Entries
Short Takes: Final Destination 5
Same carnage, different kids. This time the torture-porn embraces alternative forms of medicine like acupuncture and laser surgery. (If you have a thing about eyes, it’s best to close yours.) There’s a a terrific mounting sight gag (did you hear …
Review: The Help
In order to keep their families disease-free, the young white ladies of Jackson, Mississippi (c.1960) get behind a Colored bathroom bill and construct outdoor facilities so as to avoid sharing a seat with their domestics. As a result, future feminist …
Comedians Rally to Support Former Telethon Host Jerry Lewis
Last week it was my sad duty to report Jerry Lewis' ouster as the National Chairman of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. According to the MDA, Jerry's participation in the annual Labor Day Telethon (that he created some sixty years ago …
Empire of Silver: Vistas Aplenty
My Empire of Silver capsule review should be up in a bit, but in the meantime, I'd like to take a moment to wonder why American filmmakers seem to have lost the art of the dramatic long shot. I think …
A Closer Look at the Trailer for One Day: The Many Faces of Anne Hathaway
It's quite a challenge for any makeup artist - depicting an actress over a twenty-year period, the way they do in One Day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLUWHW5NxwI What struck me was how many other actresses they managed to make Anne Hathaway remind me …
"How do you get to make a movie?"
That was the question my son asked me last night before I headed out to Empire of Silver. While I waited for the movie to start, a movie fun fact informed me that, at least in Michael Bay's case, you …
While We're At It...
Regal Entertainment Group is making a plea for relevance in the age of Netflix. "There are millions of stories to be told," reads the text on the big screen. "Stories of heroes and legends," etc., etc. But as the action …
A Complete List of the Movie Categories on AMC's "Where Movies Live" Ad Page
Action Adventure, Blockbuster, Bollywood, Chick Flick, Comedy, Cop Buddy Picture, Documentary, Dramedy, Fantasy, Horror, Remake, Rom Com, Superhero, Teen Angst, Thriller. Fascinating. Teen Angst gets its own category, as does Superhero, Remake, Chick Flick, and Cop Buddy Picture. The difference …
En Garde: An Interview with The Guard Writer & Director John Michael McDonagh
John Michael McDonagh Get ready for a film that puts this summer's colorless comic book adaptations and gross-out comedies to shame. The Guard stars Brendan Gleeson as Sergeant Gerry Boyle, a small town cop assigned to crack a ring of …
REJECTED — My Failed Entry for the 2011 San Diego 48-Hour Film Project Competition*
Apologies for the late blog-start today - I was recovering from my mad weekend of making my entry for the San Diego 48 Hour Film Project. The rule, as you may have surmised, is that the entire film has to …
Never Mind The Muppets, Here's Starship!
Seriously, fellas? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4YhbpuGdwQ Is this to be my generation's fate? To have the really crappy songs of its youth stuffed back down its throat without the merest dollop of irony to ease the passage? I mean, "We Built This City" …
Bootleg Super 8 Screener Has Howard Stern's Name On It
Could it be? The last honest man left in broadcasting guilty of electronic copyright infringement?! A copy of JJ Abrahms Super8 containing an "H Stern" watermark has surfaced on illegal internet sites. While I'd pay anything to see a police …
Latino Film Festival's Cinema en tu Idioma Series Runs All Week
David Rasche and Cristina Lago star in *Blue Eyes* We've hit a good patch! What with The Guard, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Another Earth, Midnight in Paris, and Le Quattro Volte currently playing neighborhood screens, there's something …
Free Outdoor Screening of Disney's Tangled Tonight
Why not take advantage of KUSI meteorologist Leslie Lopez's forecast for perfect outdoor movie-viewing weather and bring the family (and blankets and lawn chairs) to Carmel Valley for tonight's free screening of Disney's Tangled? I'll be your projectionist for the …
Review: The Devil's Double
In 1987, an Iraqi army lieutenant named Latif Yahia was summoned to Saddam Hussein’s palace and ordered to serve as a body double for Saddam’s monstrous son Uday. What a great premise for a movie: an existential crisis – as …
Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Let me begin by saying that I cannot tell you my least favorite and favorite lines in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, because I don't want to spoil things for you. But I can tell you that the …
Kids Today
Now get off my lawn! Okay, so I guess it's understandable that the 10:35 a.m. show of Empire of Silver at Mission Valley AMC should have an unresolvable technical glitch - namely, that the subtitles at the bottom of the …
Joe Walker on Editing YouTube Documentary Life in a Day
With Netflix and Red Box both entering the film distribution market, it's a wonder that it took YouTube so long to find its way to the big screen. YouTube partnered with Ridley Scott's company Scott Free and director Kevin Macdonald …
Ack! Catwoman!
So the filmblogging universe is dutifully trotting out this still of Anne Hathaway (?) as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. And while we here at Big Screen hate to seem catty (seewhatididthere), we are inclined to note that that …