Category Archives: Movies
I’ve said before that I’m kind of bored with the high-calorie low-nutrition CGI spectacles Hollywood cranks out. Some of that is on me; I was into movies long before all that started, so very much a case of ‘been there, seen that, bought the DVDs.’
I’m just weary of the same old thing, which is all many bigger movies are. They cost so much to make and have to earn that back, so producers stay with formulas and formats they know. It tends to turn movies into commodities, like burgers or pizzas.
Which is fine, but I find I really prefer the smaller, non-mainstream, artisan-oriented movies. Today, for Sci-Fi Saturday, I want to tell you about two very tasty treats.
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4 Comments | tags: Frank Langella, James Marsden, robots, Susan Sarandon | posted in Movies, Sci-Fi Saturday
I don’t know if this is age, experience, or truth (likely a combination), but it feels as if storytelling in the new millennium has become superficial and shallow. Many of the movies and TV shows I’ve seen appear to be mere strings of icons so well-worn we don’t even think about them.
It’s as if the vocabulary of storytelling has expanded into LEGO® pieces connected to build colorful plastic stories lacking in nuance and detail. Special pieces (like little people or wheels) make the model a bit more real seeming, but those same complete parts get used and reused.
And some of them have started to really annoy me…
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5 Comments | tags: cliches, icons, memes, storytelling, troupes, Zippo lighter | posted in Movies, TV, Writing
Art, famously, is a matter of taste, and as a general rule of thumb, you have it while others often don’t. Just goes to say. Because you know what you like, even if you don’t know anything about art. Simply put: taste is personal.
With commodity art like most films, many people weigh in, and opinions are often split, but sometimes, even with, or perhaps because of, so many, a consensus grows — thumbs up, thumbs down. Everyone, or nearly so, seems to agree one way or the other. In particular for today, there are the films everyone hated.
I’ve found some of those despised films are underrated gems — or at least are not as bad as popular vote makes them out to be.
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8 Comments | tags: Amy Heckerling, Dark City, Demolition Man, Johnny Dangerously, Johnny Mnemonic, Judge Dredd, science fiction, science fiction film, science fiction movies, The Fifth Element, Waterworld, Zardoz | posted in Movies, Sci-Fi Saturday
Judy, Judy, Judy!
I’ve been a fan of science fiction since the early 1960s. I was already an avid fan and ready audience for Lost in Space (1966–68; Judy was one of my earliest childhood crushes), It’s About Time (1966–67), and I was glued to the TV set enthralled when Kirk, Spock, and the rest, first boldly went in 1966.
By then I’d already consumed all I could of Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, along with Verne, Wells, and Burroughs (I didn’t discover Tolkien or Howard until high school a few years later).
Movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), and Forbidden Planet (1956), all had me avid for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
It’s been a whole lot of years, and a whole lot of science fiction, is my point.
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22 Comments | tags: cyberpunk, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Jules Verne, Lost in Space, Neal Stephenson, Robert E. Howard, science fiction, science fiction books, science fiction movies, science fiction TV, SF, SF Books, SF Movies, Snow Crash, William Gibson | posted in Books, Movies, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
It’s always nice when reality pats you on the back and says, “You got this one right.” Sometimes that doesn’t happen as often as we’d like. Reality seems to enjoy confounding us. For me that seems especially true when it comes to taste in entertainment.
So, I was delighted and gratified to see The Happytime Murders, Holmes & Watson, and Robin Hood, all nominated for Worst Picture for this year’s Annual Razzie Awards. They share the honor with Gotti and Winchester. (See the full list at razzies.com.)
It’s so nice to know I’m not alone in boggling that someone actually made these movies!
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7 Comments | tags: Annual Razzie Awards, Melissa McCarthy, Will Ferrell | posted in Movies
My disdain for reboots means that, out of the gate I’m not inclined to have much anticipation for Mary Poppins Returns. Factor in that it’s a musical fantasy for and about children, and there is even less to attract me. It’s just not my cup of tea, Earl Grey (hot) or otherwise.
I have a sister, younger by a few years, so the original Mary Poppins, with Julie Andrews, was an annual fixture in our house. Along with The Wizard of Oz and that excruciating Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer claymation. I was already a hard-core science fiction fan by then; these family-friendly fantasies bored me silly even as a kid.
I think even then I was just too aware of the implicit psychopathy behind it all.
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14 Comments | tags: Dick Van Dyke, Julie Andrews, Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins Returns, P.L. Travers | posted in Movies
Nope. Never liked’m.
Watching the Thanksgiving episode of the rebooted Murphy Brown on CBS, where Murphy decides to cook dinner with easily anticipated and well-worn results, it struck me exactly why I don’t find the show very funny. And why I really don’t find any of the CBS comedies since the 1990s very funny: Idiot Clowns.
In general, it’s why I don’t find a lot of comedy very funny. Idiot Clown comedy requires an idiot clown — someone so stupid they are unaware of basic reality, a blindness forced on them to enable a (typically) lame joke. I find it cheap and easy and without much value.
More to the point, I just don’t like idiots or clowns in my entertainment.
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18 Comments | tags: Adam Sandler, clowns, Dave Chappelle, George Carlin, idiots, LA Story, Melissa McCarthy, Northern Exposure, Robin Williams, Sarah Silverman, Seth MacFarlane, Steve Martin, Tracy Morgan, Will Ferrell | posted in Movies, Opinion, TV
As someone whose high school and college education focused on writing and storytelling (through stage, film, and video), I’ve long been askance at how much culture reveres actors while not paying as much attention to the writers who provide their words or the directors who control much of what they do.
I do not at all mean to suggest actors aren’t also artists who bring important skills to the table. In college, I had to find people willing to act (for free!) in my productions — I couldn’t tell my stories without them — so I’m well acquainted with their importance and skills.
My point is only that the stories we love owe as much, if not more, to the writers and directors who create them in the first place.
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2 Comments | tags: actors, Atomic Blonde, Bebe Neuwirth, Bilbo Baggins, Charlize Theron, directors, Doctor Who, Eddie Murphy, Elijah Wood, Frodo Baggins, George Burns, Idris Elba, James Bond, Johnny Carson, Loretta Swit, Martin Freeman, Racisim, The Doctor, writers | posted in Movies, Rant, TV
The other night, I watched the first episode of the CBS reboot of Murphy Brown, and my first thought is that I hope it gets better. A lot better. The only part I liked was the cameo by Hillary Clinton playing “Hillary Clindon,” a potential secretary for Candice Bergen’s Murphy Brown. (If I remember the original show correctly, Brown had a long and troubled history with secretaries, which puts a bit of icing on the scene.)
Seeing the main characters again, for me, was awkward and close to cringe-worthy. They seem very much a product of their era (1988-1998) and didn’t translate well across the two decades that have brought so much social and technical change.
Part of the problem might be that I find CBS half-hour sitcoms tediously dull, cliché-filled, totally unfunny, marshmallow realities.
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9 Comments | tags: Big Little Lies, Candice Bergen, Murphy Brown, Patrick Stewart, reboots, Star Trek, Steve Carell, The Office, Will & Grace | posted in Movies, TV
I should probably start by hastening to add: I don’t dislike dinosaurs, either! It’s an ambiguity of English that when one says, “I don’t like X,” it can mean one has negative feelings about the ‘X’ in question, or it can mean just that one has no positive feelings for it — that one is neutral (or perhaps not interested enough to have an opinion).
It’s an easy jump from “don’t like” to “dislike,” so the phrase, “I don’t like X,” is usually taken that way. But I have wiring in my brain that makes me see it more literally — as failing to have a liking for ‘X’ — so I often have to clarify what I mean.
And what I mean is that I have zero interest in dinosaurs.
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3 Comments | tags: clowns, coffee, dinosaurs, Game of Thrones, ginger cookies, Jurassic Park, molasses cookies, pirates, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Tom and Jerry | posted in Life, Movies, Opinion, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
Logos con carne 