March 6th, 2013

No Need For A Lasso, We’ll Make Our Own

By

nola_levee650-thumb-615x354-115112

Very inter­est­ing arti­cle from Megan Gar­ber over at the magazine’s web­site on a sub­ject I had never heard of before—how cities were lit in the last few decades of the 1800s, not with street­lights but with gigan­tic, arti­fi­cial “moons,” hoisted high up on tow­ers. The exper­i­ment didn’t really last into the 20th cen­tury, but must’ve been a very strange and beau­ti­ful expe­ri­ence, to say the least.

And so, for a brief and lit­er­ally shin­ing moment early in the days of human-harnessed elec­tric­ity, the future of munic­i­pal light­ing was glow­ing orbs sus­pended high above cities — tow­ers, resem­bling oil der­ricks, capped with 4 to 6 arc lamps with a can­dle­power of 2,000 to 6,000 each. These man­made moons made the ulti­mate promise to the peo­ple below them: that they would never again be in the dark…The light itself…was the true attrac­tion. It was, as [inven­tor Charles Fran­cis] Brush had guar­an­teed, “pic­turesque and roman­tic,” one observer put it. read more »

&
March 3rd, 2013

‘Napoleon’ Is Alive After All

By

best-shot-stanley-kubrick-001

As Napoleon Bona­parte him­self said, “Impos­si­ble is a word to be found only in the dic­tio­nary of fools.” Here are Stan­ley Kubrick’s entire pro­duc­tion notes found at the end of the director’s 1969 screen­play for his never-filmed epic pas­sion project Napoleon, which Steven Spielberg—who famously fin­ished up Kubrick’s A.I.: Arti­fial Intel­li­gence, cre­at­ing much under­stand­able cause for con­cern for this future endeavor, although I remain opti­misti­cally excited—is now mak­ing into a TV minis­eries, reports The Playlist.

The four prin­ci­ple cat­e­gories of cost which rep­re­sent the largest pro­por­tion of any spec­ta­cle film are:
1. Large num­bers of extras.
2. Large num­bers of mil­i­tary uni­forms.
3. Large num­bers of expen­sive sets.
4. Over-priced movie stars.

I intend that, for ‘Napoleon’, these four cat­e­gories be han­dled in a finan­cially advan­ta­geous man­ner, which will result in sub­stan­tial sav­ings to the bud­get, allow­ing the film to be pro­duced for a much lower cost than I had first envis­aged, with­out any loss of qual­ity, size or sub­stance.  read more »

&
March 2nd, 2013

A Bright, Enduring Spark

By

firefly

It’s all too easy to see why Fire­fly shouldn’t have been yanked off the air back in 2003, for the rea­sons that it is a sur­pris­ingly funny, deeply goofy, dra­mat­i­cally uneven, often risqué, unfuss­ily down-to-earth,  very spe­cial  blast of a sort of Space West­ern retro-futurism that is an awfully easy joy to watch, and all too easy to see why it was, for the rea­sons that it is a sur­pris­ingly funny, deeply wacky, dra­mat­i­cally uneven, often risqué, unfuss­ily down-to-earth,  very spe­cial blast of a sort of Space West­ern retro-futurism that has no jus­ti­fi­able place—at least to the Fox execs, and can you really blame them?—on prime­time net­work tele­vi­sion. To incor­rectly para­phrase the at once so bril­liant and so dumb theme song, “Take me out, to the black, tell them I ain’t com­ing back…” read more »

&
February 25th, 2013

In Wake of Oscars, Media Hypocrisy Threatens

By

Seth McFarlaneI did and do not nec­es­sar­ily want to enter the posi­tion where I defend Seth Mac­Far­lane against his numer­ous haters, for the rea­sons that it would be much too exhaust­ing and I didn’t love his per­for­mance Sun­day night as Oscar host that much. I’m still not will­ing to do that, but what I am will­ing to do is com­ment on some speci­fici­ties, some stuff that struck me, as Anthony Lane might say, a bit rich.

One of his many detrac­tors, MCN’s David Poland, wrote in his review a remark that dis­tin­guished itself from the myr­iad morning-after accu­sa­tions of sex­ism, stu­pid­ity, and shame­ful bad taste, and the gen­eral onslaught of hatred that is—irrationally, it seems—dumped upon Mr. Mac­Far­lane. But, again, I’m not here to defend him; his jokes was very hit-and-miss, and some were, indeed, thrown rather haphazardly around.

This com­ment asserted, largely, and accused that Mr. Mac­Far­lane was mak­ing the show less about the movies the Acad­emy Awards were hon­or­ing, and more about the show itself. That is not incor­rect. The entire open­ing skit—in the excess of at least ten minutes—was not very much about movies at all, mostly self-referential, awfully con­fi­dent, mostly funny wink-wink skew­er­ing of how bad the tele­cast and Mr. Mac­Far­lane him­self, would end up being. (Most would say this non-enviable “future” came true.) It was all very meta, and, now upon reflec­tion, indeed dis­tracted and some­what dis­tract­ing. read more »

&
February 25th, 2013

The death of the Academy Awards

By
1954

The 26th Acad­emy Awards, held at RKO Pan­tages in 1954.

There were lots of things to dis­like, and appre­ci­ate in turn, at last night’s 85th Acad­emy Awards, but per­haps the most irk­ing was that it wasn’t the 85th Acad­emy Awards at all, but “The Oscars.”

The offi­cial name change of the ven­er­a­ble awards cer­e­mony isn’t exactly news—TheWrap’s Steve Pond reported it six days ago, with Neil Meron, who pro­duced the tele­cast along with Craig Zadan, call­ing it as a “rebrand­ing” to avoid it being “mired in a musty way.”

I hadn’t heard about it, how­ever. So I was prob­a­bly the only viewer some­what star­tled when host Seth MacFarlane—whose per­for­mance I think was reviewed nicely by Tim Good­man—kicked off the night, “Good evening, ladies and gen­tle­men, wel­come to the Oscars. And the quest to make Tommy Lee Jones laugh begins now.” read more »

&
February 23rd, 2013

From the outside, looking in

By

oscarT

It is decep­tively hard to attain the skills needed to effec­tively ana­lyze the awards sea­son and pre­dict the Oscars——a stud­ied impar­tial­ity and strict objec­tive­ness, at least while it mat­ters, not to men­tion a will­ing­ness to revisit and remem­ber awards his­tory to dis­cern the pos­si­ble ten­den­cies of vot­ers, no mat­ter how tediously small it might seem. As AwardsDaily.com puts it, The Trick is Not Mind­ing. I have a sug­ges­tion of my own— though it was orig­i­nally intended for film crit­i­cism in gen­eral, it is more than applic­a­ble here—Sorry, It’s Not All About You.

Because it really isn’t all about you, what you think of that film or that one—there’s so much more going on—history, the zeit­geist, the unpre­dictable— that your per­sonal pref­er­ences really aren’t worth a damn, sadly, when it comes to awards sea­son. “I def­i­nitely think this movie is going to win.”—Why—”Because I love it! Don’t you?? Doesn’t anybody???”—is not the way to go. read more »

&
February 16th, 2013

Not with a whimper but a bang

By

The sur­vivors of ‘The Walk­ing Dead’ open fire on a group of zombies

At a gun vio­lence pre­ven­tion hear­ing on Jan­u­ary 30th, 2012, Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham (R-S.C.) cited a pos­si­ble “law­less envi­ron­ment in this coun­try” as an exam­ple of when a legally owned military-grade assault rifles, and other firearms, would come in handy.  “I have an AR-15 at home,” Gra­ham con­tin­ued, “I would be bet­ter off pro­tect­ing my fam­ily if there was law-and-order break­down in my neighborhood.”

I couldn’t stop think­ing about the phrase “law­less envi­ron­ment” dur­ing The Walk­ing Dead, AMC’s hit zom­bie drama whose first two sea­sons I have been dig­ging into with rel­ish on Net­flix. It’s a very good, immensely com­pelling show, set in the South after the undead rose up and brought down soci­ety, civ­i­liza­tion, and every­thing we knew and took for granted. There are pock­ets here and there of sur­vivors, cling­ing on. Amer­ica has turned into a harsh, cruel, vio­lent, empty landscape—it’s a good time to have an AR-15.  read more »

&
February 3rd, 2013

We are being controlled

By
Kevin Spacey, as Congressman Frank Underwood, tells it as it is in 'House of Cards'

Kevin Spacey, as Con­gress­man Frank Under­wood, tells it as it is in ‘House of Cards’

It has been said, or I pre­sume it has been, that there is noth­ing an audi­ence likes bet­ter than being in the loop, feel­ing smarter than the var­i­ous onscreen char­ac­ters who are very prob­a­bly being either duped in some way or another. And we know it, and they don’t. We are in con­spir­a­to­r­ial asso­ci­a­tion. We are being con­fided in.

Such can be said with House of Cards, the orig­i­nal TV series that Net­flix debuted exclu­sively online last Fri­day. It is a mod­ern polit­i­cal drama set in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., full of politi­cians wheel­ing and deal­ing with ques­tion­able intent. One of these is Con­gress­man Frank Under­wood (Kevin Spacey), a house major­ity whip leader. He sup­ported the right man, and when that man became pres­i­dent, Under­wood expected some­thing spe­cific in return. It’s no spoiler to say he didn’t get it. read more »

&
January 19th, 2013

Hey slavery, eff you

By
django

Jamie Foxx wields the whip of revenge in ‘Django Unchained’

Django Unchained is a hugely enjoy­able, deeply sat­is­fy­ing mid­dle fin­ger to deep-South pre-Civil War slav­ery and racial prej­u­dice, in the form of a Spaghetti West­ern revenge tale. It rev­els in its bloody vio­lence and almost drowns in its swag­ger­ing cool­ness. Should that come as a sur­prise? No one can dis­agree that Quentin Taran­tino makes films that are cool, and Django, for count­less rea­sons, might just be his coolest yet. read more »

&
January 12th, 2013

She will do her duty, yessir

By

zerodarkthirtyWe never really know any­thing about Maya (a won­der­ful Jes­sica Chas­tain), except that she’s a CIA agent on the all-consuming hunt for the world’s most wanted man and that under­neath her pale, frag­ile fea­tures lies a steely and quasi-desperate deter­min­ism that won’t be dis­cour­aged. Over the long years that Zero Dark Thirty effort­lessly spans, you’ll never find out whether she has a fam­ily wait­ing for her at home, or why and how she was recruited out of high school to join the agency, or even her last name.

That’s a far cry from the other politically-charged pro­ce­dural of sorts tak­ing place partly in the Middle-East, Argo, where Ben Affleck’s hero could indeed bring to mind Maya. They’re both experts in the CIA, very skilled at what they do. Some­times their faces both are inscrutable and with­out emo­tion. “Let’s get the job done.” But in Argo, Affleck’s char­ac­ter places a call home to his young son, and at the end he hugs his estranged wife, mak­ing every­thing feel val­i­dated and every­body feel good. Zero Dark Thirty, the first post–The Hurt Locker pro­duc­tion from Kathryn Bigelow and writer/producer Mark Boal, never goes the easy way—and that’s why it’s such a pow­er­house. read more »

&

« Previous Page — Next Page »

« Previous Page — Next Page »