bitten tongue.

“BLAM!” What if you applied Spike TV production style to an...

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 15:08:11 -0700

“BLAM!”

What if you applied Spike TV production style to an old Donald Duck cartoon? Well, the Disney Channel actually did this as a series. And the result is like watching an episode of World’s Worst Police Chases where a cop runs over your puppy, and then again in slow-motion, while some douchebag narrator crows about the gore. (via yachtrock)

Blam-fast! Now I know where “derp-de-derp” comes from, and where post-modernism died. (via atencio)

Some films tell stories. Some films show us characters. Some...

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:14:34 -0700

Some films tell stories. Some films show us characters. Some films build worlds. Some films do all of that. This summer, I have seen three films twice in the theater: Toy Story 3, Inception, and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Each film is such an all-encompassing experience I wanted to revisit them in the proper context. While Inception may have a weaker story and characters than the other two, all three offer a majestic world to fall into, a feeling to let wash over you and transport you in the way all great films do.

Scott Pilgrim brings to mind Kick-Ass, not because of their shared comic book origin but because both films are on rails, flying through their two hours. Director Edgar Wright packs more into Pilgrim’s two hours than James Cameron could dream in any length of Avatar. The movie is a cotton-candy kick to the brain, a pure delight and treasure that may sag a little but never lets up.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World tells us exactly what we’re in for: Scott Pilgrim’s fight against real life/adulthood. The film is one-sided with a delightfully sly wink. Wright has said many times we’re watching Scott’s movie version of his life so we see everything filtered through him. The film, like the comics, relies on a climactic shift in point of view. The hero’s journey for Scott is not “defeating” the evil exes (emotional baggage physically manifested through the prism of games and comics) but instead finally viewing life from someone else’s eyes. He learns empathy and gains some self-awareness (or self-actualization/respect as I believe the film puts it). Scott’s enemy is (like all 20-somethings, particularly Americans, per the NYT) himself, his own self-absorption, his arrested development, which again manifests itself physically, this time in the form of Nega Scott.

But Scott has grown and won when instead of striking down Nega Scott he understands and relates to him. The earlier battles with the seven evil exes were “merely” Scott and Ramona working through Ramona’s personal history, Scott coming to grips with who has come before and Ramona coming to grips with what she’s done (a similar concept to Chasing Amy). It was that uncomfortable conversation of “history” that all couples have, and breaks many couples up, told in perhaps the most entertaining way yet. Instead of “defeating” Knives or Kim though, Scott finally apologizes to both of them, owns up to the mistakes he made. While it may be somewhat anticlimactic visually, it works perfectly on an emotional level.

Gideon Graves - the main baddie - controls Scott’s would-be girlfriend Ramona with a computer chip, the physical manifestation of her attraction and desire for Gideon. She remains connected to him in a tangled web of hate, lies, lust, and desire for acceptance, much like many an ex. Scott shows her what she may be worth, that she may not be the “bitch” who dumps the guy but instead vulnerable, i.e. not a robot. Ramona has surprisingly little screen time, but Mary Elizabeth Winstead brings so much to the role that she feels real, feels complete.

It’s difficult in satire not to become the thing you’re satirizing (looking at you, Hostel). Edgar Wright deftly avoids this pratfall with subtle self-awareness and instead offers up a monumental comment on this generation, on this place and time.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Fantasy Football is about to start and I just got an e-mail about Tila Tequila developments. (This started as a response to Kevin at GiTM, where he touches on issues a lot of people have with the film. All I can say is, I can think of no better final villain than Jason Schwartzman.)

Whoa. They really want to get to there.

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:18:12 -0700

Whoa. They really want to get to there.

Seriously, is anyone in charge over there? Yesterday they had a...

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:55:51 -0700

Seriously, is anyone in charge over there? Yesterday they had a man drawing John Madden yellow circles around the area where Ted Stevens’ plane crashed. Can they drop the second N and just be CN?

I could go on a rant about sample sizes, inflated importance,...

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 14:00:24 -0700

I could go on a rant about sample sizes, inflated importance, and causation vs. correlation, but wouldn’t politics be more fun if it were like American Idol or The Bachelor. ”This week, everything changes!” ”The most important season yet!” ”Surprises you’ve never seen before!” At least that way, for ratings week Weiner could go Mr. Smith on a new obstructionist tact and congressmen could kiss pages in public. (via the NY Times, inflating yet another primary’s importance)

"I wonder what he was, what he did."

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 21:17:04 -0700

“I wonder what he was, what he did.”

- The beauty of “Bullitt” is that it values the human life. In a move filled with fast cars and deadly weapons, each death has an impact, feels like a loss, a shame. The end chase is all build, the slowest burn to a release so quick it must be real. And even though we root for Bullitt the whole time, even though we want the bad guy caught, shamed, killed, the movie still treats his death as the loss of a human life. It’s a brilliant stroke that makes the movie a masterwork, car chase or no car chase.

The Bourne films live by the same ideology of realism as Bullitt, and they also have the same tender care and heart for human life. The look on his face after Bourne strangles the enemy agent in the bathroom has all the humanity McQueen conveys as he respectfully places his jacket over a dead body. These moments give our heroes a soul, and a reason to live.

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s (The Office U.K.,...

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 15:46:50 -0700

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s (The Office U.K., Extras) first feature together will be dumped in Glendale, not quite the American version of Slough but still…

Ready to get your mind blown? Young Don Draper and young Michael...

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 15:16:03 -0700

Ready to get your mind blown? Young Don Draper and young Michael Bluth are the same kid. The time-space continuum just got awesome.

New Rule

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:32:21 -0700

Henceforth, only Part Three of your film series may be 3-D. At that point, The Law of Diminishing Returns (excepting The Pixar Rule) dictates the extra dimension may be necessary to excite an audience fatigued by tired characters and storylines. Little Fockers should undergo immediate conversion now.

Hmm, that’s kind of a lame video game poster. The skin...

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:41:00 -0700

Hmm, that’s kind of a lame video game poster. The skin texture looks plastic, and it doesn’t even tell me what game it’s for… Oh, that’s for a movie? A major, Hollywood tentpole film?… Oh, I guess that is the Green Lantern logo there in the corner, but I barely know that. Does the rest of America? How is a movie about a superhero with a magic ring not terrible? At least Thor has a hammer. (via /Film)

atencio: If you liked Inception, and especially if you liked...

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:31:15 -0700

atencio:

If you liked Inception, and especially if you liked the music, take 1 minute and watch / listen to this. It’s impressive.

It’s the little things…

Your Friday Escape Goat.

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:26:00 -0700

Your Friday Escape Goat.

The internet nerdgasm starts now. Tron.

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:40:36 -0700

The internet nerdgasm starts now. Tron.

Oh, it is indeed his finest hour. The ending is always the...

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:30:54 -0700

Oh, it is indeed his finest hour. The ending is always the toughest part, but Bryan Lee O’Malley ends the Scott Pilgrim series so gracefully, so totally, that it elevates the preceding books. While Volumes 1 and 2 feel narratively rushed and tonally uneven, each volume gets more and more confident in its story- and joke-telling, leading to a rush of payoffs in the climactic Volume 6.

The mythology and world of Scott Pilgrim may be smaller than Lost, but O’Malley demonstrates how to finish the story you set out to tell. Nothing feels cheap, perfunctory, or contrived. Everything in the book stems from the very real emotional core of its leads: Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers. The aesthetics may be cartoony, but the hurt and regret these characters carry is all too real. O’Malley perfectly captures the 21st century post-college milieu: longing to be something, to be with someone, but mostly whiling away the time with video games, movies, and comics. The themes spring straight from Apatow-vian arrested development, but O’Malley delves into such emotional nuance - the dark, dirty part of ourselves we don’t like to acknowledge, we try to run away from - that it reminds one more of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by the end of it.

We are all hurt people who have hurt people. Does that mean we are capable of nothing more than hurting? Can we ever learn to evolve? To *gulp* grow up? And what does that mean? A job? A band? Money? Women? Somehow O’Malley tackles all of that in a book so entertaining it causes giggles.

My favorite image from the series sums it all up so well - Scott with a mouthful of cake and Sega font over his head: “SCOTT PILGRIM WINS HIS BIRTHDAY.”

Watch it NOW. I think back to this film’s rich visual wit...

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:54:47 -0700

Watch it NOW.

I think back to this film’s rich visual wit and high-pitched French voices all the time. It reaches Simpsons-ian levels in mixing high- and low-brow humor.

If Michael Mann made 8 1/2, it might look an awful lot like...

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:39:44 -0700

If Michael Mann made 8 1/2, it might look an awful lot like this. Inception delivered in the most unexpected way. Instead of being a cold philosophical/intellectual ride, the film is an incredible experience, filled with the brim with awe-some images and a love of dreams and cinema. The last two-thirds fly by in an edge-of-your-seat wave of excitement and amazement at how well Nolan so gracefully spins all of his plates. The movie plays with film time so well, with how we experience time within a dream, within a shared dream (the cinema), how exciting event slow while the shoe leather vanishes in hindsight. Never before has Nolan’s claustrophobic way of shooting (the guy detests establishing shots in the first act of his movies) been used to such pitch-perfect effect, keeping us guessing the whole time.

And how amazing are Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt?

Finally, someone’s remade Heat. Why do all mob movies...

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:16:19 -0700

Finally, someone’s remade Heat. Why do all mob movies take place in Boston now? Damn you, Lehane!

But seriously, what a cast, and this looks pretty incredible.

So this is finally happening.

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:23:22 -0700

So this is finally happening.

Full Social Network trailer. The warm interior lighting and a...

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 09:40:02 -0700

Full Social Network trailer. The warm interior lighting and a man driven by ego, greed, and desire are all classic Fincher territory, which bodes well for him elevating essentially a small, petty story.

Buttle

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:52:14 -0700

A list was sent to law enforcement and the media today that claimed to list 1,300 “illegal immigrants” living in Utah.

Each page of the list is headed with the words “Illegal Immigrants” and each entry contains details about the individuals listed — from their address and telephone number to their date of birth and, in the case of pregnant women, their due dates. The letter was received by law enforcement and media outlets on Monday and Tuesday. A spokeswoman for Gov. Gary R. Herbert saidWednesday that an investigation was under way to see if state employees might have been involved in releasing the private information.

But Obama’s Hitler for suggesting health care reform.