I have made no secret of my love for Roger Ebert and his writing. Notice I didn’t say movie reviews or critiques. Mr. Ebert and I don’t always see eye-to-eye, but his reviews are always a pleasure to read. He is articulate, funny and knows his stuff. Even with all his health problems, he is sharp and upbeat and flowing with life. I was reading his review of Hot Tub Time Machine when I came across this gem of a …
Category: Commentary
I might be the only person on the planet that actually enjoyed Blade: Trinity. But I blame that on my man-crush of Ryan Reynolds, my lust for Jessica Biel and my thorough enjoyment of Blade and Blade II. I have no problem with more Blade films hitting theaters, but I do have one request: No more Wesley Snipes. Yes, according to MTV, Snipes has a raging boner for more Blade, (you can read/watch his full comments here) but the highlights …
Shutter Island is the first novel by Dennis Lehane I’ve ever read and I loved every page of his deftly crafted thriller. I haven’t read Mystic River or Gone Baby Gone, but I enjoyed both movies immensely and my love of those two films actually prompted me to give Lehane’s writing a chance. After giving snaps and a circle to Shutter Island, I picked up Any Given Day and it’s waiting patiently on my bookshelf. As soon as I finish …
I’ve opined many times on this very website about how I think 3-D was, is and will always be gimmicky, irrelevant and 100 percent lame. I have yet to see a movie, including last year’s darlings, Avatar and Up, where the three-dimensional technology enhanced the experience and story, making the feature unequivocally better. I can also say without hesitation there is no soon or yet to be movie that has piqued my interest because it will feature 3-D. I hate …
Early word on Alice in Wonderland is that it’s wretched. Not that early buzz matters when pressed up against the hairy-chested brawn of studio marketing and Johnny “loved by all” Depp– (doing his best impression of Elijah Wood). To celebrate, Obsessed with film rolls out the Alice In Wonderland red carpet with an interesting take on Johnny Depp and what he’s become “at the hands of Tim Burton”. In the last five years, Depp has made the following films: Charlie …
Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints on winning Super Bowl XLIV in what may have been the most boring NFL championship since, well, the last time the Indianapolis Colts went to the Super Bowl in 2007. And while I love football as much as the next dude, I won’t lie – I anticipate the commercial breaks in the hope I’ll see some genius advertising or some phenomenal movie preview. This year’s commercials and trailers were ho-hum, except for the Google …
James Cameron must have a direct line to God or something, because the naysayers (including me) guffawed at the ballooned budget of 1997’s Titanic and predicted it would bomb at the box office. Instead, as we all know, Titanic became the worldwide and domestic box office champ, a record that’s held until today when, ironically, another big budget Cameron epic booted the iceberg-doomed ocean liner from number one to number two. And yes, I will admit, back on December 17, …
If an independent movie plays in an independent cinema and no one goes to see it, did it really exist? On last Friday’s KVNU Movie Show, we were asked why a community like Logan, Utah couldn’t have a successful independent cinema. Moving away from Logan, the heart of the question was really: “Why don’t mass audiences support independent film”? I gave some quick answer about how it’s marketing and awareness and word of mouth and when independent films have almost …