08.23.12 |
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I’ve got something of a soft spot for the Lethal Weapon series, but man, author Walter Chaw just rips into it, and the results make for a pretty hilarious read (also sadly, true.) Chaw really hammers the buddy cop series undercurrent of sexism, racism and misogyny, such as in Lethal Weapon 4:
Murtaugh “adopts” an entire Chinese family he finds on a cargo boat, telling Riggs he did it because he wishes someone had done the same for his family back when they were slaves. There’s so much wrong with that, I can’t begin to tell you. Consider, too, that the way Murtaugh treats this family, how he knows they’ve been kidnapped by the sudden absence of Chinese-food smell in the house, is as dismissive and perfunctory as the evil Celestial villains who use them as hostages in some obscure plot.
Or consider Rika, Mel Gibson’s love interest in Lethal Weapon 2:
She’s a male fantasy, in other words–one of the ugly ones; I was reminded more than once of that scene from the same year’s Great Balls of Fire where Jerry Lee tells his child bride that she don’t move like a virgin. Dragged along and pushed around, Rika squeaks stupidly, flutters attractively, and perishes so that our hero can manufacture outrage at blonde Betty Boop’s passing, thus justifying all the sadistic bloodshed to come.
Chaw later summarizes a lot of the commentary tracks from director Richard Donnor. It’s not pretty:
The track is indicated by extended periods of silence, with Donner occasionally apologizing, “SORRY, I’M WATCHING THE MOVIE AND I’M REALLY ENJOYING IT!” You can imagine him at the early buffet, yelling at the soup. He’ll also take pains to trainspot the bumper stickers littered throughout: “WHAT’S THAT ONE? DOLPHINS? HAHA!” He misses no opportunity to praise the genius of Glover and Gibson, and, yes, he will sometimes stop and ask Hoffman what a character has said. If you can suffer through all of it, that will make two of us.
Read the whole article. It’s long, but well worth it.
08.22.12 |
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Wonderful Press Play video essay that breaks down the brilliance of Quintin Tarantino’s first feature, Reservoir Dogs. We’re now twenty years past that influential release, but having revisited the film fairly recently, it’s still as shocking and strong a film as a I remember first watching it back in the late 90s.
08.14.12 |
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I’ve already linked to a few of these extended back and forth conversations between NYT critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis; they are uniformly excellent. This week’s topic adds optimism to what tends to be a sore spot in the summer movie season: diversity. We’re finally seeing a lot more films this summer that appeal to multiple tastes, not just the hyper violent, lightweight teenage segment. I especially liked Dargis’s indie funding idea:
If I were running a studio (ha!), I would take the money that I’d set aside for the next bad idea (like a remake of “Total Recall”) and give a handful of directors, tested and less so — Todd Haynes, Barry Jenkins, Kelly Reichardt, Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Aaron Katz, Benh Zeitlin, Damien Chazelle — $10 million apiece to make whatever they want, as long as the results come in with an R rating or below and don’t run over two hours.
08.10.12 |
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I had fun listening to hosts Tyler and David run through Nolan’s entire career. Look for some solid insights into the generally overlooked Insomnia and plenty of rants that pit the three Batman films against each other.
08.02.12 |
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Usually I’m not the biggest fan of list style posts, but The A.V. Club‘s work here is really useful. I’d recommend you do what I did: make a quick scan and add what looks interesting to your Netflix queue. There were a few big ones that were completely off my radar, like Once Upon a Time In Anatolia.
08.01.12 |
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Given all the press over The Dark Night Rises, articles and analysis on director Chris Nolan have reached the point of absurdity. Yet the British Film Institute’s work here is standout and well worth your time. I loved author Joseph Bevan’s analysis of trends throughout Nolan’s work. For instance, Bevan suggests video games influences Nolan’s work:
While it’s hard to imagine him adding to the regrettable lineage of video-game film adaptations, he has paid direct homage to newer games in his last two films. The elevated shots of Bruce Wayne’s speeding Lamborghini in The Dark Knight mimic the player’s view in Grand Theft Auto, while Inception’s infiltration of a snow-bound compound echoes the Splinter Cell games, as well as the Japanese game Metal Gear Solid.
These resonances also occur at script level. Inception’s dream levels are structured like the levels of a game, while Memento – with its emphasis on a lone hero picking up clues while working his way around strange environments – is reminiscent of myriad point-and-click adventures.
07.30.12 |
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Excellent, thorough roundtable discussion over at popular film site Mubi.com. Clearly the three critics discussing TDNR are not big fans, with one going so far to call Chris Nolan’s range “from borderline hack to mildly competent”, something I completely disagree with.
This piece is standout in its discussion of TDNR’s politics. I agree completely with a lot of their takes: Nolan’s politics on display are often self-contradictory, very murky, and ignored when it’s inconvenient for the action on display. As Slashfilm’s David Chen argued, The Dark Night Rises is clearly making some rough political grabs, but by the end it’s an incomprehensible stance.
07.20.12 |
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Cool story over at Movies.com on how author Katie Calautti’s friend landed a bit part in the ultimate summer blockbuster:
Movies.com: So when did you realize it was for real?
AD: My agent said, “The paperwork looks legit!” And then I went in for a costume fitting and by then they were in New York. And then I was like, “OK – it’s totally legit” – because their offices took over an entire building and the costumes took over an entire floor. There were hundreds of Army outfits…
Movies.com: What was it like on set?
AD: They had hundreds of extras there, because in the scene there’s a lot of people yelling and screaming. Christopher Nolan shows up and he chats with Bale, Gordon-Levitt and the DP. Eventually Nolan asks me, “Do you know your lines?” And I said, “Yeah” and repeated them. And he said, “Alright, don’t worry about your lines, just get the point across.”
07.19.12 |
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Spike Lee, talking to Vulture’s Will Leitch on the recent popularity of Tyler Perry movies:
SL: I would not call it a syndrome. Thing is, those box-office numbers prove there is an audience for those films. Yet, at the same time, I think there is an audience that would like to see something else. At this moment, those other films have to be made outside the Hollywood studio system. This comes down to the gatekeepers, and I do not think there is going to be any substantial movement until people of color get into those gatekeeper positions of people who have a green-light vote…When I first started making films and I would have Hollywood meetings—and I know this for a fact—they would bring black people out of the mailroom to be in the meeting.
WL: That doesn’t still happen, does it?
SL: I do not know. But I will say the best chance of me meeting somebody of color is the brother man at the gate who is checking to see if I am on the list.
Great, revealing interview with a director who generally has a less than ideal relationship with the press.
07.19.12 |
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Seriously awesome interview with the notoriously private former Batman. A very loose, eclectic conversation here: Keaton discusses his rumored rejection of Batman 3, fly fishing in Montana, drunken escapades with Quentin Tarantino and much more. I loved his thoughts on playing the same Elmore Leonard character Ray Nicolette in two different movies (Jackie Brown and Out of Sight):
Keaton: Yeah, I’ve never seen that done — ever. And I hope I’m not getting too esoteric about this, but it was almost like postmodernism.
Daniel Kellison, Grantland: If people are still reading this far into this article, they’re obviously pretty big Michael Keaton fans — I don’t think you can get too esoteric for them.
Michael: What I felt was: It’s like he exists in the world. He might show up in your barbershop, you know what I mean? Different studio, different script, different story, different director. Everything is different, and all of a sudden, this guy shows up again. And I thought, Man, it would be cool — I’d just like to show up again somewhere else.