There’s no doubt that Sideways makes for an entertaining two hours, but if this is the best Hollywood has to offer in 2004 — and it might be — it’s been a pretty sorry movie year.
Read the full article.
December 2004 Archives
I liked 2002’s The Bourne Identity a lot, but I didn’t think the character/premise could sustain itself over a series. I was wrong.
Read the full article.
As flawed as it is and even though its freshness and shock value have been diminished by imitation and time, Eyes Without a Face still works amazingly well — primal, raw, troubling, and real. Its authenticity makes it superior to 95 percent of horror movies, and it illustrates how horror operates even when it’s not terrifying.
Read the full article.
If you’re interested in the impending “format war” for the next generation of DVD players and software (movies, music, etc.), Slate has an excellent and easy-to-understand primer.
A prediction: High-definition DVDs will flop in the marketplace.
Continue reading Star Wars Episode VII: The Format Wars.
My two sports loves are the Red Sox (since 1986) and the men’s basketball team at the University of Illinois (my alma mater), and together they pretty much occupy me year-round. When baseball season ends in October, it’s time for college basketball, and when the Final Four is done, opening day of baseball season is upon us.
So with the Red Sox having won the World Series and with Illinois trouncing top-ranked Wake Forest last night, the 2004-5 Culture Snob sports season — already transcendent — is starting to look even better. (We shall ignore the Washington Redskins, the object of my wife’s sports affection, for the time being. It’s better for all involved.)
Illinois will surely have some bumps in the road, but come Monday, April 4, maybe, just maybe ... . And on that same day as the national-championship game, the Red Sox kick off the 2005 baseball season against the God-Damned, Mother-Fucking Yankees.
Recent Entries
The Enthusiast: On Roger Ebert
In 2010, at the age of 67, Roger Ebert reviewed The Human Centipede (First Sequence) — a horror flick that seems to exist primarily to make viewers vomit. As a professional movie critic for more than four decades, Ebert could...
BatChrist: Born (and Re-Born) in Hell
Depending on how you choose to count, there are either three or four Batman resurrections in The Dark Knight Rises. Superheroes — and especially Superman — have long been seen as Christ figures, and from its title to its returns...
The Audacity of Repetition, Reinforcement, and Clarity
Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises is an incredibly ballsy movie. I don’t mean its scope and ambition, both of which are indeed impressive. I mean the audacity of choices that could have easily backfired: following Heath Ledger’s nuanced, razor-sharp...
Needed Scars for a Better Dark Knight
How about a magic trick? I previously pulled off David Copperfield-scale wizardry by turning Robert Zemeckis’ bloated, 150-minute Contact into a lean, 53-minute masterpiece. (Yes, that’s hubris. Have you missed me?) This, admittedly, is a more modest feat — something...
Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch
My essay on David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Naked Lunch is now up at Edward Copeland on Film. I’ll post it here in a few days.
Ebert's Game: Still Hidden