November 11, 2008
I know there's really no other way for Lucas & co to justify the existence of a Darth Vader Toaster than to just embrace the idiocy and hang on for dear life, but still. Holy smokes:If there's something every...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:34 PM
October 7, 2008
Two essays, each interesting and thoughtful on its own, crossed my desk this morning. I think they're inter-related. First from the always spatially aware Geoff Managh on the seemingly irrational landscapes of presidential campaigning:...President Bush had stopped off this morning...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:00 PM
August 21, 2008
Awesome. a Lego Mini-Fig interpretation of the first scene of Beckett's "Endgame." The grandparents are just hilarious. [youtube via choire]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:02 PM
August 16, 2008
Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman, "Live at 01" "Recorded entirely on location at Borders Store 01 Ann Arbor, Michigan" I was almost too busy rolling my eyes at these two smug knuckleheads doing a promotional prowl of the CD...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:26 AM
August 4, 2008
Alright, so last night I made some wisecrack about a scene from Kevin Costner's 1997 film The Postman, where a mutant general pacifies his slave army by showing The Sound of Music on a floating theater on a lake...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:59 AM
August 3, 2008
I loved Cabinet before I wrote for them, and I love them after. In the latest issue, #30 The Underground, Colby Chamberlain looks at an awesome 1971 drawing by Robert Smithson titled, Toward the development of a Cinema Cavern...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:15 PM
June 17, 2008
I haven't watched an M. Night Shyamalan film since I made the mistake of watching The Sixth Sense twice. So every time one comes out, I have to wait for someone to reveal the gimmick. That one with Joaquin Phoenix...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:06 AM
June 6, 2008
"Sex, for Zohan, is like hummus: there is an endless supply, and no occasion on which it could be judged inappropriate." - Anachronistic taste, hedonism, international man of mystery, yet AO Scott's review makes no mention of Austin Powers at...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:42 AM
April 6, 2008
Choire's interview with Elizabeth Berkley reminded me of some unfinished Showgirls business here on greg.org. Back in 2002, right after Beyer Blinder Belle released the first, banal master plans for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, a...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:31 PM
February 24, 2008
Not to get all Kottke about it, but I really like the NY Times' infographic data visualization tool thing [is that an inexpert enough description for you?] that plots out the inflation-adjusted weekly domestic box office numbers of movies from...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:09 PM
October 22, 2007
I'm still looking around for anyone who gave an account of yesterday's discussion of Warhol films at the American Museum of the Moving Image. Warhol Film Project director Callie Angell and film critic Amy Taubin were supposed to "discuss the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:38 PM
October 5, 2007
Whoa, so it turns out that Sony's new Bravia ad full of city-hopping bunnies [top] is a ripoff of the LA-based design team kozyndan. According to Core77, Sony's commercial production company Passion Pictures had invited kozyndan to present their...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:51 PM
September 29, 2007
Yeah, so how about that Blade Runner: The Final Cut article in the Arts & Leisure section?? A Cult Classic Restored, Again [nyt]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:00 PM
August 4, 2007
The Japanese magazine Art-iT asked ten artists, directors, curators and i-don't-knows for their top ten "'artistic' films of the 21st century". I was glad but just a little surprised to see Jeremy Blake's Sodium Fox, which I don't think was...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:23 PM
August 3, 2007
From the NYT review of Bratz: The Movie:With their tender hearts and lip-gloss dreams, these teenage princesses are direct descendants of Alicia Silverstone’s Cher in “Clueless,” although Sean McNamara’s TV-ready framing and coarse direction lack Amy Heckerling’s snap and style....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:49 AM
June 29, 2007
There's an excellent, loong interview on Archinect with Kenneth Goldsmith, the artist, poet, dj, theory karaokeist [?], professor, and web developer behind the incomparable UbuWeb. Ubu began with just texts, and as collections and formats and partners came their way,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:33 PM
April 12, 2007
A short film Noah Baumbach made in 2000, Conrad And Butler Take A Vacation, was included on the Criterion edition of Kicking and Screaming. Variety was not pleased with this story of two buddies, one damaged from his divorce,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:10 PM
April 11, 2007
Jason caught a Guardian article saying that the Weinsteins are going to split Grindhouse in two: "There have been reports that many film-goers have been confused by the movie's structure - mistakenly assuming that there was only one film on...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:19 PM
February 28, 2007
‘What is amazing is the idea of this generation being responsible for creating a cultural icon— like that we get to do that!’—Elizabeth Berkley speaking, presumably, about Nomi at a fund-raiser for the New Globe Theater [in last week's NYO]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:27 AM
February 26, 2007
So the Oscars. Did I just miss their press release warning that they were going to inject off-off-Broadway wacky juice into the show? Because after being numbed into catatonia by years of Debbie Allen, Debbie Allen manques, and Gil Coates'...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:01 AM
January 25, 2007
When I was a freshman at BYU, I had a hopeless crush on a girl from Hawaii. She was really nice to me, and we eventually became friends. But I never had a chance because, unlike her boyfriend at...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:50 PM
November 21, 2006
The FBI said Monday that it has recovered a 1778 painting by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya that was stolen as it was being taken to an exhibition earlier this month. "Children with a Cart," which disappeared en route...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:09 AM
October 3, 2006
The Dutch Sunbather On Google Earth, a Powers of Ten-like zoom-in video. Here's the spot on GoogleMaps, if anyone cares to find out who it is....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:45 PM
August 28, 2006
A week after finally seeing it, I’m having a hard time starting to write about Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s wonderfully crafted, intelligent, slice-of-basehead-life feature, Half Nelson. One thing’s for sure, though: I won’t be able to sustain the same...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:13 PM
August 16, 2006
No more walking, watch three movies at once, and "You don't have to carry a passport, because a friendly computer already knows more about you than you do." 1975 commercial - Braniff Airways - The Supersonic Future...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:40 AM
July 21, 2006
So you can play Dark Side Of The Moon while watching The Wizard Of Oz, or you can play an mp3 commentary by Mystery Science Theater 3000 star/writer Mike Nelson while watching--Roadhouse, starring Patrick Swayze's well-oiled rack. Check out RiffTrax,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:21 PM
June 29, 2006
Wow, can you imagine Ronald Reagan as a bad guy? Here he is in The Killers getting punched by one of his henchmen, played by John Cassavettes. I-- wow. Ronald Reagan John Cassavetes Duel [youtube via wmfublog via rw]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:51 PM
In August 2001, video gamers protested the cartoony feel of the new version of Zelda because "it would be nigh impossible to introduce a serious and epic plot and epic characters" into such a "childish environment." It's not unlike that...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:19 PM
June 10, 2006
To watch McQueen and the other cars motor along the film's highways and byways without running into or over a single creature is to realize that, in his cheerful way, Mr. Lasseter has done Mr. Cameron [director of The Terminator]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:02 PM
June 2, 2006
I already added X3 to the pile of sequel-sequels that I won't see [lessee, there's Matrix 3, Star Wars 3, Godfather 3, Police Academy 3...], but that doesn't mean I don't love reading the reviews. Take Walter Chaw's review, for...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:56 AM
|
Comments (0)
March 4, 2006
Considering that the Decalogue is at least partly to blame for me deciding to become a filmmaker, and that it's partly an inspiration for my Souvenir Series, I can't let a Kieslowski festival go without genuflecting. The National Film Theatre...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:29 AM
January 19, 2006
"When I originally posted the video on the site I likened watching it to a life-changing experience 'on par with losing your virginity or seeing Garden State for the first time'..." [emphasis added] That's part of Derek's description of #1,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:43 AM
December 15, 2005
So there's a full Sigur Ros concert from Reykjavik available to stream online. Two-plus hours of maxed out visuals and...aurals? You know what I mean. sigur rs live in reykjavk 2005 [sigur-ros.co.uk] Also, Ari Alexander's documentary tracing the development of...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:17 AM
November 11, 2005
Gabriel Orozco's computer animated film at Marian Goodman, which morphs through all 700-something color permutations of the paintings in the main gallery. It's like Jeremy Blake-meets...Gabriel Orozco. Shirin Neshat's Zarin, in which a Muslim prostitute's spiral descent into psychic...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:35 AM
November 7, 2005
Jia Zhangke's Unknown Pleasures was eye-opening, the tale of two disaffected slackers told in a Chinese-inflected, naturalist style. Now Jia has turned his eye on a symbol-soaked Chinese theme park full of miniature world landmarks, which provides the impossibly contrived...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:30 AM
November 2, 2005
When watched together, in sequence, Film professor Aidan Wasley says, the Star Wars 6-ilogy is actually revealed to be the world's greatest art film, ever:Star Wars, at its secret, spiky intellectual heart, has more in common with films like Peter...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:39 AM
October 28, 2005
There was a Church film in the 70's that showed what happens when you don't do your home teaching. Mike Farrell (the BJ-Hunniccutt-on-M*A*S*H guy) played an auto mechanic/Mormon bishop, who asks a young, career-focused lawyer in his congregation to...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:27 AM
September 29, 2005
Absolutely brilliant. "Meet Jack Torrance. He's a writer looking for inspiration. Meet Danny. He's a kid, looking for a dad." Shining: the remixed trailer [via waxy, who's mirroring it.]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:46 AM
September 27, 2005
One of my favorite documentaries--and one that suckered me into making films myself--is Agnes Varda's 2000 masterpiece, The Gleaners And I. [it's $27 at amazon.] It turns out that there's an obscure gleaning law on the books in Los Angeles,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:17 PM
August 28, 2005
A friend just told me she is going to Devil's Tower in Wyoming for a screening of Close Encouters of The Third Kind. It's part of a 21-day tour called the Rolling Roadshow that screens films where they were shot....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:27 AM
August 26, 2005
Given its subject--loss and longing that spans and haunts the characters' entire lives--wouldn't it be perfect if the two+ year delay in bringing of Wong Kar Wai's 2046 to theaters was somehow intentional, planned, not just a part of...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:47 PM
August 21, 2005
Doom: The Movie seems about as stupid as Mortal Kombat: The Movie. At least they didn't blow $1mm on a script by Alex Garland. See the Doom trailer [apple.com, via fimoculous]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:20 AM
June 9, 2005
How else to explain this totally out-of-nowhere reference to one of the worst "short films on a theme by different directors" compilations EVER? Kuczyinski is fast becoming the Times' new crazy auntie, Joyce Wadler. "I wandered from one rack to...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:44 AM
May 20, 2005
Used to be you'd see people at the US Open in their tennis whites and carrying a racket, as if they just wanted to be ready, just in case Rod Laver's doubles partner twisted his ankle, and he'd turn to...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:08 AM
May 14, 2005
Director Alberta Chu's 2003 documentary, Seeing The Landscape: Richard Serra: Tuhirangi Contour follows the artist's production of a massive, 843-foot steel wall piece in New Zealand. Here's a line from the synopsis: "A dramatic five years in the making, the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:52 AM
May 11, 2005
Dale Peck thoughtfully turns is hatcheting attentions from things that people should care about but don't (books) to things they shouldn't care about but do (movies). And what he finds is, the current star-based movie rating system is inadequately and...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:08 PM
May 4, 2005
The urban explorer/cinephiles of La Mexicaine De Perforation were featured on Laurent Weil's program, "La Semaine du Cinma" Sunday (Dimanche Mai 01) on Canal+. The segment includes sweet video of LMDP's underground cinema, as well as the provocative kicker that...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:26 AM
April 18, 2005
Nebraska In Single Frames is a beautiful, evanescent short film from Robots on Strike, the home for the Oregon-based design house Impactist's off-the-clock projects. [via Coudal's Jewelboxing]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:09 AM
March 25, 2005
Is at the end of David Edelstein's all-too-kind Slate review of Miss Congeniality 2. Sandra Bullock rocked on The Daily Show, but not so hard that she can trick me into seeing a movie Manohla compares to a lagoon at...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:22 AM
March 17, 2005
Fed up with Hollywood's penchant for gut-grabbing, narrative logic-defying, lazy writer-emanating twist endings, David Edelstein asked readers for their nominations for the "most-idiotic-twist endings" in the movies. After all, he says, "For every The Sixth Sense, there is a correspondingwell,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:10 AM
March 12, 2005
The awesome Haitian director Raoul Peck's new HBO film about the Rwandan genocide, Sometimes in April, was the first film shot in Rwanda, and so he promised to debut it there as well. Writer Melanie Thernstrom writes about attending the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:06 AM
March 8, 2005
The BFI's National Film Theatre is running a complete Tarkovsky retrospective through March 30. It includes new prints of both Solaris and Stalker. And who can pass up seeing Andrei Rublev on the big screen? [I know everyone in NYC...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:19 AM
March 4, 2005
it's already too late, they're not. If only the movie were as well done as Mahnola Dargis's review. added bonus: NYTimes.com, HTML hand-coded, just for you: ",em>This film is rated PG-13" Manohla Dargis's review of Be Cool [nyt]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:49 AM
February 28, 2005
So we finally caught Sideways, twice, on the plane back from Amsterdam. The fat white trash sex scene was edited out, of course, and the PG dubbing was awkward [how can they not say "get you laid"? It's the characters'...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:02 AM
February 27, 2005
Holy smokes, the IFP awards were a total dogpile on Sideways. I can't remember all my votes, but even though I'm a Payne/Taylor fan, I spread the love around a little bit more. Yeah, and on that Oscar, too. We...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:25 AM
February 10, 2005
No, these are just strange commercials, discussed on Design Observer by Momus. Previously: The Suntory Commercials of Akira Kurosawa 'Lost' Swedish Soap Commercial Director Ingmar Bergman Finally Gets Recognition...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:53 AM
February 7, 2005
Tony Scott gave Hirokazu Kore-eda and his latest film, Nobody Knows, a strong review: Nobody Knows is not for the faint of heart, though it has no scenes of overt violence, and barely a tear is shed. It is also...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:33 AM
January 29, 2005
Advertisers first: See See Arnold Run the triumphant story of an Austrian bodybuilder who overcomes his past Nazi ties, hedonistic Hollywood antics, and widely known and repeated sexual harassment allegations to become a big-time star--of the Republican party. From...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:43 AM
January 23, 2005
My favorite IFP Spirit Awards moment was two years ago, watching some young, dumb AMW whose agent thought she needed some indie cred (it turned out to be Brittnay Murphy, unrecognizable to me as the loozah Jersey girl in Clueless)...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:09 AM
January 22, 2005
Things don't look good--and some things can't be seen at all--in Jacob's critical look at the BAFTA nominations. And the problem is the studios' stupid MPAA-legacy DVD screener system. Hero and Million Dollar Baby were left off top-10 lists...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:25 AM
January 15, 2005
Umm, I thought the British were supposed to be smarter than Americans. How else would they get all that work narrating documentaries? Yet the Guardian's film critic Peter Bradshaw gives Team America World Police an ecstatic review. And his Observer...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:37 AM
December 13, 2004
What, no Amazon links? The little red critics over at the Voice have put together their list of the best DVD's and DVD collections for 2004, and then they didn't add shoppertainment links. Here's my distilled list: The Alan Clarke...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:02 PM
December 3, 2004
RSVP to Mondays screening of AFTER LIFE and on behalf of IFC Films, receive an invitation to the premiere screening of NOBODY KNOWS. **Invitations will be handed out at the screening on Monday night. When: Monday, December 6th at 7:30pm...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:07 AM
December 1, 2004
First they ran a contest for Miramax's Hero which had such obscure questions about Jet Li minutiae that not even his agent--or even Li-fanatic-from-birth Jen Chung--could answer, even with a lifetime subscription to IMDb Pro. Now Gothamist gets all Disney...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:03 AM
November 20, 2004
First, a shoutout to all the advertisers, incluging WesAnderson's new joint, The Life Aquatic, Sharp's intriguingly opaque More To See (which contrasts with the crystal clarity of their flatscreens, I'm sure), and the ever-brilliant Daddy Types (ahem). With that out...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:51 AM
November 14, 2004
Architect Chad Smith plays Scarlett Johanson in his own remake of Lost in Translation: he's tagging along to the Park Hyatt in Tokyo on his boyfriend's business trip. The only trouble is, he's not lost, he's not depressed, and he's...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:53 AM
This afternoon on WNYC, Jonathan Schwartz was reading an underwriter plug for Zankel Hall, when he stopped and said, "Some of you may remember that Zankel Hall is in the site of the Carnegie Theater, a movie theater with--well it...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:08 AM
November 9, 2004
If the last cremation you watched was in Diamonds Are Forever, now's your chance to get up to speed and stick it to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism at the same time. In the event one of the many death threats he...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:28 AM
November 3, 2004
A while back, I filled by DVD rental queue with over 100 movie suggestions from greg.org readers. Even combined with some of my own ongoing additions, I've depleted my queue completely. More suggestions are welcome, In the mean time, here...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:56 AM
October 30, 2004
You have to give New Line credit. They hold up the video/DVD of Michael Tolkin's The Rapture--one of the most sophisticated treatments of religion ever put to film--for 13 years, and then they decide to release it on the actual...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:45 AM
October 26, 2004
Let me say this: I know Starship Troopers. Starship Troopers is a friend of mine. And Team America, you are NO Starship Troopers. Michael Atkinson lets us peer into his private fantasy world, where newspaper movie critics wield godlike power...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:55 AM
October 25, 2004
Madeleine Albright just told Jon Stewart that she's seen Team America World Police. Maybe it's not that surprising; if you actually know the person who's being portrayed as a diabolical puppet, you're obliged to see the movie. Bonus Kim Jong...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:30 AM
October 18, 2004
from the NYMDb work-in-process folder: Fleshbot Films [?!] gives Ed Wood's last film the, um, full release it deserves. It's the long-lost hardcore version of Necromania: A Tale of Weird Love!; the simulated sex version turned up at a tag...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:13 PM
October 15, 2004
First, re simulated puppet oral sex: With the MPAA's bell still ringing in my ears, I'm content knowing that Alfredo has saved the ridiculously hacked out shot for little Toto to watch later, perhaps on the DVD. How our high...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:28 AM
October 10, 2004
While the discovery of an underground cinema in the center of Paris has been widely covered, little or no attention has been paid to what the films actually played there. Les Arenes de Chaillot (The Chaillot Arenas) was created...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:30 AM
October 7, 2004
John Edwards is hosting Dr. Strangelove tonight on Turner Classic Movies. [via fimoculous] The only bummer is that Kubrick fingered the generals, not the chickenhawks. Still, I'd be less nervous sharing the screen with Dick Cheney than with George C....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:15 AM
September 22, 2004
Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! director Russ Meyer went tits up over the weekend; students of his rather buxom body of work will recognize his fondness for this position. My greatest Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon triumph was connecting FPKK's Tura...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:20 AM
September 18, 2004
My apologies for mistakenly calling the explorateurs urbains of La Mexicaine de Perforation cataphiles. In an interview on NPR, filmmaker Lazar Kunsman, the group's spokesMexicain, explained that cataphiles are "more like nerds," who just wander around underground without doing anything....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:50 AM
September 16, 2004
"At one point, when we saw him, he was modestly introducing himself to ELEANOR COPPOLA. "'Hi, I'm Jim Caviezel,' he said. 'I played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ.' "Then they talked, appropriately enough, we thought, about wine." -...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:05 AM
September 12, 2004
So Tony Scott and Manohla Dargis, his new partner in film reviewing, handicap the fall movie season in today's NYT. Now about the new kid: she praises David O. Russell and Alexander Payne in the same sentence, so she can't...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:51 AM
The Village Voice's Dennis Lim discusses the Alan Clarke Collection, a box set DVD from Blue Underground which includes four of the British director's roughest, late-career films. The one you'll get it for is Elephant, Clarke's 1989 story of senseless...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:07 AM
September 11, 2004
The Guardian's Jon Henley talks with members of La Mexicaine de Perforation, the urban explorers group who built and operated a cinema in a 4,000-sf uncharted quarry 60 feet under the Place de Chaillot in Paris. They called the cinema...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:25 AM
September 8, 2004
Holy Moley, damn, wow, whoa, this is possibly the coolest thing I've ever heard: a full-scale modern movie theater was discovered in an uncharted underground amphitheater carved out of the catacombs of Paris. It's near Trocadero, the Palais de Tokyo,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:44 PM
July 16, 2004
Shill has a giant library of movie title screens. Not necessarily opening credits sequences--which are an artform in themselves--but a screencapture of the title card. It's connoisseur-comprehensive, with four versions of Tarkovsky's Stalker, for example, tracking the nuanced differences...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:40 AM
A correction: Reading Herbert Muschamp's review of MoMA's "Tall Buildings" show, which includes the United Architects proposal for the WTC site. [The 'Dream Team' proposal is in there, too, but I've said all I'll say about that.] Coming after...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:27 AM
July 1, 2004
The Guardian asked a bunch of brainy Brits what the 'most hated movies of all time' are. I say, who knows, especially if you don't see them all? But there are some very funny answers. Showgirls (a So Bad It's...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:54 AM
June 29, 2004
Mike Mills will be at an AFI screening of his Air documentary Eating, Sleeping, Waiting and Playing Wed. 6/30 at ArcLight Hollywood. 8 o'clock. It's being shown as part of an AFI series of music documentaries, which until last weekend,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:39 AM
June 25, 2004
From the preface to his excellent Slate review: "In 20 years of writing about film, no movie has ever tied me up in knots the way Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 (Lions Gate) has. It delighted me; it disgusted me. I...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:07 AM
June 24, 2004
"Gibson, the director, producer and screenwriter of The Passion, was named the world's most powerful celebrity by Forbes magazine on Thursday, dethroning 'Friends' star Jennifer Aniston who held the No. 1 spot last year." [CNN] Related: Also in the Top...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:44 AM
June 16, 2004
If you're in London this Father's Day: The artists Elmgreen & Dragset have put together a short program (49') of film and video works which "examine architecture's complicit role in defining our enactment of psychological states." It will be shown...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:25 AM
June 9, 2004
[via waxy] Box office performance prediction models are a business school professor's best tool for drumming up consulting gigs in the entertainment industry they secretly wanted to get into in the first place. For a long time, my old Wharton...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:51 AM
May 21, 2004
If you combine reading this hi-larious script with a flip through an oily Brad Pitt photo shoot from [throw rock, hit any current title] Magazine, it'll be like watching Troy--only 2.5 hours shorter*, $10.25 cheaper, and ten times funnier:Beach of...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:53 AM
May 7, 2004
I very rarely walk out of movies. If someone's gone to the trouble of making a film--and I've gone so far as to decide to see it and pay for a ticket--I'll usually sit it out. Unnervingly, I've walked out...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:39 AM
|
Comments (12)
April 26, 2004
I like Kill Bill vol. 2, but I'd like to see it together. I LOVE George C. Scott's warroom performance in Dr Strangelove. What comedy....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:42 PM
April 11, 2004
WTF? Herbert Muschamp in today's NYT Magazine: "[Miuccia Prada] has made the world safe for people with overdeveloped inner lives. [I guess, by selling bagsful of $480 polo shirts to armies of style-free mooks and molls from Manhasset. [And by...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:06 AM
April 7, 2004
Andrew Sarris writes a highly satisfied review of Dogville, but only after an extensive apologia for Von Trier and apologetic justification for deciding to see it in the first place. Did everyone used to have to equivocate so much for...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:56 AM
March 28, 2004
If you're in San Francisco, beat yourself for not going to the Cinematheque's two-day festival of the films of Gordon Matta-Clark. [via archinect]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:13 AM
March 27, 2004
Actually, I was going to title this post "Nicole Kidman: Dogville's bitch," but that's not how I was brought up. Besides, it sounded unnecessarily cruel. [Not in comparison to the movie itself, however, or to some of its reviews....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:57 AM
March 11, 2004
[via GreenCine] Are You Awake? Crissy has created the most dauntingly comprehensive fan site for Lost in Translation I've ever seen. [And it's on MT, Anil.]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:52 AM
|
Comments (0)
March 10, 2004
[via Anil] Martin Grove looks at all the Caesars being rendered unto Mel Gibson as a result of his owning The Passion of The Christ. The money's enough to make believers out of more than a few Hollywood types, that's...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:35 AM
March 8, 2004
The Guardian has excerpts from the expat Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo's Cinema Eden: Essays from the Muslim Mediterranean. In a memory straight out of the seedy phase of Cinema Paradiso, Goytisolo writes about packing into "fleapit" theaters in Barcelona, Tangier,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:01 AM
|
Comments (1)
February 27, 2004
While the NYT's Sharon Waxman finds plenty of righteous indignance among (anonymous) studio executives over ever working with Mel Gibson again, the scales have fallen from Endeavor agent John Lesher's eyes. As a result, he wins the award for best...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:13 AM
|
Comments (0)
February 21, 2004
BU professor Ray Carney tells about his maniacal decades-long search for a copy of the "original version" of John Cassavetes' first feature, Shadows, in a riveting, suspenseful, and enlightening Guardian article. It feels like he doesn't leave out a...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:45 AM
|
Comments (0)
Just let me program your whole Monday viewing schedule for you. 6:30 - MoMA curator Barbara London screening classic video art and talking about how to collect it. (email for details) 9:00 See Derek Jarman's 1993 film, Wittgenstein, at Passerby,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:44 AM
|
Comments (0)
February 18, 2004
It was just released today. Buy it or rent it now. There's a commentary track by Antonioni scholar Peter Brunette, (author of The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni), but read J. Hoberman's excellent contextual discussion of Blow-up in his latest...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:49 PM
|
Comments (1)
February 3, 2004
Michael Musto points out an unexpected upside to Sofia Coppola's winning the First American Woman To Be Nominated For Best Director: it rescues that historical recognition forever from Barbra Streisand's French-manicured clutches. You can celebrate this karmic retribution by buying...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:11 AM
|
Comments (0)
January 24, 2004
From Scott Evans, CEO of Outreach, Inc, retailer of evangelical swag via the (Godless and/or Anglican) Guardian:Dear Pastor, The release of The Passion of the Christ is the most exciting outreach opportunity I've seen in my lifetime... In fact,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:09 AM
|
Comments (0)
January 15, 2004
But what can I do? It's Kieslowski. The Decalogue is playing at the AFI Silver Theater in DC, starting tomorrow (through 1/22). The marathon back-to-back screening of all ten episodes on Saturday includes, inexplicably, the only screenings of episodes I-IV....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:15 AM
|
Comments (0)
January 5, 2004
First, Peggy Siegal, take a lesson from Pontecorvo's publicist, who got such excellent blurbs from the Pentagon screening of The Battle of Algiers, who cares if the people giving them wouldn't know credibility if it blew up underneath their Humvee:...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:54 AM
December 10, 2003
not that I've seen it yet, mind you, but the cinematographer is John Toll, who also shot Terrence Malick's Thin Red Line. On second thought, why not just rent or buy Thin Red Line?...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:15 AM
|
Comments (0)
December 8, 2003
Ahh, that's a better. Now I can endlessly praise the programming acumen of the MoMA Documentary Fortnight without it sounding like pure self-promotion. Three of Amar Kanwar's most recent works--including A Night of Prophecy, which I killed my Friday night...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:39 AM
|
Comments (0)
November 14, 2003
The Guardian tallies up the 40 best directors in the world today, complete with ratings in Zagat-style (or beauty pageant-style) categories: Substance/Look/Craft/Originality/Intelligence. Setting aside the unavoidable grade inflation--seven critics rated them from 1-20 for each category, but the totals fall...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:17 AM
November 13, 2003
still her first one-woman show, Without You I'm Nothing. It's on Trio right now. Looks like I'll be up for another hour to see the grand finale, her cabaret rendition of "Little Red Corvette." (Complete with backup, it turns out,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:59 AM
|
Comments (0)
November 6, 2003
[STANDARD SPOILER ALERT] Despite what the global saturation ad campaign may imply, it's better to approach My Architect as a spinoff--like a feature-length installment the Animatrix--not as a sequel. (That none of the actors from The Matrix films were in...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:39 AM
I attended a private screening of the film, My Architect last night at the Sutton Theater, followed by a sumptuous dinner in the Pool Room at the Four Seasons. Normally, I eschew the Four Seasons for reasons that Jake Brooks...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:15 AM
|
Comments (0)
November 1, 2003
Call me irresponsible, but I/we really liked it. We'll never send our kids to public school now, of course, or let them out of our sight, ever, but we thought it was subtly and extremely well made. David Edelstein's already...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:57 AM
October 14, 2003
After seeing Sylvia last week, I thought I wouldn't write about it again; I couldn't make it to interview Christine Jeffs, the director, and I posted in August about John Brownlow's extensive discussion of the challenges in writing the script...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:55 AM
|
Comments (0)
October 12, 2003
Context isn't everything, but it counts. We just got back from seeing Lost In Translation with a multi-generational crowd, in the movie theater around the corner from Holly Golightly's brownstone. As they say, it's the little differences: "Gorgeous sheets."...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:41 AM
|
Comments (0)
September 9, 2003
I'm reading and enjoying Steven Soderbergh's book, Getting Away With It, where he intermixes his self-hating journal entries and deeply interested conversations with Richard Lester, the director credited with "launching" the British New Wave. (He did The Beatles movies, The...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:13 AM
|
Comments (0)
September 7, 2003
I know Venice is barely over and Toronto's just getting started, but I'm already getting pumped for the New York Film Festival in October. Is "pumped" the right reaction for an Ozu centennial retrospective? All 36 films by the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:43 AM
|
Comments (0)
September 6, 2003
I should have mentioned it earlier--maybe when I asked for DVD rental suggestions--but HBO's Band of Brothers is one of the best series I can think of. (Except that I can also think of Kieslowski's Decalogue and Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:48 AM
|
Comments (0)
August 29, 2003
My DVD rental queue is down to dangerously low levels. greg org?subject=what you should see is...">What you should see is... You should sign up with GreenCine, by the way, not the big red DVD subscription service Gawker sold it's soul...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:25 AM
|
Comments (0)
July 30, 2003
How'd I miss this? GreenCine has a lyrical article/review about Punch-Drunk Love, PT Anderson, and Jeremy Blake, by Tom Tykwer, the German director of Run Lola Run and Heaven. Punch-Drunk Love is FINALLY available on DVD, by the way. And...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:56 AM
|
Comments (0)
July 17, 2003
also via GreenCine: The indie mini-major studio Fox Searchlight Pictures has launched a weblog with the ambitious tagline, "All the independent and arthouse movie news that's fit to blog." Fortunately for what still feels like a one-man operation, the first...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:40 AM
|
Comments (1)
July 9, 2003
Don't know how I missed this; in Feb., Gus Van Sant talked to The Onion A.V. Club about making his films. The sequential filming mode from Gerry was used again on Elephant; with a small, light crew, Van Sant...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:44 AM
|
Comments (0)
June 21, 2003
It's Rashomon meets Inside the Actor's Studio over at the Guardian, where Sam Delaney cross-references contradictory behind-the-scenes accounts from various score-settling or credit-grabbing Hollywood memoirs. His movie matching list: Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, Rosemary's Baby, Jaws...and Flashdance. Truth is not...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:11 AM
|
Comments (0)
June 2, 2003
June 1, 2003
Thanks to the folks who've emailed suggestions for DVD's to order up. Here's a sample, along with recommendations from some other people: Kurosawa's Ran; Resnais' Hiroshima, Mon Amour; and any Kubrick (I decided on Full Metal Jacket and Lolita) I...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:26 AM
|
Comments (0)
May 29, 2003
Only a couple of weeks after Agent Smithing my brother's early adopter, $10/month-for-life Netflix account, I've run out of movies I want to rent. Or more precisely, movies I want to rent that Netflix actually has. (Note: if you're reading...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:32 PM
|
Comments (0)
May 16, 2003
You know how Justin invented Shoutcast so he could listen to Loveline in Arizona? Well, if weblogs never existed, I'm sure they would've been invented yesterday as a way for everyone in the world to review Matrix Reloaded. [Warning: major...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:33 PM
|
Comments (0)
May 8, 2003
Good movie. Nice bones tossed to the comic book readers. Just a suggestion: maybe if their hair wasn't so uniformly weird, people wouldn't hate the mutants as much....
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:25 AM
|
Comments (0)
April 10, 2003
DVD Talk's Gil Jawetz takes a great, informative look at the development of the opening credits for Panic Room. David Fincher's credits are almost always events in themselves, and apparently Panic Room is no different. Jawetz makes the connection to...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:58 AM
|
Comments (0)
April 8, 2003
Insanely great article by Steve Silberman in Wired on John Gaeta and the CG--no, virtual cinematography--they developed for the Wachowskis' Matrix sequels. They created ESC, a "CG skunkworks company" for (at least) one fight scene, where Neo kung fu...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:47 AM
|
Comments (0)
March 29, 2003
In the Guardian, Jonathan Jones talks with Aleksandr Sokurov about his latest film, Russian Ark, and he retraces the path of the single 96-minute Steadicam shot through the Hermitage with the museum's director, Mikhail Piotrovsky. I've written about this...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:56 AM
|
Comments (0)
March 23, 2003
Eh. Who needs to watch the Oscars, with their self-serious, press conference-addicted producer, Gil Cates, and their Chicago faits accomplis. The IFP Spirit Awards are like a hundred times better. It's on Bravo right now (and it repeats, uncensored, on...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:22 AM
|
Comments (0)
March 18, 2003
Decasia is Bill Morrison's fascinating, expressive film composed of beautifully deteriorated nitrate film stock. Last December, Laurence Wechsler wrote about showing it to Errol Morris: "I popped the video into his VCR and proceeded to observe as Morrison's film...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:29 AM
|
Comments (0)
February 24, 2003
Been making arrangements for a private preview of a new work by Jeremy Blake, who I've been friendly with for many years, since his first NY show. While putting together an email of links and background for people, I...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:14 AM
|
Comments (0)
January 31, 2003
Just got back from 11'09"01, the collection of eleven short films produced by Alain Brigand. It's at Lincoln Center today and tomorrow. Short answer: overall, it's impressive, and some of the shorts are quite powerful and moving. Others suck. [Stills...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:33 AM
|
Comments (0)
January 2, 2003
A couple of weeks ago, I called About Schmidt the Thinking Person's My Fat, Greek Wedding and linked both back to the 1955 Academy Award sweeper Marty. Now, after giving it some thought, Vogue's Sarah Kerr notes an "odd coincidence"...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:13 AM
|
Comments (0)
December 13, 2002
Nobody's Perfect, indeed. If Anthony Lane can't get beyond Jack's celebrity, fine. He saw the movie at the NY Film Fest opening. His unabashed pinky-extended criticism almost always gives an enjoyable read. (Need some holiday cheer? Get his collected reviews,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:27 AM
|
Comments (0)
November 15, 2002
Print Talked to MoMA today to finalize the exhibition format for Souvenir November 2001. A film transfer would be really lush and sexy. Yesterday, I saw a video projected version of a short I'd seen at the New Directors/New Films...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:14 AM
|
Comments (0)
November 14, 2002
Listen to director Harry Shearer (he's the voices in your head, you know) and another independent filmmaker talk about getting people interested in their films and getting their films into theaters [10.5 min.]. From WNYC's On The Media (via...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:40 AM
|
Comments (0)
Ewan, up close. Image: Eccentricity-online.com The Guardian has an interesting interview with Ewan McGregor who talks about singing, about directing his first short, and about working with directors. There's audio as well, in case you're into the accent. Ewanspotting,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:46 AM
|
Comments (0)
October 19, 2002
Last night, I talked about the artists and filmmakers post with an artist friend who passed through town. He pointed out Lars von Trier's collaboration with the Danish romantic painter Per Kirkeby on Breaking The Waves. Kirkeby created deeply...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:27 AM
|
Comments (0)
September 27, 2002
Apparently, the project went into turnaround when Mollie Wilmot objected to being portrayed by Bette Midler or Melanie Griffith. Disney executives may be smiling through their tears to learn that Wilmot, "the socialite with the oversize white sunglasses who rose...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:29 PM
|
Comments (0)
August 8, 2002
Even though a friend at Vanity Fair is so sick of hearing about him she puts her hands over her ears and starts screaming "la la la la la la" when I mention his name, I've been listening to Robert...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:06 PM
|
Comments (0)
May 26, 2002
Congratulations to Paul Thomas Anderson, co-winner of the Best Director Award for Punch-Drunk Love at Cannes. The Palme D'Or for Short Film was awarded to Pter Meszaros for Eso Utan (After Rain). And congratulations to HBO for their documentary,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:22 AM
|
Comments (0)
