Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts

Thursday, January 17, 2008

A-M and P.M.

Man, I love this scene between Ann-Margret (drool) and McQueen in "The Cincinnati Kid" -- she's about the only actress who could hold her own against McQueen in a scene. Ssssmokin!

Friday, September 21, 2007

Holliday

Doc Holliday versus Johnny Ringo

I just threw that in for fun; great scene. Kilmer did a great job as Holliday in "Tombstone."

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Clown Kick...

Guess I'm thinking about clownish things because Autumn's approaching, and it makes me think of Halloween, and spooky things, and clowns creep me out.

Classic...



That's such a great bit!

And this, man, oh man.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Yes...

I'm pleased that a few others agreed with my general dislike of LMS (bolded, below); this is from Wikipedia; I love the line about the bamboo under the fingernails...

Reviews
The film has a "92% fresh" rating from critics and 96% fresh from users at Rotten Tomatoes.[10]

Michael Medved gave Little Miss Sunshine four stars (out of four) saying that "…this startling and irresistible dark comedy counts as one of the very best films of the year…" and that directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the movie itself, and actors Alan Arkin, Abigail Breslin and Steve Carell deserve Oscar nominations.[11]

Joel Siegel gave Little Miss Sunshine a rarely-awarded 'A' rating, saying that "Orson Welles would have to come back to life for this not to make my year-end Top 10 list."[12] Breslin's depiction of Olive Hoover has also moved many critics, with USA Today's Claudia Puig saying "If Olive had been played by any other little girl, she would not have affected us as mightily as it did." [13]

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a C rating, calling the characters "walking, talking catalogs of screenwriter index-card data."[14] Jim Ridley of The Village Voice called the movie a "rickety vehicle that travels mostly downhill" and a "Sundance clunker."[15] Anna Nimouse of the National Review writes that the "film is praised as a 'feel-good' film; perhaps for moviegoers who like bamboo under their fingernails. If you are miserable, then Little Miss Sunshine is the film for you."[16]

On the December 22, 2006 edition of The Tonight Show, Dustin Hoffman, who was on the show along with Abigail Breslin, said, "It's[specify] one of the best performances that I have seen in my entire life."

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Little Miss Sunshine of a bitch

I'm still not talking about California, yet. Sorry!

But I had to mention that I saw Little Miss Sunshine over the week off, among other movies (The Wedding Crashers, Borat, and a couple of others I've already forgotten). I had a very Elaine-watching-English-Patient moment with Little Miss Sunshine (LMS). I hated that fucking movie. Wow, I don't even know where to begin with it. It's like a big dungheap of contrivances passing for funny, and empty windbagging passing for meaning. Overrated! Overrated! J'accuse!

There's some general thematic thread about winners and losers that runs through it, but the pat ending kind of cheapens that, I guess. But the setup for it, lordy -- like anybody would even want their daughter to try out for a beauty pageant at all, let alone a little chubby, cherubic girl like Olive Hoover was. C'mon. But they go with it because otherwise there's no movie there. Grandpa snorts heroin -- why? I guess so he can OD on it later and end up carried out of the hospital to make the trip with them (hey, National Lampoon's Vacation did it better -- the minute Grandpa turned up in the story, I was like "Oh, I bet he'll die en route and they'll have to transport him. Wow.) Why is Steve Carrell's (sic) character a gay suicide survivor? How does that actually serve the plot in any way, shape, or form? In no way, except for him to whine about being the world's foremost Proust scholar (overlooked by the guy who stole his man from him, but that's incidental to being passed over for a MacArthur Fellowship gained by his rival). Why is the freak Nietzsche-reading misfit deliberately mute in his quest for the Air Force Academy? Just something quirky for him to do, which is cast aside when, quite by accident, he discovers he's colorblind. Meh. Greg Kinnear's character is asshole du jour, another failure (reminded me a lot of my stepdad, actually -- even how he dressed), but that's not really very relevant -- I mean, he has an epiphany that a girlie beauty pageant's not good for his kid? No shit, Sherlock. And the mom realizes it, too, I guess -- she's mostly a cipher, filling in the Shelley Duvall (sic) role, I guess. And why does the bus crap out near the beginning -- oh, because it's a quirky thing to happen, gives the characters something to do.

The actors did well with the parts, and the girl playing Olive was cute as a button, in her geeky way, but Arkin was given a freebie for his teensy, largely pointless role in that movie -- I mean, he won an Oscar for that, didn't it? Didn't that movie with a bunch of Oscars?

Sure, the family comes together at the end, but it's all so much tinsel masquerading as gold. I know like 90% of the country/world loves this movie, but I was shocked by how much I didn't like it. I was searching for explanations, like trying to see what else the writer and directors did -- turns out, not much (they've directed music videos, the writer wrote a couple other things, but not much). And it showed. Spousette didn't like it much, either, although she was gentler with it than I was. I guess I write too much to cut a writer any slack in a story. But I'm very glad I only saw it on DVD, didn't pay cash-money for it.

For those who love it, what do they love about it? What are the lessons in it? I want to look it up on Wikipedia, see what people say about it. I remember deriding Donnie Darko as a "deep movie for shallow people." LMS had that kind of quality to it, like awkwardness pretending to be funny, and emptiness for depth.

The Wedding Crashers was somewhat more amusing, although it was surprisingly thinly written. I want my comedies served up with thick slabs of Funny, and while TWC had some bits that I liked (including Rachel McAdams -- drool), but overall it was pretty weak, went on a trifle too long -- but it still managed, in its own slobbery way, more depth than smirking LMS clearly thought it had.

And that's my piss-and-vinegar film review for today!

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Major "King" Kong

This is me, bronco-busting the Bomb... "Waaaahooooooo---* (I made it a clickable link to YouTube; how cool is that?)