(lots of spoilers! assumes you’ve seen the episode!)

(previous: “The Road Less Traveled”)

Far as I can see, there’s just one thing to talk about in this episode: the Hybrid’s oracular prognostication:

The dying leader will know the truth of the opera house. The missing three will give you the five who have come from the home of the thirteenth. You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end. End of line.

continue reading "‘Battlestar Galactica’ blogging: “Faith”" »

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 11:57 AM | permalink | comments (5)
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Over at Film.com.

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 11:30 AM | permalink
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Speed Racer
The Wachowski Brothers, who gave us The Matrix, return with a cotton-candy cartoon about a kid who likes to go fast when he races in his car, and his name is Speed Racer. No, that’s not his nickname: it’s his name. I’m not making that up: it’s really his name. (my review)

What Happens in Vegas
Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher go to Vegas, get deliberately drunk, get accidentally married, and win $3 million. If you thought they were unpleasant before, just wait till they start fighting over the money. If only this really had stayed in Vegas. (not seen by me, thank god)

Redbelt
You know David Mamet, right? David Mamet? Yeah, Mamet. His movies all sound like this. Like this? Like this, like people stuttering, or like Mamet thinks he’s the anti-Pinter. The anti-Pinter? Yeah, the anti-Pinter, like no one can shut up for a second so they just say anything. This time it’s about mixed martial arts, but it’s the same old stuff. (my review)

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 11:23 AM | permalink | comments (0)
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Here we have that rarity... and thank god it’s a rarity: a movie that hits every single damn note in precisely the wrong way. Packed with phony emotion, schtick that rings false even as schtick, characters meant to be amusingly clueless who are instead unbearably horrid, and one of the most overbearing movie soundtracks I’ve ever been subjected to, this romantic comedy strains for screwball and misses entirely. It’s the unholy offspring of a cartoon and a sitcom, only less subtle. It’s chalk-on-a-board awful. It pains me deeply to say this, because this is another kind of rarity: a movie written and directed by a woman (Joan Carr-Wiggin) about a woman of a certain age movies typically ignore. But it still has to stand on its own as a decent flick. Which it doesn’t. Julia (Juliet Stevenson [Breaking and Entering], who is a goddess, except not here) tricks her sitcom-terrible husband (Daniel Stern: Very Bad Things) into a vacation to Malta because she arranged, a quarter of a century earlier, to meet her old lover, Alex (Tcheky Karyo: A Very Long Engagement), there. A new form of cinematic torture ensues as absolutely everyone turns out to be someone you’d strangle for free -- Julia’s whiny, bitchy, spoiled-rotten daughters would be first in line -- and that, annoyingly, a disgustingly prefeminist retro hangs over something that is clearly meant to expand the awareness of women as people and as sexual creatures. Julia’s complaint that “if people knew who their mothers really were, the world would end,” is particularly ridiculously melodramatic, but combined with another woman introducing herself as a “divorcée,” among other archaic inanities, suggests that someone has failed to recognize that the year is no longer 1954.

(Technorati tags: Previous Engagement, Juliet Stevenson)

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 11:17 AM | permalink | comments (0)
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Only by the end -- when it suddenly turns “intense” and “dramatic” -- does it become so bad it’s laughable, and by that point, I just wanted to cry, pounded into submission as I was by its bloated, mind-numbing tediousness. Imagine if the pod race in Star Wars Episode I was as bad as everyone said it was, and took itself twice as seriously, and went on for more than two hours. And then add a wiseass monkey and his sidekick, an obnoxious kid, on top. Stir, and scream. The Wachowski Brothers have taken the genius of their Matrix series, its ability to defy physics and make it work, and turned it into something it would be an insult to cartoons to call cartoonish. Heartless, soulless, lifeless, and empty, this is ostensibly the tale of racing-mad kid Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch [Into the Wild], an otherwise fine actor whom I hoped has learned a lesson about giving in to the Hollywood machine) and his, well... I don’t know, in fact. Speed is a complete nonentity -- it would be an improvement if we could call him bland. Apparently he just wants to race his cars but other people -- like the bad corporate types who run the racing world and fix all the races -- don’t want him to. The fact that this whole Jetsons-style world Speed lives in is mad for racing doesn’t seem to have suggested to anyone on the supposedly creative end of this flick that he might have needed a bit of something to distinguish him from the mob. Or, perhaps his allegedly astonishing racing skills are meant to be a thing: it’s hard to tell when you can’t even see what the CGI cars are doing on the CGI tracks. Please, please, please, someone tell the Wachowskis -- and all of Hollywood -- that CGI is a storytelling tool, not something tool filmmakers can substitute for story.

(Technorati tags: Speed Racer, Wachowski Brothers, Emile Hirsch)

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 7:53 PM | permalink | comments (9)
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Friday fun! Here’s a screen capture from one of the DVDs in my collection (and it’s definitely from a movie, not a TV show). Guess the movie for fun and, well, fun. No prizes, just bragging rights.

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 7:30 PM | permalink | comments (5)
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The Imperialism of Men

Ugly time. Beautiful design. I don’t mean that facetiously. British colonial style is gorgeous, all mosquito netting and lazy ceiling fans and rattan lawn chairs and linen and khaki fashions, even it is a cluelessly lovely mask of hiding -- at least to invading eyes -- the fetid horrors of raping, pillaging imperialism, while also, at the same time, suggesting a certain appealing exoticness. It’s all adventure and romance, and if things go bad, well, you can always go home, and never mind the locals, who’re just primitives anyway, however charming.

continue reading "Tribeca ’08: Before the Rains (review)" »

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 5:48 PM | permalink | comments (2)
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QUICK RULES: You’re eligible to win if 1) You have not won anything from me in 2008; 2) You have a U.S. mailing address; 3) You enter once and only once.

The classic Japanese anime series Speed Racer gets a reboot in the new Nicktoons show Speed Racer: The Next Generation, and I’ve got three copies of the pilot movie, “The Beginning,” to give away, courtesy of Lionsgate.

Enter by using this link to send your name and U.S. mailing address.

(Visit the DVD’s official site.) (Buy the DVD at Amazon.) (Read my review.)

ENTER BY: 11:59pm Eastern time, Monday, April May 19.

Winners are chosen at random from all eligible entries received.

NOTE: Your email address and mailing address will be used ONLY for contest purposes. You will not be added to any mailing lists; you will not be spammed as a result of entering. All contest entries are discarded at the end of the contest period.

(Technorati tags: Speed Racer, DVD, giveaway)

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 12:34 PM | permalink
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Stop, Speed Racer, Stop

Hey, the oil is running out and gas is at four bucks a gallon, so of course we’re bombarded with naughty automotive porn like NASCAR, all those hussy drivers shamefully burning up the precious fluid and wantonly spewing hydrocarbons into the atmosphere -- fuck conservation and fuck the environment, too, just ram it all with a big-ass phallic car. And now it’s the kiddies’ turn to get those last licks in on Mother Earth before the pumps run dry: Speed Racer is back! He’s in the movies, and he’s on TV again, too, in a new Nicktoons series called -- are you ready for this? -- Speed Racer: The Next Generation. Quelle originale.

continue reading "Speed Racer: The Next Generation: The Beginning (review)" »

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 12:19 PM | permalink | comments (4)
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Makes me think of that “school for the gifted” Far Side cartoon:

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom

(Technorati tags: Prospective Student, Eric Luhta)

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 4:04 PM | permalink | comments (0)
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Here. Though I bet only at my hair-pulling-out post-episode mindfrak are people talking about quantum entanglement...

(Technorati tags: Battlestar Galactica)

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 3:53 PM | permalink | comments (5)
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I’m trying not to think about Made of Honor now that I’ve seen it and reviewed it and can put it behind me, but it’s kinda like when you’re kid and you have a loose tooth and your mother tells you to leave it alone but you just can’t help it, you simply have to tongue it and fiddle with it and not leave it alone at all until it falls out before it was really ready to and then you bleed all over your favorite Luke Skywalker T-shirt.

Cuz I’m wondering: just what the hell does that title mean? (And I’m not the only one wondering this.) I mean, before I saw the movie, I figured, Well, obviously, Patrick Dempsey’s character is going to be so full of honorable intentions and so dedicated to respecting the wishes of his best friend in the whole world that even after he realizes he’s in love with her on the eve of her wedding, he will do the noble and, yes, honorable thing and be an official witness to her nuptials like a grownup, all the while keeping his damn fool mouth shut about what he wants and going out of his way not to ruin her wedding day at all.

Riiiight. I had apparently forgotten for one glorious moment that Hollywood does not make movies for or about grownups. Of course there’s very little honorable about Dempsey’s character at all. So where did that title come from?

continue reading "daily list: 4 things that ‘Made of Honor’ might possibly mean" »

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 1:39 PM | permalink | comments (1)
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Holy Wars

Maybe it’s a coincidence. Probably not. Colorado Springs is home to the U.S. Air Force Academy, which has been, for years now, in the throes of its very own evangelical religious revival -- and the academy has been the defendant in at least one lawsuit aimed at throwing off what appears to be an official stamp of approval on the proselytizing and accompanying denigration of anyone who doesn’t embrace Jesus Christ as his or her personal savior. And the city is also the home of Pastor Ted Haggert’s New Life megachurch, which draws upward of 10,000 rapturous worshippers every Sunday and could fairly be called the epicenter of the evangelical groundswell gripping the United States, which Haggert explicitly states here is a movement designed to counter liberalism.

continue reading "Constantine’s Sword (review)" »

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 11:42 AM | permalink | comments (0)
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It’s my site and I can post what I like:

For those not in the know: the Doctor Who star will be playing the mad Dane in a Royal Shakespeare Company production in Stratford-on-Avon starting in July (and will also appear in Love’s Labour’s Lost at the same time; the two shows will be in rep).

I have tickets for both shows in early autumn, and yes, I will report in full ASAP afterward.

Thanks to Dave in comments for pointing out this first publicity photo.

(Technorati tags: David Tennant, Hamlet)

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 11:32 PM | permalink | comments (16)
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My screening schedule is getting back to normal, meaning four, five, six, or more movies per week. And I still have so much writing to do about Comic Con and Tribeca... But that won’t stop me from trying to cram in as many screenings as I can. Like these:

So there’s this movie from Kazakhstan about Genghis Khan, and it was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Oscars. (It didn’t win.) And now Mongol is opening in limited release here on June 6. Apparently this guy ruled half the world or something in the Dark Ages. Which must have taken some balls. Hopefully his movie does him justice.

The documentary Constantine’s Sword [now playing in limited release] delves deep into history, too, to explore the violent legacy of the Catholic Church. It’s from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Oren Jacoby, so I’m hoping for good things from it.

continue reading "my week at the movies: ‘Mongol,’ ‘Constantine’s Sword,’ ‘The Fall,’ ‘A Previous Engagement,’ ‘The Babysitters,’ ‘Noise,’ ‘Quid Pro Quo,’ ‘The Wackness’" »

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 12:24 PM | permalink | comments (6)
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It’s not fancy or snazzy, just a great example of straight-up info that Web video makes wonderfully accessible: Harvard Law scholar Elizabeth Warren strips the bullshit away from the truth around the financial pressures on ordinary Americans in the early 21st century, and how much they’ve changed in only a generation. It’s long but worth it:

(Technorati tags: Coming Collapse of the Middle Class)

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 2:42 PM | permalink | comments (1)
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Good news, everyone! No need to feel like a guilty filthy dirty gossip slut anymore when you watch that hideous parade of celebrity meltdowns, lawsuits, mugshots, and shameless publicity whoring known as TMZ! For the FCC -- that bastion of wisdom and, um, other wiseness -- has ruled that TMZ is a “bona fide news program.”

It’s totally true! The FCC kinda had to rule this way, because 20 years ago, it ruled that Entertainment Tonight is also a “bona fide news program.” Also totally true! Which meant that the FCC kinda also had to rule that The 700 Club is a bona fide news program, too. Jesus wept! Not!

We are so bona fide in the United States of America that we are bursting with bona fide-ness. Look:

continue reading "daily list: 13 things as bona fide as ‘TMZ’" »

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 12:27 PM | permalink | comments (5)
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(tons of spoilers! don’t read till you’ve seen the episode! and no comments from party poopers -- this is a love fest only / previous: Episode 1: “Partners in Crime”)

Another week, another brutal episode of Doctor Who. Thanks, guys.

continue reading "‘Doctor Who’ blogging: “The Fires of Pompeii”" »

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 7:14 AM | permalink | comments (19)
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A Darker Sense

Ang Lee’s 1995 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility -- for which star Emma Thompson won an Oscar for her screenplay -- is so wonderful that I dreaded to see this new BBC miniseries version, because how could anyone top Lee? (And especially after others of PBS Masterpiece’s Austen marathon were less than satisfying.) But this much-longer version -- 40 minutes longer than Lee’s -- is just as delicious, giving more play to some of the darker aspects of Austen’s novel and giving the characters more room to grown into themselves, without negating Lee’s film at all. You can love the Lee and love this one, from director John Alexander and legendary screenwriter Andrew Davies (who also adapted the classic 1995 miniseries of Pride and Prejudice), at the same time.

continue reading "Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility (review)" »

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 3:56 AM | permalink | comments (4)
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The toast of festivals around the world and Lebanon’s selection in the Best Foreign Language Film category at this year’s Oscars, this sharp-eyed yet cosy film about five women navigating the dangerous shoals of change in a culture where tradition and modernity clash is as smart and heartfelt as it is observant about the universalities of the lives of women. Writer-director Nadine Labaki, making her feature debut, leads a luminous cast as a gaggle of female friends -- young and old, Muslim and Christian -- who work and hang out at a Beirut beauty salon, where undercurrents of unspoken expectations about what women should look like, how they should behave, and whom they should love -- or not -- bubble through everything they say and do. (The title refers to the gooey sugary goop used for hot-wax-style removal of unwanted, “unfeminine” hair.) Men and sex, and the disparaging of both, are frequent topics of conversation, but sweet, romantic guys -- a traffic cop who’s secretly in love with Labaki’s salon owner, for instance -- outnumber the bastards by a long shot. Why, it’s enough to give chick flicks a good name.

(Technorati tags: Caramel, Nadine Labaki)

posted by MaryAnn Johanson at 3:41 AM | permalink | comments (0)
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