03 August 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on August 3rd, 2009 @ 06:36:44 pm, using 173 words, 104 views
Are reviewers who can look at Judd Apatow’s latest movie opening winning #1 by a substantial margin with almost 2 and a half hours of movie and deciding it’s proof that he’s failing. But here’s a guy who’s decided that Apatow is on his way down. I’ve seen “40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up,” “Superbad,” and some of the ones he just produced, and I saw “Funny People.” The latter is too long, as he gives plenty of opportunities to his actors, including his own kids, and may actually be two movies in one, as another reviewer claimed. But it’s good throughout and is on the same level as the others. Will it pull the famous $100 m.? That’s really the mark of the movie’s quality, which is the point of the review. Who knows yet? But let’s decide that Apatow’s done.
Until he’s not, apparently, but he has to make duds first for the narrative to work, which means “Funny People” has to be a dud, otherwise none of it makes sense. That couldn’t happen, could it?
14 July 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on July 14th, 2009 @ 05:31:41 pm, using 257 words, 82 views
As someone who literally laughed himself sore reading Larry Doyle’s I Love You, Beth Cooper, I waited for the movie with anticipation. But the reviews, such as this one and the ones it links to, kept me from seeing it. It sounds to me like the problem wasn’t the actors, director, or story, although that pretty well sums up the complaints. To me, it seems like they got the wrong format.
Beth Cooper should have been a cartoon.
Doyle’s greatest claim to fame is being a writer for “The Simpsons.” Now picture “The Simpsons” as a live action (that is, real people) series. Real people, not cartoons, doing and saying the things that have kept it going 20 whatever years. Maybe it would have worked, but isn’t the humor in large part from it being a cartoon, able to do things and create images that just don’t happen without the special effects in real life?
Now consider the book, which was a frantic cartoon set to narrative. Run a Hummer into a house? Maybe works in “real life” but hard to fail as a cartoon. That’s the deal here. They took the book version of a cartoon and tried to make a regular movie out of it. Would the cartoon have worked? Would anyone have gone to see it? (Give a cartoon version of Hayden Jessica Rabbit’s body and then ask that question.)
It’s too bad. The book is hilarious and memorable, for good reasons. I hoped the movie would be. But I was really wanting a cartoon.
18 June 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on June 18th, 2009 @ 08:17:36 pm, using 370 words, 44 views
In honor of the GRAN FINAL tomorrow night of “Las Tontas No Van al Cielo” ("Dumb Girls Don’t Go to Heaven"), we’ll do our own GRAN FINAL for Shop Class as Soulcraft, which we’ve been talking about below. We’ve been critical of the book, but make no mistake. It’s a book you should read and think about. For all its idiosyncratic and neurotic subtext, it raises a topic that should be front and center in our deliberations of our futures, not just the enervation of modern organization but the deliberate construction of the “Flow” experience (which oddly is never mentioned but presages this book by over a decade). And any book that raises Moral Mazes to a high place of honor has substance to it.
So I thought I’d direct you to a more blatantly supportive review in case I’ve actually dissuaded you from picking the book up. This review catches most of anything positive I or the other reviews should have said but didn’t. Here’s an example. Then go read it all.
Por favor.
In contrast, Crawford argues forcefully that a manual skill – or a trade – is not, as many would imagine, just brute physical work without any intellectual component. Manual skills, from piano playing to motor-bike repair have to be learned; they require real knowledge that has to be honed over many hours of practice and experience. The end results are real too: if you play the piano badly nobody wants to listen; if you build the house poorly, it falls down; if you don’t repair the washing machine, it doesn’t work.
There is no escape from the consequences of bad workmanship or an ill-learned craft. The converse is that work well done gains the respect of co-workers and customers alike, and provides the objective means of judging the worker’s competency. Therein lies the satisfaction, security, and, increasingly, in this world of nonexpertise, the financial reward.
We shouldn’t just support the shop classes and niche motorcycle shops to achieve it. It’s as much inside as outside. We just have to make it a priority and stop blocking the paths that get different people there in different ways. This book may help us make that start.
22 May 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on May 22nd, 2009 @ 09:32:53 pm, using 153 words, 82 views
“Don’t trust me on this movie. It rubbed me the wrong way. I can understand, as an abstract concept, why some people would find it entertaining. It sure sounds intriguing: “______________________________.” If that sounds like fun to you, don’t listen to sourpuss here.”
Roger Ebert supplies a great example today of what we talk about when we whack on reviewers who don’t take the work or the audience into account in their reviews and admit that the reviewer’s personal foibles may make the review a problem, not what’s being reviewed. He reeeaaaaalllllly disliked this movie, but says, hey, maybe you won’t. Here’s why but this may not bother you. Ebert can still pull the “I’m educating the unwashed” game occasionally, but these kinds of reviews show that he understands the interplay that’s needed. Now go read the whole thing and find out what movie he’s warning you about. But you may like it anyway.
12 April 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on April 12th, 2009 @ 05:04:31 pm, using 478 words, 87 views
If you had a minimum wage or worse job during high school or college, surrounded by folks who, for whatever reason, would be listing that as their occupation for the foreseeable future, you will most likely relate to “Adventureland” even beyond the nice little coming-of-age story and romance you’ll find there. Jesse Eisenberg is the grad school wannabe in 1987 suddenly forced to come up with tuition over the summer despite “mowing lawns” as the most advanced item on his resume. So he ends up at a second-tier amusement park in Pittsburgh, run by Bill Hader and Kristin Wiig (in predictably amusing performances) and meets the variety of characters you’d expect. The ones most of note are Ryan Reynolds, proving again that he can act and turning a jerky cheating husband who will still be at Adventureland when the face and pecs are gone into someone you can sympathize with (as you want to smack him), and the fast-rising Kristen Stewart, pre-"Twilight,” in yet another really good performance that gives you hope that, should she avoid Lohan Disease, she will have a remarkable career, in a good way. The movie’s at 88 at Rotten Tomatoes as I write and deserves it. It’s not a “100 Best” winner later in life but it’s a nice if familiar story well told, with great details, and conspicuously felt by those involved. You can find a nice summaries and insight about it here and here.
From one:
It’s a little painful to watch Brennan and Em make their grievous emotional errors because their mistakes are the kind that people actually make.
The script and some of the drama could have been tightened a little to avoid some plot awkwardness and story drift.
While both “Superbad” and “Adventureland” are about growing up in difficult circumstances, the newer movie is a much more involved and less-obvious film.
This movie, in a lot of ways, reminds me of my job in high school working at a grocery store. It was the kind of job in which book knowledge meant very little as you encountered a messy world with many different types of people and employees.
From the other:
Mottola moves his actors beyond the usual kid-pic stereotypes. His rapport with them is total. His scenario is excessively padded, especially toward the end, and he showers us with at least one too many goofball.gross-out scenes. But audiences expecting another dumb wallow will be startled, and I hope enlivened, by this movie’s core of feeling.
Two last things to remember that you pull from this movie. One, the trailer makes the movie look funnier and more “Superbad” than it is, despite each having the same writer/director. That doesn’t make it bad, just different, and the promoters should have had more confidence in the quality of the movie they actually had.
Two, never eat the corn dogs.
20 March 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on March 20th, 2009 @ 06:38:15 pm, using 172 words, 89 views
One of the better blogs among those you never visit because it’s somewhere between 12th tier and this blog, upon which the entire rest of the blogosphere rests, is Alterdestiny. Lots of good stuff of different types–history, music, sports, movies, politics, Latin America (really)–one of those sites for folks more eclectic than eaten up with one subject. While they have many good posts up right now, as usual, one that managed to surprise and lead me to recommend it to you is this one, a review of “The Philadelphia Story.” This is one of the Katherine Hepburn launching pads of the 1930s/early 1940s, with Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, a class-based comedy that still says more about people and romance than practically any movie made in my considerable lifetime. Nothing profound in the review since it recognizes good plots, themes, and performances. But, if you’re not familiar with the movie or just want the grin that will come remembering it, head on over. And then make it a habit.
17 March 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on March 17th, 2009 @ 05:35:49 pm, using 130 words, 30 views
Interesting heads-up at Climate Progress on a new British film that looks back on this time period from 2055, when all the weather crap we could have mitigated if we weren’t psychotic has hit the fan. The name? “The Age of Stupid.” Which says the best of anything this period of history, for the last 30 years, when we screwed up virtually everything–from education and religion to sports and higher education to weather, water, and energy. With the institutions that could have stopped it–media, universities, and the Democrats–leading the Stupid.
“The Age of Stupid.” You don’t even have to write the book. The title says it all. As does the movie, apparently. Check out the review, then give the movie some cash if it comes near your travel range.
27 February 2009
Written by
billconnelly1 (
)
Published on February 27th, 2009 @ 04:55:49 pm, using 84 words, 29 views
WARNING. DO NOT PRESS PLAY ON THE VIDEO BELOW IF YOU GET SUPER QUEASY AT THE SIGHT OF VOMIT, BECAUSE…WELL, YOU’LL BE SUPER QUEASY IN ABOUT FIFTY SECONDS. If you don’t have a sensitive stomach, and you’re in the mood for the latest (and possibly greatest) Apatow movie gross-out gags, click on the below scene from I Love You, Man. Holy crap did I laugh hard (at work) at this. (Via Videogum)
I love Judd Apatow movies.
22 February 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on February 22nd, 2009 @ 04:35:20 pm, using 435 words, 51 views
Maybe it’s time to switch out op-ed writers with movie and book reviewers. Just as it’s clear that we as a nation have been suffering from institutional arteriosclerosis, those who blow interpreting event around us have failed almost to the same degree as the reviewers whose exploits we chronicle here regularly. Here’s solid evidence for the concept: an op-ed writer who understands “Slumdog Millionaire” as a Dickensian fable, not reality but the hope of love and courage over all odds, you know, the sort of thing we’ve had to have as a species to keep going in the face of existential reality.
. . . A year ago at this time, the favorite movies for the best picture Oscar - “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood” - cast a totally hopeless eye on human events.
That’s not the story we want to hear today. Dickens, himself, had to escape his own youthful experiences with the grimmer aspects of life in London. The success of “The Pickwick Papers” in 1836 meant that he’d never have to look back on those days.
But he did. “Oliver Twist” was his next novel, and it exhibits the two great characteristics of all his books - a passion for life, particularly people, and a determination not to forget the situation he escaped from. It’s what biographer Edgar Johnson calls “the interwoven comedy and tragedy of the human struggle.”
And that’s what makes “Slumdog Millionaire” resonate - the realism along with the hopefulness.
Compare that to the idiot quote in the post just below by a noted [sic] film reviewer for a noted [sic] magazine out of a city completely out of touch with the rest of the planet, a guy who clearly wouldn’t have seen much of value in Dickens either. And note that that reviewer laments that this year’s offerings aren’t the amoral, nihilistic hellholes that the op-ed guy recognizes for the hopeless garbage they really were, while winning the applause of the “sophisticated reviewers.” (Let’s guess how many students will be reading Dickens ten years from now and how many the tripe that the reviewer has just published as his take on modern commentary. The guy even manages to rip Maureen Dowd (a good thing, I admit) without realizing that HE is the movie reviewer version.)
So let’s just move them around. Let clueless reviewers opine on politics (where they can’t possibly do worse than the pundits of the last two decades). And let the op-ed guys have at a field where they clearly have gathered more clues than the plak who have filled the reviewing arteries. How could it be bad?
04 February 2009
Written by
billconnelly1 (
)
Published on February 4th, 2009 @ 05:47:05 pm, using 61 words, 47 views
List Anything reviews reviewers in list form.
I agree with #10, and #5-1. Caddyshack is clearly great, as are Anchorman, which just gets funnier every time I see it, and (especially) Coming to America, which has aged as well as any Eddie movie. I’m not surprised that Dumb and Dumber got bad reviews, but…it’s great, and it’s actually aged pretty well too.
02 February 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on February 2nd, 2009 @ 07:19:25 pm, using 26 words, 48 views
All I have to say, any movie that beats “Slumdog Millionaire” for Best Movie better be one of the best damn movies of all freakin’ time.
29 January 2009
Written by
mdconnelly (
)
Published on January 29th, 2009 @ 09:01:44 pm, using 192 words, 57 views
I know that I’ve made clear my long-time preference for well-done teenage sex comedies here, but, that said, let me point you over to a movie not getting nearly the attention or audience that it deserves. “Last Chance Harvey,” likely to be Dustin Hoffman’s last leading man role with the impossible to fail Emma Thompson. Yes, an old geezer love story with, thankfully, no sex or frontal nudity. Just intelligent people doing an intelligent story. And, given the state of American intelligence right now? Probably gone after this weekend.
How good? It’s got 70 over at Rotten Tomatoes, complete with this synopsis:
Consensus: Last Chance Harvey is an above-average story that graduates to potent romantic drama based on the chemistry and charm of its top-notch performers.
Of course, if that’s not what you want, you can always wait for the next horror/slasher/blood flick or whatever crap Kate Hudson hurls out there next. But a good movie done well? Well, not many of those out there right now. So, if you are interested, head over to the theater this weekend. Otherwise, it might be your, dare we say it?, last chance.
Sorry.
Permanent Link