I rewatched Love Actually and am here to ruin it for all of you →
The best take down of “holiday classic” Love Actually ever. Killer work by Lindy West at Jezebel.
The best take down of “holiday classic” Love Actually ever. Killer work by Lindy West at Jezebel.
I watched The Wolf of Wall Street on Christmas last week and while the movie is far from perfect, I liked it a lot. But I’m troubled by the viewpoint promoted on Twitter and in blog posts on how the movie “glorifies” the endless parties of drugs, booze and sex. Yes, director Martin Scorsese spends very little time on the negative impacts of main character Jordan Belfort’s actions, and some are cheering his behavior. But while the movie was entertaining, I was still repulsed by Belfort and everything he stood for. The late great Roger Ebert put it best in this essay from back in 1992:
The most fundamental mistake you can make with any piece of fiction is to confuse the content with the subject. The content is what is in a movie. The subject is what the movie is about. Word counters like Medved are as offended by a Martin Scorsese picture as by a brainless violent action picture, because they see the same elements in both. But the brainless picture is simply a form of exhibitionism, in which the director is showing you disgusting things on the screen. And the Scorsese picture might be an attempt to deal seriously with guilt and sin, with evil and the possibility of redemption. If you cannot tell one from the other, then you owe it to yourself to learn; life is short, and no fun if you spend it disowning your own intelligence.
Niles Schwartz, writing for L’etoile:
Carlito’s Way is a beautiful after-hours ride to nowhere, a late night discotheque frenzy of manic physicality blasting off and crumpling down with the same bullet, where the dancers are passionately moving as if to a final destination of perfection, but are escorted out, dozing, on last call…Now, Carlito’s Way stands as one of his [Pacino’s] last headlining triumphs, his subsequent noteworthy work having shared before-the-title acknowledgement: Robert De Niro (Heat), Johnny Depp (Donnie Brasco), and Russell Crowe (The Insider).
It’s still an amazing film, something I want to potentially revisit during the holiday break. Available on digital rental and Netflix via DVD.
Mark Harris writing for Grantland:
So, as a means of guesswork, right now it makes more sense to look at the voters than at the movies. The Academy is divided by branch — actors, writers, producers, sound people, composers, and so on — but thinking of Oscar voting as tribalism-by-profession often leads to fallacies like “Editors like movies with a lot of editing in them,” and it doesn’t tell you much about how Best Picture nominees emerge. Think of the Academy instead as a group of about half a dozen voting blocs divided by taste and predilection. This is who they are — and who’s targeting them.
I can’t say Scout Tafoya’s video essay defending Alien 3 won me over on that film based on memory; I found the tone and screenplay way too dark and nihilistic. But given what director David Fincher has done since, from Fight Club to The Social Network, makes me really want to rewatch this soon. It’s been over a decade since my last viewing.
Wonderful, true to life yet moving tribute to Walker over at Grantland, as written by Alex Pappademas:
Maybe it’s too big a leap to suggest that Walker’s death represents some larger symbolic dimming of the day for a certain kind of leading man — blue-eyed, surfy, fast-car-loving, born of the Newman/McQueen DNA line. So instead, let’s say Walker managed to occupy a space of diminished expectations with aplomb and even grace. He punched his weight. He’d started making serious-actor moves toward the end of his life — like coproducing the December 2013 release Hours, in which he plays a father struggling to keep his infant daughter alive on a ventilator during Hurricane Katrina — but wasn’t too good to endorse Davidoff Cool Water, a cologne that smells like a teenage boy who drives a cab.
The Dissolve’s Matt Singer:
We live in a world where immediacy and instantaneous access is the fundamental driver of commerce. Convenience certainly has its place, but expertise should still have one too.
Agreed; and up to now, as Matt points out, Netflix’s automated algorithm is no match for a smart video clerk.
Really enjoyed listening to Martinez talk about his thought process behind the Only God Forgives soundtrack in this interview with Slashfilm:
So what ended up happening is kind of this hybrid of several different ideas, one of which was The Day the Earth Stood Still. My favorite score of all time, but even as well as I know it, I can’t imitate it, nor would it have been appropriate. But the idea of something fantastic and something that was otherworldly was the quality we wanted to take from that score. I think at one point we liked the idea of the retro and fifties, but I couldn’t really nail that. So once again I failed in an interesting way.
Nice video feature where longtime critic A.O. Scott discusses his experiences reviewing and watching film. Always been a fan of his writing.
Scott Fennessey and Chris Ryan, writing for Grantland:
As a fine-arts student who got his start in the vulgar world of commercial directing and slick TV shows, he has always subverted expectations…Looking for the quintessential interstellar extraterrestrial adventure? Instead, take the most grotesque body-horror movie ever made. Scott’s movies are delivery systems for ideas, but they’re also Trojan horses — hulking, beautiful objects, meant to distract audiences while those ideas creep in, one soldier at a time, to take over your mind. It’s been an effective, unlikely strategy for the British-born filmmaker.