QOTD: What are the best movie soundtracks ever?
I swear I can hear the wind moving through tall prairie grass in John Barry’s music for Dances with Wolves…
Dances with Wolves
female gazing at: Kevin Costner
Yesterday’s female-gazing at Gary Cooper made me think: Wow, Gary Cooper really kinda looks like Kevin Costner, doesn’t he? Or, the other way around, actually, since Costner came second. The thing about Costner is, he really is the embodiment of the evil of Hollywood. Because he has appeared in some seriously shitty movies — hello, … more…
December 18: DVD alternatives to this weekend’s multiplex offerings
We know how it is: You’d like to go to the movies this weekend, but you really hate those 3D glasses– oh, who are we kidding: you’re gonna see Avatar this weekend if you have to knock over someone’s granny for a ticket. But just in case you’re feeling the slightest bit guilty about having … more…
Avatar (review)
The closest I will ever come to visiting another planet, and what an exhilarating trip.
Australia (review)
If director Baz Luhrmann had decided to shoot in black-and-white, you’d hardly be able to tell this wasn’t made around 1939 or so. Sure, all those gorgeous helicopter shots of the wild and dangerous and beautiful Outback would be a dead giveaway, so they’d have to go. But otherwise…
Mission: Impossible 2 and Shanghai Noon (review)
Can it be a coincidence that both of the big new flicks this Memorial Day weekend — the kickoff for Hollywood’s first summer movie season of the twenty-first century — are basically Hong Kong action movies? The people who think about these kinds of things — current-events journalists, mainly — have already predicted that if the 1900s were the American century, the 2000s may well be the Asian century… but they were speaking economically and politically. I guess it’s probably inevitable that Asia would start to hold some cultural sway in the West, too.
Ravenous (review)
Like The 13th Warrior, Ravenous is one of those bizarre little genre movies that appeals only to a small minority of twisted freaks — like me. What can I say? I’m weird.
Dances with Wolves (review)
Dances with Wolves is one of the most visually and emotionally stunning movies I’ve ever seen, a glimmer of another world where less might have been lost if more people had been as open and friendly as John Dunbar. From John Barry’s stirring score to director/producer Costner’s daring presentation of a huge chunk of the movie in the beautiful Sioux Lakota language (with subtitles), this is a majestic requiem for a world that is gone.
Cimarron (review)
Wichita just ain’t far enough west for Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix). He longs for the untamed frontier. So when the 1889 Oklahoma land rush puts 2 million acres up for grabs, he packs up the wife, Sabra (Irene Dunne), and the kid, Cimarron (which means ‘wild,’ we’re told), and heads off to help build a new world, or, more specifically, the boomtown of Osage, Oklahoma.
