The Woj (In Exile?)

Movies, 2011

Posted 5 months ago

Since it seems clear that I won’t be watching a movie tonight, here are the 2011 movies I saw this year, ranked. I’m sorry I only saw 16 17 (I forgot Moneyball!). I’ll do better next year.

The Descendants
Contagion
Win Win
Warrior
Drive
Bridesmaids
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Moneyball
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Sweet Little Lies
The Lincoln Lawyer
J. Edgar
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
The Ides of March
Super 8
Tabloid
Thor

movies

Catching up on Nikki Finke

Posted 9 months ago

As I read through my month-old backlog of Nikki Finke articles, a series of WTFs, “!!!”s and others that are basically tweets, except here I can (a) not spam you; (b) use links; (c) not feel ridiculous for tweeting month-old news.

Ben Foster is going to play John Gotti Jr.
Charlyne Yi is going to be on House
Emile Hirsch is wasting his time in shitty alien movies
Clive Owen’s mustache is the worst thing that has ever happened to me, but if you think I’m not seeing Killer Elite, you’re out your damn mind.
Steven Soderbergh shot two days as second-unit director on The Hunger Games on a lark.
Yay Anna Kendrick + JGL
Mark Romanek keeps getting work.
Liam Neeson keeps making January thrillers.
Atom Egoyan is making a West Memphis 3 movie.
I missed that Roman Polanski has adapted “God of Carnage”.
Nikki (herself, not one of her staff) is doing these Autopsy Reports, talking about what went wrong with movies that bombed — I don’t know if they’re something she’s done before, but they’re really very good, delving into the history of the casting, marketing, focus groups, outreach, property-acquisition, development, and so forth of the movies in a way I haven’t seen before. The one about Conan is excellent.
Rosamund Pike + Dominic West? Yeah! Wait, it’s a Rowan Atkinson movie? Goddammit.
Justin Lin is just a full-on Hollywood director and I have to accept that he’s never going to make another Better Luck Tomorrow. Sigh.
I will continue to call it Good Christian [Bitches] and you’re just going to have to deal.
Andre Braugher is going to do an arc on SVU.
Mike O’Malley isn’t just the best part of Glee, he’s also a writer on Shameless.

tv
movies

1

Posted 12 months ago

While Beautiful Boy is potent and even admirable (setting aside the question of why there are no scenes of the victims’ parents’ grief), it ultimately mistakes prim, emotional monotony for gravity.

Mark Holcomb, The Aftershocks of a School Shooting in Beautiful Boy, The Village Voice, June 1, 2011.

I am very much not a fan of that parenthetical. The movie is about the parents of a school shooter. You take the movie for what it is, not what you think it should be. Why did The Godfather not have any scenes with the Irish mob? Because it didn’t.

Posted 1 year ago

It’s impossible to write about “Midnight in Paris” without giving away its great coup de cinéma (one that, however, the film’s trailer doesn’t betray) …

Richard Brody, “Midnight in Paris”: Checkout Time, The Front Row, May 20, 2011. (Don’t click the link if you don’t want the “spoiler”.)

I don’t know about that. Kenny Turan managed it just fine.

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Criterion Sale = Bye Bye Monies

Post reblogged from A Cat A Day Helps The Crazy Stay

lunserschutz:

Amazon is having a sale for ~50% off select Criterion Collection releases. I am a person with no self-restraint. Here is what I couldn’t stop myself from buying:
8 1/2 [Blu-ray]

The Last Temptation of Christ

Le Cercle Rouge [Blu-ray]

The Magician

Paths of Glory [Blu-ray]

Wings of Desire [Blu-ray]

I will buy nothing, but I heart Le Cercle Rouge pretty hard.

movies