I’ve been to New York City twice in my 35 years, once for business and then again last November to run the 2008 ING New York City Marathon. Both trips to the city did nothing but foster my fondness and awe for The City that Never Sleeps. From running through Brooklyn and Queens on a crisp autumn morning with 50,000 other runners, to looking down from the Empire State Building at the sea of stars that is Manhattan, to eating …
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Surely you’ve heard the buzz and outcry surrounding Paramount Picture’s decision to withhold G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra from the bulk of film critics this week, instead giving a few web mainstays like Devin Faraci of CHUD.com and Harry Knowles from Aint’tItCoolNews.com the chance to see the much maligned Stephen Sommers movie in advance. Frankly, I think it’s a great move by Paramount. They proved with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen that a 20 percent fresh rating on RottenTomatoes.com …
Each summer, studios drop a late-season, B-grade thriller into theaters in hopes of seeing it make a run at a dark horse weekend. 2005: Into the Blue and Red Eye. Last year: Death Race and Mirrors. Two of those four qualify for a the Showcase of Shame and both, incidentally, were not released in 2008. But so much for old memories. It’s summer 2009 and this year we’ve got A Perfect Getaway. Written and directed by the very capable craftsman …
With all the flaccid outrage (read: Why didn’t I get invited?) by critics over Paramount’s decision to screen G.I. Joe to only a handful of audiences and critics (including CHUD’s spot-on review by Devin Faraci) and KSL’s Doug Wright mistakenly reporting director Stephen Sommers quit the project (he didn’t- nor was he ever fired), a huge question remains: “OK, but is it any good?” The short answer: Yes. Remember Stephen Sommers pre-Van Helsing? He’s back with a GI Joe that’s …
October 9, 2009 is cool for two reasons now – first, it’s my dad’s birthday, and second, it’s when Zombieland with Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin hits cinemas. You know Harrelson, because he’s old and been around for awhile, but Eisenberg was curly-haired nerd recently seen in Adventureland, and Emma Stone climbed the ladder of fame in Superbad as being the only girl on the planet who would possibly sleep with Jonah Hill. And you know …
Andy challenged me to post my own trailer (Did you miss me? No? Fine.), so here it is in all it’s excessively long-named glory. But first, four things. 1) Vampires are dumb. 2) John C. Reilly playing one proves it. 3) This vampire craze is about to implode– The Vampire’s Assistant may help. 4) Somewhere in the middle, I kind of laughed.
Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones is one of the most powerful and emotional novels I have read in my entire life. It moved me in such a way that a film version didn’t seem possible or plausible. That’s the beauty of books and reading, the “movie” is painted in our minds by virtue of our imagination, not Hollywood’s. Nevertheless, my fears were stymied when Peter Jackson (The Lord of The Rings) was tagged to direct Sebold’s masterpiece. My only concern …
I was singing the praises of Coraline last night via my Facebook status when I came across the trailer for the new Wes Anderson (The Darjeeling Limited) stop-motion-animation movie, The Fantastic Mr. Fox. It wasn’t by coincidence I happened upon another seemingly stop-motion gem, rather I was reading up on Coraline director Henry Selick, who, it was noted in his Wikipedia biography, worked on The Fantastic Mr. Fox with Anderson, as well as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. As …