07.09.14 |
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More on Michael Bay and Transformers 4, this time from the great Film Crit Hulk (and for those new to his writing, the all caps isn’t a mistake, it’s an editorial choice on Hulk’s part):
EVERY TIME HULK SEES A MICHAEL BAY MOVIE HULK IS REMINDED THAT HE DOES THESE KINDS OF THINGS. WHICH, PERHAPS IN A SAD WAY, CONSTANTLY REMINDS HULK THAT HE IS ONE OF THE MOST WEIRDLY FASCINATING FILMMAKERS ON THE PLANET. PLEASE DON’T MISTAKE THAT FOR A STATEMENT IMPLYING HIS FILMS ARE WORTH SEEING OR ARE ACTIVELY FASCINATING TO WATCH. NO, THEY ARE OVERLONG, BORING SLOGFESTS THAT SPEW SO MUCH HATEFUL, SEXIST, HOMOPHOBIC AND RACIST GARBAGE ALL UNDER THE PRETENSE OF THAT WINKING “THIS IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE” BRAND OF HUMOR THAT MAKES YOU WANT TO GO OUT INTO THE LOBBY AND RECONCILE YOUR HUMANITY FOR A WHILE.
07.07.14 |
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Slashfilm’s David Chen:
If there is such a thing as cinema as Soderbergh describes it, then Age of Extinction is a perfect distillation of anti-cinema. It posits that films no longer need a coherent plot, character development, or action scenes that have tension and stakes in order to be successful. That economic considerations no longer need to be hidden or subtle — they can be brazen and attention-grabbing. That excess in every respect (runtime, municipal destruction, manchild behavior) is not a vice, but a virtue.
05.09.14 |
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Regardless of your thoughts on Nicholas Wending Refn’s Only God Forgives (I have mostly mixed to negative feelings), it’s a visually assured, at times stunning work with its slow dolly shots and strong primary color usage. So it’s really interesting to see how much visual effects played into post production, and not just for the violent scenes. There’s some otherwise mundane yet critical touches, like removing all traces of dolly tracks to give the effect of a floating, dream-like camera, or editing out a small ceiling fan to distract from an actor’s performance.
As a warning, there’s a lot of very grisly, bloody content highlighted in this video (NSFW).
04.25.14 |
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Film columnist and writer Niles Schwartz:
An attitude of the entire trilogy deals with how all corruption is equal. As Michael (Al Pacino) tells Senator Pat Geary (G.D. Spradlin) in Part II, “We’re both a part of the same hypocrisy,” and then later speaking of the political bodies combating him in Part III, “Italian politics have had these men for centuries. They’re the true mafia.” The opening of The Godfather, romance though it is, speaks the same sentiment as the prologue in the more anthropologically-correct prologue of Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas, where Henry Hill narrates, “What the organization is offering is protection for people who can’t go to the cops. That’s it, what the FBI could never get. Like a police department for wise guys.”
04.04.14 |
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I haven’t revisited Alien for quite a while. But Ridley Scott’s classic has aged extremely well, and it’s influence on modern sci-fi and horror tropes is undeniable; smart analysis is always welcome. This video essay by Steven Benedict is exactly that; it hits on some major themes while not overstaying itself welcome.
04.02.14 |
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A four minute super cut of scenes from Michael Mann movies? Count me in.
03.20.14 |
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Film awards season is well behind us, but this Vanity Fair convincingly argues why the Oscars, and to a lesser extent most acting awards, tend to favor the relatable over the cool and unreadable.
03.14.14 |
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This typographic blog post has already been passed around tech and design circles, but it’s absolutely worth a look if you haven’t seen it. The subject matter is 2009’s Moon and it’s cool to see a lot of futuristic fonts in discussion. You’ll probably learn something about Eurostyle; I had no idea there were variants (like Microstyle) that deviated slightly from the original typeface.
03.13.14 |
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Six minutes of Criterion Collection staff making classic films gorgeous? Sold. Keep your eye on the whole Gizmodo video collection on Vimeo while you’re at it; it’s uniformly smart content.
03.10.14 |
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Damon Houx of Badass Digest, describing the plot of Knock Off:
Marcus has to confront Eddy about the nanobombs in the knockoff product, and it gives Van Damme his finest acting moment to date, where he tells his semi-brother that he made a deal for him with the feds as he’s threatened with a gun. Sure, you could compare it to the “pull the strings” speech in Ed Wood, but Van Damme is fully committed. That scene then ends with Eddy being targeted by a missile which sends him flying outside, to die in a green flame explosion. It’s followed by an action scene starts where Van Damme and Schneider must escape from a fruit warehouse, which is a stunning set piece of claustrophobia as most of the fruit workers have long but dull knives, and the fruit around appears to be spiky pineapples (it doesn’t have the stems so I’ve never been sure) which makes even the fruit hreatening. The sequence ends with Schneider and Van Damme escaping and mumbling “Hoola, hoola hoola. Hoola hoola hoola.”
Completely unavailable via streaming rental. I’m not spending $8 to buy this one either. Unfortunate.