I think we need some burden-sharing here; I should not be the only one on the blog going to the opening day of these summer blockbusters. How about if Jeff goes to see Angels and Demons next week and Gio takes on Terminator Salvation the week after?
There are no surprises here. This is the prequel in which we see the young Kirk enter the Starfleet Academy and immediately get thrown into a battle to save the Earth from rebel Romulans from the future. Continue reading Star Trek
I have a fascination for heist narratives, onscreen or on the page: the lovingly-detailed build-up, where we delve into the lives of a varied group of criminals, the casing of joints, the hatching of plans; the equally painstaking attention to the execution of the gig, with and without hitches; the last-act which can diverge, in equally-satisfying ways, toward hair-breadth escapes and the caper’s happy-ending OR toward unplanned interference, the one detail missed which blows the escape, or the eruption of submerged tensions which tears apart the gang, or….
David Denby once, in an aside, thought filmmakers loved heist films because the elaborate planning and execution echoed the intricacies of filmmaking. (Denby so rarely says anything smart that it stuck in my head. [I only say this to get into the next edition of his book on _Snark_.]) I probably get sucked in by my own meta-narrative obsessions: heist stories are about the shaping of a tightly-defined, closed plot… and the impossibility of defining and closing such plots.
But another pleasure is less analytical: I enjoy watching these films because they are about work. How often do we see characters in film working? Sure, we may see an office, or occasionally a factory; there are occasionally subplots involving a big presentation or some event. But people defining an outcome, and then carefully doing all the little shit that needs doing to make that outcome occur — heist films, or more broadly certain variants of the crime narrative, are about workers and their tasks. Continue reading Crime/Labor
…to see what’s up with image hosting Continue reading just a test
I thought I’d try something different, though hardly unprecedented. Other film blogs take full advantage of image and video hosting capabilities. Ours, though rich in humor and ideas, is pretty stale visually. So here goes. What are some of your favorite shots? (no, Michael, Hackler is not what I had in mind). Dig around online and see if you can images of your faves! Continue reading Favorite shots
Is really not that bad. It is solid entertainment, full of impressive action sequences (including one great one on Three Mile Island), loosely weaved together with the origin story to Wolverine and his brother, Sabretooth (played by Liev Schreiber, hamming it up). There is little effort made to ponder the dialectics of mutant existence, in contrast to the original movie trilogy, so instead we get a standard story of sibling rivalry, lost love, revenge, and admantium injection. It is fun to see more of the comic book mutants appear as extras, and even Xavier makes a late appearance. But nothing very complicated is being attempted in the movie, and it is a good way to ease into the summer blockbuster season.
As I was buying the ticket, the seller told me to “stay for the credits” and indeed, there is a fairly pointless 30 second scene right after the five full minutes of credits (during which I learned that what appeared to be the Canadian Rockies, were in fact mountains in New Zealand). I wonder if this was an official message, or just an employee eager than I not miss a second of the origin story.