bashir, my favorite film of 2008, in its marriage of sound and visuals and general momentum. Also, I cried at the end of Scott Pilgrim.
Isn’t the American Country Awards sort of a redundant name for an awards ceremony? I mean, the Canadian Country Awards would just be a Shania Twain circle jerk.
I don’t know what it says about Michael Bay when his banal new Victoria’s Secret commercial is better and more lucid than his last two or three films.
