Movie Madness: Title Drops

Ah, yes, that hit-you-over-the-head meta game from moviemakers who think they're more clever than they actually are!  Title-dropping happens far too often, and it always jolts me right out of the movie-watching experience.

Two Law Professors Watch "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"

Professors of law are among the hordes who have stampeded to the movie theaters this holiday season for their Star Wars fix. You may find their ruminations of some interest: law prof the first and law prof the second.

As for me ... No, I haven't gone yet. No, and however heretical this may sound to some people, I'm not all rarin' to go either. It feels like an obligation. I'm thinking that I'd rather go see La La Land, actually, because the combination of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone was so charming in 2011's Crazy, Stupid, Love.

But! As long as we're on the topic of Star Wars (I've always been more of a Trekkie myself), take a look at this fan's detailed obituary of Leia Organa. Not Carrie Fisher, mind you. Leia Organa.

Movie Madness: DC Fans vs. Rotten Tomatoes

HAHAHAHA - Apparently this is for real!  DC fans have started a petition to shut down movie review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes because the collected reviews for Suicide Squad stink.  Isn't that like shooting the messenger?

Personally, I've about had enough of DC movies. The idiotic and grimly pretentious Batman-Superman smackdown was stupid and awful, and I said so at the time.  After that mess (how did you screw up both Superman and Batman so badly at the same time? AND Lex?) I lost all hope that Suicide Squad could be any good.  After this latest kerfuffle I think I'll just save my money ... and maybe go see the new Jason Bourne flick instead. (Here's just one review out of hundreds.  The phrase that caught my eye: "Suicide Squad amounts to an all-out attack on the whole idea of entertainment.")  The DC movie universe is a joyless, grayscale cesspool where fun goes to die be brutally murdered.  In the rain.

Besides, this little temper tantrum by fans about reviews is pretty indicative about how DC as a wider community can't get its priorities straight.  Usually I'm slamming the studio and execs, but today my target is DC fans, and my accusation is the same.  Your priorities are all screwed up, dude.  How about you take your rage out on DC for making a crappy movie that reviewers hate instead of on reviewers for hating a crappy movie?  DC bigwigs:  How about you quit making crappy movies? 

Here's something relevant that made me laugh out loud:

Anyway, the only thing the DC moviemakers are doing with any effectiveness is driving me into the arms of Marvel.  Ah, Marvel, fun, colorful, freewheeling, quippy, whose problems and peccadillos now seem like mere nitpicking trivia after the sort of total self-immolation DC keeps performing.  How's this for a conspiracy theory: DC's movie division is run by a cabal of Marvel undercover agents who have managed to infiltrate DC at the highest levels and who have been tasked with destroying DC root and branch.  Seriously, DC couldn't be doing a better job of alienating its fans and destroying itself if it were trying.

Film Culture Commentary: Spectacle, Storytelling, and "Interstellar"

I've been thinking about movies lately (heck, anything is better than thinking about the current political campaign season!), and I owe you a review of Deadpool, so here's something for the interim. Check out this rather nice analysis of Interstellar (a movie I had reviewed here):

Oscars 2016 aka What the Heck Did I Just Watch?

I didn't really watch the Oscars last night as much as I had it on while I was doing other things, but with increasing frequency I had to push the mute button on the remote control. The Oscars are always a big self-congratulatory party for Hollywood, and I've never taken it seriously as anything other than a fun fashion show where people get to show off plumage both beautiful and bizarre, but this year's Oscars were ... I don't even know what to say.

A few highlights and low points of this hot mess:

• Host Chris Rock's intro monologue was a little ... er ... rocky (I wished he would stop laughing at his own jokes), but when he landed his punches, he landed them hard, and he targeted just about everybody.  On this year's Oscars race relations controversy he didn't spare anybody from Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith ("It's not fair that Will wasn't nominated for Concussion.  But it it also wasn't fair that he got $20 million for Wild Wild West" and "Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna's panties. I wasn't invited!") to the Hollywood elite's "sorority racism" ("We like you, Rhonda, but you're just not a Kappa," to which he added flat out the term "white liberals!"  Wow).
• Louis CK was funnier and more real in his two minutes than the entire battalion of other Oscar presenters.
• On a related note, C-3PO, R2-D2, and BB-8 were warmer and more spontaneous than nearly all their stilted, unfunny human counterparts.  Shoot, the Minions, Buzz Lightyear, and Woody were better. How about next year we dispense with the humans entirely?
• Rock getting Girl Scouts to sell cookies to the audience was actually pretty funny.  
• The evening's attempt to address issues (both internal and external) turned out to be an exercise in surreal, heavy-handed virtual-signalling and tonally weird calls for action.  What was freaking Joe Biden doing on the Oscar stage?  Why were actors giving Crazy Uncle Joe a standing ovation?  Was that really the president of the Academy out there trying to tell people the Oscars were going to fix themselves?  Did the Oscars actually do a musical number about sexual assault? WHAT?
• DiCaprio finally won his Oscar, so maybe people can now quit yapping about his quest for that statuette.  Then he proceeded to turn his acceptance speech into a bully pulpit about global warming, and I pushed the mute button.  The most entertaining thing about The Revenant at the Oscars was the guy in the bear suit applauding in the seats.
• Mad Max did very well in the technical categories!  Still, Ex Machina won the special effects Oscars. SERIOUSLY?
• Whoever wrote the "jokes" and "banter" for the Oscar presenters should be booted. The stuff was not only unfunny or boring, but cringe-inducing for most of the show. Ugh!  How about we stop trying to script banter from here on out?  Watching Russell Crowe attempt to engage in unfunny repartee with Ryan Gosling was agonizing.  Just get out there, announce the nominees, anoint the winner, and go away!
• The In Memoriam segment, surprisingly, wasn't terrible.  Iconic video clips from departed icons Christopher Lee, Alan Rickman, and David Bowie were very good, and the Oscars achieved its only moment of emotional resonance for me by ending the montage with Leonard Nimoy as Spock in Star Trek 2 with that line.
• Sam Smith somehow won the musical Oscar with his miserable tune from Spectre. Horrible.

Enough of this mess. Let's get to what really matters: the outfits on the red carpet. The fashion was as much a hot mess as the rest of the show.  Oh, I miss Joan Rivers' acid-tongued commentary.  A few people managed not to look awful, but ...

• Kate Winslet wore a shiny black trash bag.
• Olivia Munn in her orange dress looked like a traffic cone.
• Charlize Theron and Olivia Wilde clearly thought they were competing for the Oscar for Most Exposed Sternum.
• Cate Blanchett kept her dress in the pantry too long, and it had started to sprout by the time the Oscars rolled around.
• Rooney Mara dug out a dress from a previous century but failed to notice that moths had eaten a huge chunk out of the middle.
• Refreshingly, Chris Rock pointed out that people always ask the girls what they're wearing because all the guys are wearing the same thing (black tuxedos): "If George Clooney wore a lime green suit with a swan coming out of his [butt]," Rock proclaimed, "you can bet we'd all be asking what he was wearing - !"

Quote of the Day: Oscar Nominees

Enjoy this bit of brutal honesty as one anonymous Oscar voter takes on this year's various nominees.  Here's a taste of it:

"I am voting for Mad Max solely because I want to stop The Revenant."

I didn't even bother going to spend my hard-earned pennies on Leonardo "always the Oscar bridesmaid, never the bride" DiCaprio and The Revenant, but I did very much like Mad Max: Fury Road (and The Martian).

Speaking of brutal honesty ... 

Awesome: Fan-Made Trailers for Original Star Wars Trilogy

They're delightful.  Here's the first one for your delectation:

Belated Christmas Gift: the Honest Trailer for "Die Hard" (1988)

FINALLY!  Just today Screen Junkies has released an Honest Trailer for the best Christmas movie of them all!  La Parisienne, this one's for you, babe.

Star Wars: the Premake

Check out this incredible work by a fan:

   Star Wars: The Premake from John D'Amico on Vimeo.

Monday Therapy: the Star Wars That I Used to Know

What with all the recent hype about The Force Awakens, I thought it'd be fun to look back a little, both at Gotye (remember this once-ubiquitous music video?) and the Star Wars prequels:

A Contrarian's View on Star Wars Hype

I guess it does take some nerve to come right out and say this smack in the middle of the hype over the latest Star Wars trailer:

"... allow me the heresy of suggesting that all this craziness is over a movie. A movie that no one has yet seen. A movie based on another movie that was a great deal of fun 38 years ago and certainly stands as a major event in modern pop history, with or without the sequels, but that was — you may now ready the rocks for stoning — hardly a great work of cinema."

The writer then posits "the Footie Pajama Theory," which even though it does make sense, can't help but seem a little ... what's the word? ah, yes, condescending ... because of its very name.

Well, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion about Star Wars and everything else.  I'm going to allow myself the hope that the new movie is better than the abominable prequels and their most egregious error.  I'm hoping that when the new movie premieres we can all have a little fun along the way.  I'll leave you with this:

Friday Fun Video: "What if Werner Herzog Directed Ant-Man?"

I loved Marvel's Ant-Man and will write a review soon (update: here it is).  It's been a frantic summer of work (and, alas, far less blogging than I would like), but let's take a break right now, dear readers, and enjoy this:

The Movies of 2014

How many have you seen?  I reviewed a selection, and you can find all my raves and rants under the movie reviews tag!

Film Culture Commentary: Texts and Films

A Brief Look at Texting and the Internet in Film from Tony Zhou on Vimeo.

What's In A Name? A Cheesy Summer Action Hero By Any Other Name Would Kick As Much Butt

Out of a very crowded field of silly movie character names I pick "Stacker Pentecost" as the best/worst/most memorable. Besides, Idris Elba is at least five kinds of awesome.

Still, if we want to talk about ridiculous movie character names, we should not forget the glorious, laugh-out-loud silliness of almost-to-clearly NSFW monikers from the world of James Bond.  (Out of that bunch I think I have to pick Honor Blackman's character name from 1964's Goldfinger.  Any name that can make even Bond himself say disbelievingly, "I must be dreaming" deserves a mention)

Naughty Or Nice? "Die Hard" As Christmas Movie

Ace thinks the iconic Bruce Willis action flick is indeed a Christmas movie, and I'm inclined to agree!  While we're at it, Iron Man 3 is set at Christmas too.  Would I rather watch these movies than yet another round of It's A Wonderful Life?  YOU BETCHA.

Film Culture Commentary: Asian Leading Men

Looky here, Buzzfeed has finally discovered that there are some cuties and hotties in Asian cinema.  Welcome to the party.  At least Takeshi Kaneshiro is in the top 10.  But no Shin Koyamada? No Ian Anthony Dale or Russell Wong?  At least the delightful Ken Watanabe on the list, but he's only #24?  Shame, Buzzfeed!  Dishonor on you!  Dishonor on your cow!

Why That Movie Poster Looks So Darn Familiar

Same old, same old.

Friday Fun Video: Movies in Movies

So meta:

Movie Madness: Reductionist Movie Plots

In a world in which Taken and Mrs. Doubtfire are equals.