James Franco: Stanley Kubrick’s “Blood Meridian” is the perfect western for these times. This piece originally appeared on Trop, which publishes weekly reviews of fake movies. What follows is James Franco's critical take on Stanley Kubrick's "Blood Meridian. " Director: Stanley Kubrick; Cast: Marlon Brando, Johnny Depp, Michael Shannon as “Toadvine,” Tim Blake Nelson, and Leonardo DiCaprio as “The Kid” It is well known that Marlon Brando had once solicited the directorial duties of Stanley Kubrick for the film that would eventually become Brando’s directorial debut and the only film he would ever direct, the existentialist western, “One Eyed Jacks,” in which he also starred opposite his forever faithful co-star Karl Malden (“Streetcar Named Desire”—stage and screen, “On the Waterfront”).
And Kubrick? This was the movie he was meant to make. His movies, coldly beautiful, are peopled by the heartless and vicious specimens of humanity: “A Clockwork Orange,” “The Shining,” “Full Metal Jacket,” “Barry Lyndon,” “Dr. What “Top Gun” has in common with “The Odyssey” IN THE SUMMER of 1986, on the verge of fourteen, I accompanied my friend and her family to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for a two-week beach vacation. The small cottage we stayed in was without a television, and after just two initial days of sunshine, a unrelenting rain came in. At first, we busied ourselves with chocolate milkshakes and gossip, several successful trips to the hermit crab store, and stuffing our first bikini tops with potholders. But eventually, her exasperated mother dropped us off at a local movie theater, where, unsure of what to see, we ordered two large buckets of popcorn, bought tickets to a movie called Top Gun, and settled in for what we were sure was a “guys’ movie.”
One hundred and ten minutes later, we staggered out into the sunlight, slackjawed and stunned. In the ten days that followed, my friend and I saw Top Gun five more times. I’ve thought a lot about what makes this movie so successful. Below, I give you the movie as monomyth. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Coens, Pekinah, & The Western. Okay, I have to get all of this Coen brothers stuff out of my system. First, I recently stumbled across a Creative Screenwriting podcast interview with the Coen brothers conducted by Jeff Goldsmith. A few interesting things were said. The brothers don’t do outlines, they don’t do research (“We’re not big on that. We’re from the make-it-up school.”), nor do they ever have, with the exception of adaptations and remakes, a clue as to how their stories will end.
In fact, one of the brothers said, “If the author doesn’t know, the audience couldn’t possibly know.” Goldsmith also asked them if they ever do character passes through the script to ensure that each character has a unique voice. Hehehe… Yup, that’s everything you’d expect from the Coens. With respect to outlines, I recall Neil Simon saying in his autobiography that he avoided outlines like the plague. And consider this – every day, the brothers meet in an office and talk through each and every scene before they write it. May I Recommend a Post-apocalyptic Movie, a Brilliant Thesis about Society: Joon-ho Bong’s ‘Snowpiercer’, Based on the French Graphic Novel ‘le Transperceneige’ Note: If you are a post-apocalyptic movie aficionado and appreciate the ones that provide an in-depth critique of our civilization and the problems that we face, then you should skip the write-up below and just watch Bong Joon-ho’s ‘Snowpiercer’, especially if you enjoy accessible Korean movies – the dialogue in the movie is mainly in English.
If you do plan on reading what’s below, please keep in mind that I don’t like providing spoilers, so I’ve refrained from discussing too many details, but instead have approached this write-up as a recommendation. The write-up will probably make more sense post-viewing. There is a certain intensity about Koreans. I realized this during the early 1990’s while attending university. One of my roommates was Korean and he was kind enough to introduce me to his world.
We became very close and he and his friends welcomed me into their midst. I spent a good three years among them. Snowpiercer International Trailer (2013) - Chris Evans Movie HD movie poster. The Importance of Living: Lin Yutang Meets the Dude – An Esoteric Take on 'The Big Lebowski,' Part 2. [Readers may wish to read An Esoteric Take on The Big Lebowski prior to reading this post] Razzle, dazzle, drazzle, drone, time for this one to come home Razzle, dazzle, drazzle, die, time for this one to come alive And hold my life until I’m ready to use it Hold my life because I just might lose it Because I just might lose it Lin Yutang – from Paul Westerberg’s Hold My Life There are a few works out there, be they novels, movies or even pieces of music, that manage to make the esoteric, exoteric. Even today, despite the unprecedented process of secularization the West has gone through, the numbers are staggering: there are 2.1 billion Christians worldwide; 1.6 billion Muslims; about 900 million Hinduists; and 350 million Buddhists.
In a nutshell, the Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity, Islam — see life as a period of probation in which man, by acting virtuously according to the doctrine set out by each religion, will earn for himself a place in heaven. Look, I’m alive. Review: 'Prometheus' is a Visually Stunning Epic Failure. An Esoteric Take on The Big Lebowski. More than a movie The Big Lebowski is the kind of miracle that, more rarely than occasionally, slips through the cracks of the Hollywood machinery. That’s because the Coen Brothers’ previous film, Fargo, earned seven Academy Nominations and won two, for best original screenplay and best actress in a leading role, Frances McDormand, incidentally Joel Coen’s wife.
So, with a lot more clout behind them, the Coen Brothers embarked on their next project, The Big Lebowski, in which the leading role of the Dude is sublimely played by Jeff Bridges. The Dude, by the way, was inspired by a real man, Jeff Dowd, a publicist who helped the Coen Brothers in launching Blood Simple, their first film. In the Dude we find the archetype of the slacker, i.e, according to the definition in the dictionary, an educated young person who is antimaterialistic, purposeless, apathetic, and usually works in a dead-end job. In fact, the Dude doesn’t seem to work at all. He does bowl, though, and with a passion. Kristen Wiig, Alice Munro And Negative Space In Fiction : Monkey See. Hide captionKristen Wiig plays Johanna Parry in Hateship Loveship, adapted from an Alice Munro short story. IFC Films Kristen Wiig plays Johanna Parry in Hateship Loveship, adapted from an Alice Munro short story.
[This piece discusses the plot of both the Alice Munro short story on which Hateship Loveship is based and the film itself, although it's frankly nothing you can't intuit from the trailer.] The Alice Munro short story "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" begins with a plain and awkward woman named Johanna arranging a shipment of furniture and shopping for a dress. She's leaving town to go to the man she expects to marry, though he hasn't yet asked. Edith is a young teenager, and with her at the center of the narrative, we leap back in time to learn how Johanna came to be leaving: Edith and her friend Sabitha played a cruel joke in which they made it appear that this man, Sabitha's father, was writing Johanna love letters. Of course, films don't work this way. The 5 Most WTF Moments From 'The Counselor' Acidic, cynical, perhaps having a twisted laugh on those who think they’re in control of their own fate, Ridley Scott’s “The Counselor” is an incredibly moribund and bleak poem about greed, chance, and the dark side of man.
It’s like a merciless and blistering riff on the adage, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.” And coming from the mind of celebrated author Cormac McCarthy (“The Road,” “Blood Meridian”), known for grim and unforgiving stories of fate, morality and the dark shadows of human nature, what did you expect? It’s classic McCarthy chiseled down to the bloody bone (and note this isn’t his first script: McCarthy wrote a screenplay for 1977’s “The Gardener's Son”—watch it in full here).
Starring Michael Fassbender, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt and Penelope Cruz, "The Counselor" is also one of the darkest and weirdest movies a studio has released this year. “A cologne ad for the scent of despair,” L.A. 1. “Hey-Its-That Guy!” “RoboCop”: An ’80s classic reengineered — but why? A review of Her by Ray Kurzweil. (credit: Warner Brothers) Her, written, directed and produced by Spike Jonze, presents a nuanced love story between a man and his operating system.
Although there are caveats I could (and will) mention about the details of the OS and how the lovers interact, the movie compellingly presents the core idea that a software program (an AI) can — will — be believably human and lovable. This is a breakthrough concept in cinematic futurism in the way that The Matrix presented a realistic vision that virtual reality will ultimately be as real as, well, real reality. Jonze started his feature-motion-picture career directing Being John Malkovich, which also presents a realistic vision of a future technology — one that is now close at hand: being able to experience reality through the eyes and ears of someone else.
With emerging eye-mounted displays that project images onto the wearer’s retinas and also look out at the world, we will indeed soon be able to do exactly that. More realistic, but imperfect. The Wind Rises; Wolf Children | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist. Over the years, my membership in NYFCO has introduced me to some truly great animated films, all of which I would regard as superior to the typically overpraised Hollywood blockbuster.
Two of them were Brad Bird films: “The Iron Giant” and “Ratatouille”, films that respectively deal with a friendship between a young boy and a giant robot from outer space, and a French rat who aspires to be a gourmet chef. I also loved “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Toy Story 3”, films targeting a more youthful audience than Bird’s animated features. (Both are reviewed here.) But towering over them is “Princess Mononoke”, a 1997 Japanese anime that was directed by Hayao Miyazaki whose swan song “The Wind Rises”, a biopic of the engineer responsible for the Zero fighter plane of WWII, was judged by NYFCO as best animated feature this year—the only choice that coincided with my own. The film features two love affairs, one between Jiro Horikoshi and airplanes and the other with his wife Naoko.
Like this: 25 Things You Didn't Know About the Original ROBOCOP ~ The Geek Twins. The RoboCop remake is due to be released on February 12, and I thought it would interesting to take a look back at the original, which had a rich and complex production. Here are twenty five facts about the making of RoboCop that you probably didn't know about. 1. Screenwriter Edward Neumeier says he got the idea for RoboCop from working on the set of Blade Runner. It was about a cop hunting robots, which made Neumeier think of reversing it to make a robot cop hunting humans. 2. 3. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. Sources: What do you think of the movie? Related Posts10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Captain EO13 Most Surprising Facts About The Avengers15 Cool Things You Didn't Know About The Dark Knight Rises.
Movie mistakes - goofs, bloopers, pictures, quotes and trivia from thousands of movies. 50 best movie twist endings of all time. 10 Alternative Christmas Eve Movies. Fancy something different to watch this Christmas Eve but still want to retain the festive spirit? Here are 10 alternative Christmas movies a little different from the usual fare: 10. The Apartment The Oscar-winning classic comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine is perhaps less cynical than some of director Billy Wilder's other caustic comedies, but it does poke fun at some elements of Christmas most of us would rather do without: insufferable work parties, drinking to stave off loneliness and stubborn colds. 9. Terry Gilliam shows us how alive and well the tradition of Christmas is even in a dystopian future. 8. 7.
A popular film with the Church, Monty Python's Life of Brian reminded us that organised Christianity is good on its word of tolerance and forgiveness, with its endless campaign to see the film banned at the time of its release on grounds of blasphemy and, presumably, lack of a sense of humour. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. Nothing screams "Christmas! " 1. 50 Best Documentaries of All Time. Capturing the Drama of Real Life As any second grade teacher knows, children learn what they want to learn. Bobby doesn’t feel like learning division today? Not gonna happen. Unless…well, unless he learns without realizing it. The old pill in the ice cream trick, so to speak. In a way, good documentaries serve a similar package. Now, without further ado, grab some popcorn, sit back, and dim the lights. Methodology: like our books piece, the selections for our Definitive Men’s Movie Collection represent our favorites, “considered in the light of how much they changed our lives, and might change yours.”
Movie Review - 'Her' - A Man And His Machine, Finding Out What Love Is. Hide captionIn the sci-fi romance Her, a lonely man (Joaquin Phoenix) finds love in a rather unexpected place — with a computer operating system named Samantha. Warner Bros. Her is the best film of the year by a so-wide margin. It's gorgeous, funny, deep — and I can hear some smart aleck say, "If you love it so much, why don't you marry it?
" Let me tell you, I'd like to! I certainly identify with the protagonist, Theodore Twombly, who falls in love with his computer operating system, his OS, which calls itself — sorry, I gotta say "who calls herself" — Samantha, and who sounds like a breathy young woman. When Her begins, it doesn't seem as if it's going to be a romance but a sci-fi social satire, set in an unspecified future Los Angeles in which the architecture has no connection to people — they stroll through faceless plazas gazing into electronic devices, talking to unseen listeners. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore, and it's the performance of the year.
'The Great Beauty': High Culture Without the Highbrowness. Years ago, while a student at USC’s Cinema Production Department, I took a class taught by Arthur Knight, whose The Liveliest Art: A Panoramic History of the Movies was a standard textbook at colleges and universities all over the world. In it he argued that cinema was the liveliest art because it incorporated all arts. It’s a notion that was dear and sacrosanct to all of us cinephiles.
For centuries it was cathedrals that incorporated all arts; then it was opera; in the 20th century, supposedly, cinema. Nowadays that’s hardly the case. Seeing Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty, therefore, was a surprise. Critics have praised the film but, I’d venture, for the wrong reasons, such as, for example, a vivid depiction of decadence in the Berlusconi era (really? What most critics cannot realistically know is that in Italy culture retains a largely regional denomination. It’s most unusual that a film would deal bluntly with high culture, as The Great Beauty does. Golden Ratio On Film: The Math In There Will Be Blood's Cinematography. The Onion Looks Back At 'The Shining' | Video. The Onion Reviews 'The Hunger Games: Catching Fire' | Video. The Onion Reviews 'Gravity' | Video. Chris Hadfield ejected from movie theatre for loudly heckling Gravity.
All Is Lost—And Who Was Doing the Thinking? The twisted mind of “Ender’s Game” Guilt, history and “Ender’s Game” Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir. How to Make a Massacre: Tobe Hooper on Masters of Horror. Puhnner Blog - Movie reviews - Spout. Tiny Terror: Roman Polanski. Why 'Back to the Future' Is Secretly Horrifying. The Horrifying Secret 'The Matrix' Reveals About Humanity. Side Effects – review | Film. Slavoj Zizek On "They Live" We Know What The Shining Is Really About, And We're Going To Tell You. Perhaps. The 6 Weirdest Theories About "The Shining" The Onion Looks Back at ‘Jaws’ Open Thread. Criterion Collection edition of Seconds, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Rock Hudson, reviewed. Review: All Night Long (1962) - Jon Fortgang, writer and editor. Rancid Popcorn » patrick mcgoohan. Ryan Gosling: “Do I look like a feminist?” “The Conjuring”: Right-wing, woman-hating and really scary.
‘World War Z’... for Zionism? Being There 1979 : Film Analysis/Review -Symbolism, Esoteric Paradigms, and the Creation of Reality. “28 Days Later” Luhrmann’s “Gatsby” is like “crayoning Donald Duck into ‘The Last Supper’” The Shining: Kubrick's Gold Story 1/4 film analysis by Rob Ager. THE THING film analysis (update) "Was Childs infected?" part 1/2. ALIEN film analysis PT 1 by Rob Ager. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE in-depth analysis by Rob Ager 2010. In the Year of the Pig - The Screen:' In the Year of the Pig,' Documentary, Bows. Film | Film Reviews | This Is What Defeat Looks Like: Zero Dark Thirty Reviewed. Film | Film Features | Cut! Not Enough Hollywood Directors Know When To Quit.
‘Disturbing’ & ‘Misleading’ by Steve Coll. Perfectionist, my ass! | shadowplay. ‘Full Metal Jacket’ review by Jacob Olsen. Locked Inside the Kubrick Cult | City Arts | City Arts. Mstrmnd. THE SHINING (1979) analysis by Rob Ager. Thunder Road is one of the first, and finest, automotive action movies off the Hollywood lot | Film | Watch This. Is ‘The Great Gatsby’ a Movie or a Shopping Promo? The Julie Taylor Test: How to tell if a TV actor is bad. 'Trance' Is an Intelligent, Multi-Layered Film. 'Oblivion' Suffers From Derivative Elements. Everything you were afraid to ask about “Upstream Color” Upstream Color is the first masterpiece of the year. The Place Beyond the Pines starring Ryan Gosling, reviewed. Muscles, Fire, Guns, the New Frontier and Inner City Savages! - the Right Wing Mythology of Eighties' Action Films.
Oscar Travesties, Day 5: Objectively Terrible Art - Hollywood Prospectus Blog. Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln and the Myth of Hollywood. Netflix Movies On Streaming That Are Actually Good: 7 Tools To Help You Find Them. Pick of the week: A Nazi’s daughter’s painful awakening. ‘Lore,’ by Cate Shortland, Views Children in Postwar Germany. Steven Soderbergh’s Caper Film ‘Side Effects’ Arthur J Bullock Jr's review of Prometheus [HD] “Side Effects”: A chilly, mysterious thriller ends a strange and brilliant career.
"Prometheus": A Movie About Alien Nephilim and Esoteric Enlightenment. Quentin Tarantino talks to himself. Andrew O’Hehir’s 10 Best Movies of 2012. ‘Barbara,’ Directed by Christian Petzold. 2012 In Review: 10 Films Worth Going Out Of Your Way For : Monkey See. Pick of the week: Kathryn Bigelow’s mesmerizing post-9/11 nightmare. “It’s a Wonderful Life”: Occupy Bedford Falls! Is feminism worth defending with torture? “Killer Joe”: Matthew McConaughey’s comeback gets creepier. Pick of the week: Brad Pitt’s ultra-bleak thriller. 11 Classic Lindsay Lohan Faces To Look Forward To Seeing In "Liz & Dick" “Liz & Dick”: An instant camp classic. The James Bond Myth.
The World Is Not Enough - By Frank Jacobs. Casablanca 2 fact-checked: Did Rick and Ilsa really get it on? Robocop revisited: Paul Verhoeven’s caustic political wit feels as radical as ever. “The Walking Dead” ups the carnage. ‘Headshot,” Directed by Pen-ek Ratanaruang. The Eternal Leonard Maltin: The Movie Guide That Gives And Gives : Monkey See.