I always conflated this movie with Cool Worldbecause of the idea of an artist interacting with a cartoon reality. Until I reread my review of Cool World, I still thought it was also about creator and creation, but the artist only based his work on the already-existing alternate reality.
Also, this is definitely actually aimed at a PG-13 rating. And the animation is claymation, or CG pretending to be claymation, rather than Ralph Bakshi rotoscoped xeroxes. Continue reading →
So as I’ve heard, this is the story of a brilliant law student using sex appeal to break into Harvard so she can get un-dumped by her boyfriend. And that’s just about all I’ve heard. I seem to recall it managed to get a sequel or two as well as a stage musical, despite the fact that that description doesn’t sound like something that could lend itself to a sequel, but when has that stopped anyone before?
I think of this movie as “Armageddon with Dirtronauts” (from a Dick van Dyke Show pitch). I really just know the log line, something’s wrong with the Earth’s core and we need to go fix it. Apparently it’s too dangerous to send robots to that kind of temperature and pressure so humans have to go instead.
It’s actually a fascinating idea to send an expedition below the crust, even if the conceit is ludicrous. At least Journey to the Center of the Earth is so divorced from science (I think even in Verne’s day the hollow Earth theory was at least on the way out) that it can be read as pure fantasy. With what we currently understand about the planet, no good can come from sending people that deep inside it, and the only sources of story there come from just how implausible such an expedition would be. So I’m going to try to enjoy this on its internal consistency, because the way it pretends to be science just preemptively frustrates me, but it otherwise looks like fun.
I’ve probably been aware of this movie since shortly after it came out. I remember for years seeing it on the shelf at the library, picking it up, and putting it down again. It always looked like something I should be interested in, but it never grabbed me. It’s about a dog show. It’s a mockumentary. It’s by Christopher Guest. And none of that ever really put it over the edge for me, until now.
For an improvisational mockumentary with a huge cast, the only thing I know to expect is that I can’t predict anything.
I’ve been looking for this for years. It’s easy to find the sequel, it’s much harder to come across this one. I’m not sure why that is.
The marketing looks like it’s positioning this as “Mr. Bean is James Bond”, but I’m hoping Atkinson will be doing something closer to Blackadder. Some of that hope may be fueled by the idea that if it’s the case, it might find a place as a missing link in my silly theory that Atkinson’s Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death is a continuation of the Blackadder line, which tends through history to get smarter (though usually of lower station).
For years, Terry Gilliam has wanted to make a Don Quixote movie. And for decades, it’s been in development hell. Except once, it actually went into production. And never came out. This is the story of Terry Gilliam’s impossible dream.
I always thought Gilliam made this documentary himself when production fell apart, but it’s attributed to a couple of other directors. Makes sense, I guess. He’s too busy making weird movies (or at least trying) to make a documentary.
Apparently the title for Gilliam’s movie is The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. I always thought it was going to just be Cervantes’s story with a Gilliam bent, but that title sounds like he intended to at least tell a new frame story. I am unfortunately not familiar enough with Quixote to know how the original story ends, but I expect it’s a classical tragedy. So it might yet not be an original story on Gilliam’s part.
This hinges around a digital heist, but the summaries focus on the persuasion required to get the hacker to hack. Even Hollywood hacking can’t sustain a whole film (even The Net is mostly real-world action), so I expect very little of the excitement actually comes from a guy sitting at a laptop typing until the money is stolen.
I have the impression of the mastermind of the heist as a figure not directly involved in the plot aside from hiring people, coercing people, and hiring people to coerce, but there’s one more headliner than I would expect in that notion, so maybe he’s in the middle of it all, giving orders. I know far too little of use for comment beforehand.
I do recall seeing pieces of this on TV in college, but never more than a moment here and there because I only caught it at the beginning once and I didn’t have the time to watch it then.
I think this involves saving Hanukkah. I’m not entirely sure about that right now, but I thought I’d do a Hanukkah movie, and how many Hanukkah movies are there anyway? I wouldn’t know, as it’s not actually my tradition. I can only think of one definite one I’d really rather not see.
But anyway, what this definitely is is a Jewish parody of Blaxploitation films. Kind of like Shaft if he was Chosen instead of black. Well, more like the remake of Shaft maybe.
I’m not sure how long ago this movie came to my attention. I think it might have been when this comic was published, which was roughly six years ago, but I’m not sure but that it hadn’t come up before then. It seems to have the reputation of being the densest time travel movie ever, but then it seems a vast majority of the audience couldn’t understand Back to the Future Part 2.
The most specific thing I know about the plot is that it concerns a time machine with rules often cited as probable for potential real time machines, but rarely used in fiction because it limits the kinds of stories that can be told. The title always makes me think of a textbook, but I think it’s more likely to be about priming the machine due to those operational restrictions.
Between the highly cerebral reputation, the independent production, and a synopsis I saw that is likely to just be describing the first scene in a zero-tolerance approach to spoilers, it seems entirely likely that this could be an hour and a half of two guys in a room talking about what they’re going to do with the machine and only at the end revealing the actual result. I have seen duller “people just talking” movies about mindbending concepts. (See Mindwalk, which adapted a nonfiction book about physics by having a few characters meander through an art gallery talking. Or maybe don’t.)
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio. Revolution Erie Productions, 2005.
Before watching the movie: When I ask someone new for a movie recommendation, there’s a high likelihood they’ll suggest something I’ve already seen. There’s a very slim chance they’ll recommend something I’ve never even heard of. Not every movie I’ve ever reviewed is obviously to my taste, but the ones that aren’t are pretty much the cinematic canon. And now there’s this. Possibly the first small drama I’ve seen outside of a film festival. I might have passed it by without the strong recommendation of a new friend. The closest reference point I have is something like What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? for reasons that become less clear as I explore what they might be (for one thing, I remembered that one as a period story and it’s actually contemporary). This seems to essentially be a story about a housewife supporting her children by writing for prizes. So it’s more like October Sky (intellectual skills lifting people out of bad situations), only probably not at all. Continue reading →
Yesterday's Movies 