quick list: five really relevant filmmakers working now
With a look at balancing brains and appeal and impact, here are the filmmakers who are driving what we watch, how we talk about it, and what’s to come.
JJ Abrams
what would Mark Twain do?; Michael Moore joins the Oscar board; Sam Worthington, comic book king?: leftover links
Every week my browser gets cluttered up with tabs for stuff that I stumble across and figure I might be able to use as a Question of the Day or a WTF Thought for the Day or grist for some other post. And inevitably, I end the week with most of that material unused. But … more…
Polanski speaks (but doesn’t apologize); sexist iPad ads?; Mr. Rogers is evil, says Fox News; more: leftover links
Every week my browser gets cluttered up with tabs for stuff that I stumble across and figure I might be able to use as a Question of the Day or a WTF Thought for the Day or grist for some other post. And inevitably, I end the week with most of that material unused. But … more…
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…
J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg: together again for the first time
When I was a kid and fell in love with movies and decided I wanted to make movies (an ambition that later morphed into writing about movies, so no, I’m not quite the cliché of the critic who’s a thwarted filmmaker), I decided that I wanted to be the next Steven Spielberg. His movies of … more…
North American box office: ‘Up’ down, gets a headache from ‘The Hangover’
1. The Hangover: $44.99 million (NEW) 2. Up: $44.14 million (2nd week; drops 35%) 3. Land of the Lost: $18.8 million (NEW) 4. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian: $14.6 million (3rd week; drops 40%) 5. Star Trek: $8.3 million actual numbers, not estimates Good thing I wait for the actual numbers, because … more…
everybody loves Spock
It’s easy to see why: But still… It’s one thing when everyone’s fallen so madly in love with Zachary Quinto’s Spock in the new Star Trek flick that Entertainment Weekly writers are blogging about their sexual fantasies about the actor and/or the character. (I will never, ever feel guilty again for swooning over an actor … more…
May 8: DVD alternatives to this weekend’s multiplex offerings
We all know how it is. You’d like to get out to see a new movie this weekend, but you dread heading to the multplex in case it’s clogged with people in Spock ears and Klingon foreheads, and anyway, Mom won’t want to beam up to the Enterprise for Mother’s Day. But you can have … more…
Star Trek (review)
Oh, J.J. Abrams! Dude! You sneak, you! Can I have your geek babies?
question of the day: What do filmmakers owe the fans of favorite universes?
J.J. Abrams is telling diehard Trekkies to avoid his new Star Trek reboot: “Don’t see the movie,” he has said. “You’ll just get angry. It is not Shatner playing Kirk, so I do apologize.” (I think he’s wrong about how serious fans will react, but I’ll get to that in my review, which I’ll post … more…
