classic ‘Doctor Who’ blogging: “Robot”
Made of spoilers. Don’t read until you’ve seen the episode unless you don’t care to have it spoiled for you.
King Kong
North American box office: ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ back at No. 1
And new releases fail to engage: 1. How to Train Your Dragon: $15.4 million 2. The Back-up Plan: $12.2 million (NEW) 3. Date Night: $10.5 million (3rd week; drops 37%) 4. The Losers: $9.4 million (NEW) 5. Kick-Ass: $9.3 million (2nd week; drops 53%) actual numbers, not estimates Ugh. It was ugly out there this … more…
Tribeca ’07: Black Sheep movie review
Becomes, as all the best sendups do, a thorough tweaking of the genre as well as an excellent example of the same.
Sand Pirates of the Sahara (review)
Why Ferenc Arpad’s 1951 B movie is on my A list of Best. Movies. Ever.
King Kong (2005) (review)
Words like ‘meditation’ and ‘contemplation’ may seem inappropriate, at first glance, because the standard hack-movie-critic phrases like ‘roller-coaster ride’ followed by multiple exclamation points don’t even come close to doing justice to the heart-revving adrenaline rush Jackson has crafted. Two words: dino stampede. I probably should have put my head down between my knees and taken a series of long, deep breaths to recover from that early Skull Island setpiece, except it would have meant taking my eyes from the screen, and there was no way in hell I could have done that.
King Kong (1933/1976) (review)
What with the new DVD release of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1933 *King Kong* and the anticipation over Peter Jackson’s about-to-be-released homage, the eternal question is renewed: Just why the hell did the natives on Skull Island build an anti-Kong wall… and then put a Kong-size door in it?
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (review)
It’s probably very much funnier if you’re already a bit of an Anglophile, if you drink a lot of tea and long to attend a weekend house party in the 1930s at a manor in Sussex where you take the train down from London and someone meets you at a station that’s called a ‘halt’ and you don’t think murder is all that bad as long as the mystery of it is solved by a gentleman who has his manservant dress him for dinner. Cuz the Wallace & Gromit claymation toons have always been very much about both celebrating and sending up the peculiar British character, and you have to recognize it as a bit silly and a bit of an exaggeration that was never really real anyway but still completely love and embrace it nevertheless to really get the warmth and affection with which they — the Wallace & Gromit toons, that is — are offered for your entertainment.
The Star Wars Holiday Special (review)
Here’s what you have to do in order to survive *The Star Wars Holiday Special*: Don’t watch it. If you must, then 1) Have alcohol or some other inebriating substance close to hand — a rock to bang against your skull will do in a pinch. And 2) Remember that your tender 10-year-old self probably witnessed this atrocity the one time it aired on TV to unsuspecting, nay, *eager* audiences, and suffered such psychological trauma that your brain blocked off the memory in order to spare you further harm; know that you may suddenly experience violent flashbacks to Christmas 1978 as that mental wound is viciously reopened.
Hulk movie review: anger management
I kinda would have liked to be able to toss off a ‘it’s not easy being green’ quip about *Hulk* and be done with it, but damn if Ang Lee hasn’t gifted us with a film that I don’t want to be flip about. Yeah, it’s about a rather enormous green guy who smashes stuff… except that’s like saying that *Hamlet* is about this college kid who goes crazy.
