Duh-duh-duh-duh-dun-dun-duuuuuuh! What, you don’t recognize that? That’s the textualized theme from the 80’s TV action extravaganza about ex- special forces turned do-good mercenaries, The A-Team: The show that introduced the world to Mr. T. and a young, impressionable Dan to the fact guns are only used for making dirt shoot up the ground around people’s feet. Casting was only just filled out, but the The A-Team is already cranking in full-on production and is well on its way to hitting …
Author: Dan
Both 2012 and it’s film prequel, 2012, march steadily closer. One will entertain us in a thrill-ride of white-knuckled apocalyptic escapism. The other will explode the earth and send us burning, drowning, suffocating and crushed to an early grave. Can’t wait! While 2012 (The Movie!) holds no allure for me –as no massive annihilation spectacle has since 9-11/New Orleans/ Thailand/China– it sure does pack a lot of spectacle. The sheer amount of destruction is a feat of modern CGI science …
Bright Star is what used to be surefire Masterpiece Theater bait. A serious, deliberate and restrained piece of lushly designed period romance and tragedy. A film where moments and vistas swirl around its centerpiece stars, all managed with a steady and deliberate directorial hand. All said in today’s bombastic, spoon-fed world of cinema… that’s some boring crap. And yet, it’s like comparing Bach to Beatles. Where most mainstream films feel like they’ve got a bouncy hook and melody to bring …
First, a confession: Open a film with a vast expanse of stars and you’ve instantly grabbed my inner geek by vice grip right where it counts. Put a knobby starship plowing through that expanse of stars to regions unknown and you’ve won my goodwill. Hello, Pandorum. As the most recent big screen addition to the grime-crusted house deep space sci-fi morphed into circa 1979, German director Christian Alvart’s Pandorum manages to kick off in disorienting fashion, nicely setting up unanswered …
Somewhere between the Oscar-winning geneses of 1980’s Fame and its 2009 remake, technology changed fame’s definition. Once the reward for hard work and craft refinement, fame has become the reward for cheaply hawking the three B’s (belly, breasts and butt). Where fame and the title of “celebrity” (IE- an individual worthy of celebration) were once purchased in the currency of dedicated sweat, it’s now easily traded via the narcissistically shallow efforts to amass a legion of social network followers with …
Michael Caine. The guy’s thespianized in both dreck (Jaws 3) and tentpole (Batman) and everything in between (The Cider House Rules), but he’s got that je ne sais quoi that keeps everyone coming back for more. Most recently, he’s become the lovable Grampa Caine personae of the Miss Congeniality and Children of Men variety, but before all that he was a gun-totin’ hard case in 1971’s Get Carter. Three cheers for the upcoming Harry Brown, then– it looks like we’re getting …
Unexpectedly pleasant movies are always a nice surprise. After Cloudy With a Chance of Meatball‘s lackluster marketing efforts and a string of mediocre trailers, I’d all but written it off. Oops. Totally unfamiliar with the children’s book of the same name, I went in to Sony Animation’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs with an unattached blank slate– a slate quickly loaded with a congenial array of off-center comedy and LOL zing. Who knew? Cloudy barrels forward with a technicolor …
Jennifer’s Body arrives not as simply a tongue-through-cheek horror film aimed at enticing the teen crowd, but also loaded with a hat-trick of questions: 1) Is Diablo Cody (writer of Juno and Showtime’s United States of Tara) a 2-hit wonder? 2) Does Megan Fox have an acting career beyond Transformers? and 3) Is the movie any good? The answer: probably not, kind of and not really. In move-geek circles, a lot’s been made of the fact Oscar Winning screenwriter Diablo …