If the co-directors of the documentary Paradise Lost had made a more forceful movie – one that ripped apart this case they clearly think is so flimsy – they might have actually freed the accused. Instead, they crafted a portrait of a community with its innards exposed. It seems obvious enough that when it’s a matter of freedom, decades in prison, and death, one shouldn’t fuck around, but they do.
If movie critics chose Oscar nominations, then, here are two possibilities of what they might look like.
I fought Millions for as long as I could. But in the end, it won. It’s a charming little movie that casts magical realism as the mind of a child. Plus: an easy dismissal of Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
The story of Stanley Dural Jr. is the story of a kid who hated his father’s music. The rich irony is that the kid who hated the accordion and zydeco would become the planet’s best-known zydeco performer. His nickname is “Buckwheat,” and the world knows him as Buckwheat Zydeco – a multiple Grammy nominee and the first zydeco artist ever signed to a major label.
I’m about 15 years late to this party, but I’ve always planned to write a lengthy piece on my love for Oliver Stone’s JFK. My point would simply be that whatever its failings as a credible history (or even a viable alternative history), JFK excels as propaganda, and should be studied for that reason. In a 1993 essay in The Atlantic, Edward Jay Epstein does a good job explaining Stone’s methods.
It is a great world in which the names of Nietzsche and Kant can be invoked in a discussion of popular music.
David Wong offers “The Top Ten Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed.” (And, yes, it’s geeky.) The title is cool because it’s accurate while having its own little sci-fi vibe. The content is cool because Wong brings to the task a keen understanding of what works (and how it works) in narrative and in movies.
Two articles this week in The Motley Fool explore the practice of “throttling” at online-DVD-rental outlets Netflix and Blockbuster. Basically, if you watch and return a certain number of movies a month, you’re likely to experience longer turn-around times and reduced availability.
Blogger Anthony Kaufman makes an astute observation about the divided critical reaction to Paul Haggis’ Oscar-nominated Crash: “According to the top-ten lists available, not a single critic who resides in New York or Los Angeles placed Crash in their top five. … So the vast majority of Crash fans come from everywhere in between.” Kaufman concludes that this is a function of the movie being simple and unsophisticated.
Imagine a mystery story in which the detective started to explain the killer’s method and motive, paused 30 seconds in, and said, “It’s pretty convoluted. Let’s skip that part.” That’s how the Oscar-nominated documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room works.
