I was gonna see The Simpsons Movie,
but I’m really into this cup and ball now.
July 28, 2007
May 7, 2007
Notes on Spiderman 3
Summer movie season is finally in full swing! (Gene Shalit, eat your heart out.) I’ve been out of review writing for a while and it’s not really my bag, but this year’s summer movie blog will be more of the “Notes on …” format I originally pictured. It’s just a record of my thoughts on films as I see them, without trying to sand down the edges and make the pieces fit too nicely. Essentially, you’ll be looking at an unstructured rough draft of a review that will never be written.
Spiderman 2 ripped off Superman 2 with the whole “Hero turns his back on herodom to get the girl only to return to the tights to save the day in the end,” so it seems fitting that Spiderman 3 had a little too much comedy and a corrupted dark version of our hero. I was waiting for Thomas Hayden Church to ski down the side of a sky scraper or black suited Spidey to straighten out the Leaning Tower of Pisa. (more…)
August 21, 2006
Notes on a Snakes on a Plane
It’s hard to write up a picture like Snakes on a Plane this late in the game, after it has had more ink spilled on it than almost anything else of the summer, but I’ve got a thing or two to say on the subject and, hell, Slate keeps letting an idiot like Dana Stevens file reviews. Let’s start with a few thoughts on the hype:
The mainstream entertainment press jumped on board the mostly Internet-fueled hype, without really seeming to get why except for knowing it was the “cool” thing to do. In a lot of ways I’d describe the hype on SoaP with that hoary old Louis Armstrong quote about jazz: “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.” I’ve never really been at more of a loss for words than when I tried to quantify my reasons for looking forward to the picture. It seems that both sides of the divide agree on the general facts: The concept is bad and the title is worse. Where the discord happens is in the tone with which one states these facts. To resort to another well-worn phrase: if you’re going to say it, you best smile when you do. (more…)
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