I just started watching Deadwood this week – late adopter and all – but found this essay compelling. Comparing the show to both Shakespeare and the first two parts of The Godfather, Andrew Dignan offers trenchant insights not only about HBO’s western series but about the Bard and Coppola’s movies.
“Not with a bang … not even a whimper … it was more like a wet fart.” There’s little point in trying to improve on this opening sentence from the House Next Door’s review of the kinda sorta season finale of The Sopranos.
In an aimless, nearly endless essay (more than 3,000 words), Wagstaff brings up some fascinating questions in what mostly functions as a personal remembrance of the circumstances of watching movies: “Most film criticism is rightly focused on the movie itself. The purpose of this essay is to clear a little spot of ground for the circumstances that surround watching a movie, the things that affect so strongly how we see it.”
I know Wolf Creek doesn’t seem like an appropriate destination for cultured – and sensible! – people such as you and me, but allow me to make a case for visiting this remote area of the Australian Outback in your cinematic travels.
Back in November, I fretted that Lost would suffer from what I dubbed the “endless hit-TV-series death march. “Oh, my prescience!
It’s been a decade since I read Christopher Buckley’s Thank You for Smoking. I remember it as slight but laugh-out-loud funny, one of the few books I did not hesitate to recommend to anybody. The movie adaptation, written and directed by Jason Reitman, didn’t make me laugh out loud, but I was surprised at its modest depth – and the sources of that richness.
Funny-lookin’ Steve Buscemi offers his rules for filmmaking.
Filmbrain raises an essential issue: “I have noticed a trend in the film blogosphere of critics who, while talented writers, are so damn clinical in their criticism that I find myself wondering if they actually enjoy film.”
In the magazine Cinema Scope, David Bordwell demonstrates how a lack of specific examples undermines a potentially intriguing argument.
Although obviously Andersonian (Rushmore-ic?), The Squid and the Whale is not a movie that Wes Anderson could have pulled off. Noah Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical film is too raw, naked, painful, and real. It fuses The Royal Tenenbaums and Ordinary People at a genetic level that Seth Brundle would appreciate. Although it acts like a comedy, the movie’s familiarity and truth will be as funny to many people as a slap in the face.