Film and television
Topic archive / 1,464 posts
See also my film diary
So is this Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist movie purposely trying to mislead fans of The Thin Man?
Impatiently counting down the days until Beverly Hills Chihuahua opens.
Consumption: July 2008
On the Web
- Beard Revue: Rob Weychert: My beard has been rated 9.5/10.
In the Stereo
- DAT Politics: Are Oui Phony??
- Richard Hell & The Voidoids: Blank Generation
- Mission of Burma: OnOffOn
- Devo: Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
- The Hold Steady: Stay Positive
- Mercyful Fate: Melissa / The Beginning
- ZZ Top: Tres Hombres
On the Silver Screen
Having the same trouble with The Big Chill as I do with Woody Allen movies: It's really well done but it's more grown up than I want to be.
Revisited The Lost Boys, glad to have my memory refreshed on that beefcake singer/sax-player's moves: youtube.com/watch?v=PIU52Yeogdk
"Cast of 300 Advises Obama on Foreign Policy" is a misleading headline, to say the least. nytimes.com/2008/07/18/us/pol…
Confirmed over lunch that Family Guy is still not funny.
Consumption: June 2008
On the Web
- Camp Naked Terror 7: Photos from this year’s Summer Camp Slasher Birthday Bash.
- Touring to Alaska on Vegetable Oil!: My friend Matt and his tour mate Kyle demonstrate how they the prep the environmentally-friendly fuel that’s taking them across North America.
In the Stereo
- Bad Brains: Rock for Light
- Mose Giganticus: Commander!
- Dr. Dre: The Chronic
- Danzig: Danzig II: Lucifuge
- South: South
- Mission of Burma: Vs.
- Kanye West: The College Dropout
- The… See more →
The Riverview's numbered theaters don't say what's playing inside, so I just snuck into The Incredible Hulk. You win, Riverview.
I expected The Happening to be terrible. I did not expect to be absolutely sick with embarassment on behalf of all involved.
RIP Stan Winston. You will be missed.
Short Round : Indiana Jones :: Ewoks : Star Wars
Watching It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World for the first time in awhile, thinking it really ought to be shown in all economics classes.
Slums of Beverly Hills does not a good first Hulu experience make.
Consumption: May 2008
It really should be called "Planet of Charlton Heston Being Repeatedly Subdued by Apes for Two Hours."
Ode to a Town Best Forgotten
Montana and Wyoming are not unattractive states, but as the mountains flattened out to hills flattened out to farms, the scenery was getting tiresome. It rained all day, at times hard enough to completely obscure the tiresome scenery, not to mention the unlit motorists with whom we were sharing I-90. So pretty much everything about the drive made us look forward to ending it. We did so upon arriving at Gillette, Wyoming, where we chose… See more →
The City
The ninety-sixth episode of Full House, which marked the series’ halfway point, was called “Matchmaker Michelle.” In it, the youngest Tanner child decides to fix up her father with her preschool teacher, who is a generation older than him. What I find really interesting about this episode is that the catalyst for Michelle’s desire to find a new mother is her friend Teddy, who asks why she is always the daddy when they play house.… See more →
Xanadu
Among thousands of acres of land, a private airstrip, several species of exotic wildlife, and many millions of dollars worth of imported works of art, today belonged to Hearst Castle. I’m speaking, of course, of the incredible and excessive home that newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst built for himself over the course of more than twenty years in the early-mid twentieth century. As far as I know, it is the closest thing this country has… See more →
The Left Coast
Today’s drive was by far the prettiest of the trip so far. If I could, I’d take it out to dinner and a movie. I’d bring it home to meet my parents. I’d buy it a blood diamond and audition wedding DJs with it. We’d honeymoon at Disneyland, put a down payment on a mortgage in a Toll Brothers gated community, and have cute disagreements over paint chips. We’d have three kids named after our… See more →
Wayne Across America
Despite the Philadelphia International Airport’s best efforts to the contrary, my traveling companion and longtime friend Wayne Kobylinski arrived to meet me in Albuquerque today, only about three and a half hours late. This meant our drive up to Flagstaff was much darker than it was originally intended to be, which gave us a chance to learn not only that one of my headlights is out, but that Arizona is less beautiful when you can’t… See more →
Okay, yeah, Iron Man was really, really fun.
Heading out for some breakfast with @CreativeJuice and then to a movie about an iron man. I think it's a Black Sabbath documentary.
How Do You Spell Relief? A-U-S-T-I-N
When you have as many reasons to look forward to arriving in Austin as I did today, you keep a constant eye on the speedometer, and that eye is ceaselessly disappointed. It was by no means a slow drive, but reduced-speed bridges across Louisiana’s wetlands and traffic congestion around metropolitan areas like Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, and Houston made for some uneven speeds, despite the fact that I spent nearly 500 miles on one road… See more →
Consumption: April 2008
On the Web
- We Bleed Design: The style is a bit trendy for my taste, but the site employs some very novel and intriguing transitions using a clever combination of JavaScript, CSS, and transparent PNGs.
In the Stereo
- Pharaoh: Be Gone
- Rupa & The April Fishes: Extraordinary Rendition
On the Silver Screen
Lake of Fire is an intelligent examination of the abortion debate. Soldiers in the Army of God is redneck crackpots repeating themselves.
May skip OIAF (ottawa.awn.com) in favor of ATP New York (atpfestival.com/events/atpnew…). Ability to get tickets for the latter will decide.
Just finished Season 3 of The Wire. As with the end of each season, I dread the quickening approach of the final episode.
Bailing on the double feature because I couldn't even get through half of the interminable opener (George Romero's Knight Riders). Boo.
Ten minutes to showtime at a sparsely-attended double feature.
Philly peeps: Who wants to join me for Exhumed Films Bizarre Biker Battles tonight? ihousephilly.org/exhumedbikerbatt…
Finished this year's Philadelphia Film Festival with a thud. Average score for the ten films I saw: 2.7/5. Not so good.
Convinced the film I just saw (Korean "thriller" Black House) was written by an eight-year-old with a copy of Insurance Fraud for Dummies.
Five minutes to showtime in a theater full of hardcore dorks, hearing a little too much of myself in the conversations surrounding me.
Watching a PBS educational series about the Medici family on Joost. It's interesting, but the narrator and dramatizations are annoying.
Even if the film I just saw wasn't awful, $9 is too much to pay for a screening that fails to advertise that it's a projected Criterion DVD.
In a Dream, last night's initial foray into the film fest, was outstanding and deeply moving. Trying to keep pace with three films today.
Very unhappy with Stringer Bell.
Philly peeps: Here's my schedule for the Philadelphia Film Festival. D me if you want to join me for some screenings: urltea.com/31yf
Son of Rambow is probably better than Be Kind Rewind, but there are only so many movies about remaking movies I can see in a short time.
The IRS guy on the phone just used The Karate Kid to explain the application and removal (wax on, wax off) of penalties and interest.
Making my schedule for the Philadelphia Film Festival.
Run Fat Boy Run: Can my admiration of Simon Pegg and Hank Azaria eclipse my disdain for Michael Ian Black and David Schwimmer? We'll see.
Watching Bring It On. For the second time. Yeah, that's right.
Beginning Season 2 of The Wire, feeling fortunate not to have had to watch it according to the dictates of a broadcast schedule.
Like so many good documentaries, The Weather Underground owes everything to the hindsight of its characters who lived to tell the tale.
The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie version of @simplebits's and @beep's M&SS: The Markup & Style & Behavior Society.
Looking at some obscenely gorgeous vintage Cuban film posters.
That lo-fi, grainy, DV verité approach turns me off every time. The original DIYers created greater art with a much higher barrier to entry.
Very, very wary of film festival entries for which a trailer doesn't exist or is otherwise unavailable.