Noah review: The Bible Episode IV: A New Hope
A Biblical action disaster fantasy epic that is completely bonkers, endlessly entertaining, and actually religious in that inspiring-and-instructional way.
Beautiful Mind
A New York Winter’s Tale (aka Winter’s Tale) review: cold in the city
A leaden, charmless movie that is unable to commit to its own fantasy. So implausible that even Colin Farrell’s own Irish accent sounds fake.
fun stuff from FlickFilosopher stats week of Aug 17-23 2013
Actual unretouched phrases that people plugged into search engines this week that led them to this site (with some commentary from me)…
QOTD: Does Hollywood have a math problem?
If so, is it a separate problem from Hollywood’s general disdain for anything intellectual?
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (review)
Oh, glorious steampunk! Oh, glorious Victoriana! Oh, for a time when men were men (and not little boys) and industry meant hard work (and not corporate malfeasance) and optimism (and not despair) ruled the day. When the future was so bright, you hadda wear shades.
question of the day: Ron Howard’s Stephen King’s ‘The Dark Tower’? No, seriously: What are these people thinking?
Have you read any of Stephen King’s series The Dark Tower? No? Imagine if Clint Eastwood and James Joyce collaborated on a trippy fantasy about the mystical quest of a gunslinger. It’s weird and fascinating and has inspired a cultish following (and I really need to read more of the series [Amazon U.S.] [Amazon Canada] … more…
question of the day: Which Oscar-winning Best Picture is least deserving of that award?
Recently the members of the Online Film Critics Society were polled to see which Oscar-winning Best Picture we thought was least deserving of that honor. The “winner”? Crash, which won Best Picture for 2005. Other films that garnered more than one vote (links go to my reviews): 2001: A Beautiful Mind 2000: Gladiator 1997: Titanic … more…
first look at Matt Smith’s ‘Doctor Who’ costume
Production started today on the 2010 series of Doctor Who, the one with Steven Moffat in charge and Matt Smith starring as the Doctor, and the BBC released the first image of Smith in costume: Looks like David Tennant’s 10th Doctor geek chic has been exchanged for… what? Nerd chic? At least the boots keep … more…
Frost/Nixon (review)
This was the sort of hopeless dread the news that Ron Howard was directing this left me with. I felt like Robert Stack in *Airplane!*: ‘It’s a goddamn waste of time — there’s no way he can land this plane!’
A Beautiful Mind (again) (review)
So whaddaya know? Ron Howard and Russell Crowe rode the short bus all to the way to the Oscars by playing the ‘we made a sensitive film about the mentally ill’ card. Which is complete crap, of course. *A Beautiful Mind* is pure made-for-Hollywood pap about the mentally ill in which schizophrenia is treated by Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman the way doctors used to treat it in the bad old days before we (some of us, anyway) were enlightened about diseases of the brain: Hey, snap out of it! Get over it! It’s all in your head!
