Year in Review – Best Films of 2010
I was fully prepared to start out this post calling 2010 the worst year for film in my moviegoing lifetime. Part of that stems from the fact that many Hollywood movies were really bad in 2010. Terrible even. But there’s also this: I’ve had to sit through an Oscar season where good but not great films like The Social Network, True Grit, and The Fighter are being heralded as masterpieces, along with high art torture porn like Black Swan. By time I got around to even thinking about this post, I was exhausted and frustrated. Then I looked at my running list of 2010 movies screened. Going through all the great films I’ve seen this year, I realized that it wasn’t a bad year for everyone… just American narrative film (docs excluded). That sounds really pretentious, I know, but my...
Read MoreYear in Review – Best Films of 2009
I saw fewer new movies this year than in any other since I started putting together my top ten lists. That’s not bad news. I just cut out a lot of… well… crap. No, I didn’t see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and no, I didn’t see Sherlock Holmes. I love movies, but what’s the point in watching all the bad when there’s so much good out there. (That doesn’t explain how I ended up seeing Nine, though. Ugh.) The good, in fact, was so good that I could have chosen any one of the 11 pictures on my top 10 list to be the best movie of the year. That’s a testament to the quality of all the pictures listed below. All the films on my list, from Tarantino, Reitman, the Coen brothers, Bigelow and more, may very...
Read MoreDisney buys Marvel
In the age of the Internet, how this remained a secret, I will never know. But it was announced this morning that Marvel Entertainment would become part of the Walt Disney Co., giving Disney the outlet it needed to appeal to males ages 13-30. It’ll still be a few years before we hear the Touchstone and Disney fanfares in front of Marvel Studios releases, so I’ll drink the Kool-Aid for now. Both Marvel and Disney this morning made an effort to compare the deal with the one the Mouse House struck with Pixar Animation Studios, which only happened three years ago. Truth be told, we haven’t really seen what the Disney-Pixar deal means for Pixar motion pictures… or for Disney for that matter. Up was already well into production at the time of the merger. Bolt is only half-Pixar....
Read MoreIn defense of Katherine Heigl?
EW’s Ken Tucker took it upon himself to write a blog post on why Katherine Heigl doesn’t deserve the negativity that is coming at her from all sides after the release of her disastrous rom-com The Ugly Truth. As someone who has disliked Heigl for some time now, I thought I’d give Mr. Tucker a chance to convince me otherwise. To quote KT: As a result of this and other perceived sins, the L.A. Times has published a piece about contempt for Heigl, and a blogger I respect, the first-class TV writer Ken Levine (whose terrific blog you can also find my blogroll), has published a ferocious entry about Heigl as a diva. I respectfully disagree. Me, I’ll defend her. Her Letterman appearance, if you watch the whole thing, was funny and smart. You have to be on your...
Read MoreThe Week in Pirate News: Marshall for ‘Pirates 4’, plus ‘Captain Blood’
I really wasn’t hot on the news that Warner Bros. is updating the 1935 Captain Blood movie and putting the pirate, once played by Errol Flynn, in space. But it looks like that news lit a bit of a fire under the asses of the Disney execs. Variety is reporting that Chicago helmer Rob Marshall is in line to direct the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. From Variety: Disney is on the verge of putting Rob Marshall in as director of a fourth installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, a move that puts the film on track for a 2010 production start, with Johnny Depp back as Captain Jack Sparrow. There hasn’t been a director at the helm of the pirate ship since April, when Gore Verbinski stepped out to focus on a movie version of the vidgame...
Read MoreA Trip to the Moon
Forty years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the Moon. A lunar landing was the stuff of myth just 67 years prior, in 1907, when George Melies told the story of a manned trip to the Moon in Le Voyage dans la lune. Going from the Earth to the Moon, both for human exploration and film, serves as an inspiration for what can be achieved when great people with visionary minds push the limits. Let’s remember these epic feats today and hope that we can rediscover that same pioneering spirit that has defined other...
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