It might get loud
The other night I watched ‘It Might Get Loud,’ an intimate portrait of three generations of guitarists; Jimmy Page, the Edge and Jack White. It’s directed by Davis Guggenheim, whose last film outing was the Oscar-winning ‘Inconvenient Truth.’ Before I go on, if you love Led Zeppelin or U2, you must watch this film.
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The Odyssey
I remember my dad telling me the adventurous tales of witty Odysseus when I was a little kid; the hero’s cunning idea of hiding inside the Trojan horse, his ten-year-long troubled trip back home from Troy, his fight against the giant one-eyed Cyclops, his miraculous escape from the deadly Scylla and Charybdis, his bloody revenge [...]
Encounters at the End of the World
Herzog and his dry metaphysical german accent fly us down to freezing desolate Antartica introducing us to a colorful collection of characters living their life on the moon-like continent of glaciers and icebergs. This is no film about fluffy penguins, Herzog warns us at the beginning of the movie. It’s a film about the [...]
AVATAR
For whatever reason, I kind of bought into the hype. I have never been a fan of James Cameron, I thought the blue guys in the trailer looked stupid, and I’ve never had a good experience watching a movie in 3D. Yet, I handed over $17 to see self-proclaimed “King of the World” James Cameron’s [...]
2 Days in Paris
Browsing the Netflix instant-view archive, I bumped into 2 Days in Paris – a bright 2007 comedy written and directed by Julie Delpy who co-stars next to a brilliant Adam Goldberg.
At first I expected it to be one of those empty and boring and corny romantic comedies that I usually can’t stand watching for more [...]
Ali/Frazier from Frazier’s POV Compelling Stuff
Muhammad Ali, the beloved boxing champ who lit the 1996 Olympic torch and was an outspoken critic against racism, really had a cruel opportunistic streak in him when it came to his rivalry with Joe Frazier back in the 1970s. The new HBO documentary, Thrilla in Manilla, views the Frazier/Ali rivalry from Smokin’ Joe’s point [...]
Elvis Rebels in Paradise
Elvis makes his first appearance in “Blue Hawaii” as the plane door opens, on his way back from active military duty, and he’s already putting the moves on the flight attendant. While his hawaiian girlfriend, anxiously awaiting his return, is a bit put off, somehow, Elvis gets away with it. Imagine that.
Blue Hawaii [...]
I Was Mumblecored This Saturday
We’d just finished Hitchcock’s Lifeboat on PBS Channel 13 when the host launched into his introduction to the next film, something he called, what? what did he just say? “Mumble-something…” He explains it’s a recent film movement produced by 20-somethings. A quick internet search revealed the genre as “Mumblecore.” Various definitions stake a [...]
When A Crime Goes Wrong
Dou.ble in.dem.ni.ty is a clause or provision in a life insurance or accident policy whereby the company agrees to pay the stated multiple of the face amount in the contract in cases of accidental death. An accidental death is a death that is neither intentionally caused by a human being, such as homicide, nor foreseeable, [...]
The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration™
Just in time for Rosh Hashanah, I got something to dip in honey!
‘THE GODFATHER: THE COPPOLA RESTORATION’ box set was released today. The reissues of Coppola’s
films have gone under extensive restoration to bring back the color and original look of Gordon Willis’ cinematography. The reissues are on both standard DVD and Blu-Ray disc.
Paramount Press [...]
Alexander Nevsky (1938)
I have an occasional (some would say masochistic) urge to submit myself to ancient, semi-obscure, and/or foreign films. Part of this desire to venture into the cinematic wilderness arises from a childlike curiosity. What kinds of films are out there? How do directors in different times or countries wield [...]
Give This Man a Beer
The Last Detail is said to be the first Hollywood film to depict naval sailors as regular guys, cussing and whoring. They realize they’re lot in life is one of a low level grunt. They drink, fight, and hang with prostitutes on a trip up the east coast to deliver an 18-year old sailor to [...]
Quiet City (2007)
The recent press on the “mumblecore” movement piqued my curiosity enough to check out Quiet City, one of the movement’s latest efforts. Mumblecore refers to films that portray contemporary 20-something year olds , in post-collegiate limbo, in a natural manner, using a D.I.Y. aesthetic characterized by lo-fi production values and an improvisational feel. The [...]
The Last Emperor
The Criterion Collection will be releasing ‘The Last Emperor’ on DVD next month. The dynamic duo of director Bernardo Bertolucci and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro gave the world one of the most beautiful epic films ever made. ‘The Last Emperor’ won nine Academy Awards, with its international cast, stunning cinemotagraphy, bench mark art direction, superb editing, [...]
Ford at Fox
John Ford, well what can I say; as filmmaker, to ignore him is to ignore that there is a Bengal tiger in the room with you. Ford is American cinema and he has shaped how we perceive ourselves as Americans. An iconoclast in his years at Fox and in his time off the lots he [...]
À bout de souffle
Holy Meerkats !! A new, restored HD tranfer of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless by Criterion to be released on 10.23.2007. Breathless was Godard’s first film and helped launch the French New Wave (La Nouvelle Vague) and became a benchmark in cinema for its stlye. Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo as a Bogart idolizing, murdering hood and the angelic [...]
Tears in the rain
What Castillo really really wants for Hanukkah/Christmas/Kwanzaa is Blade Runner 5 disc Ultimate collector’s edition. Finally! after decades of waiting the original 1982 US theatrical version that contains Deckard’s narration will be available on DVD. Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s sci-fi film noir has become a bench mark of the science fiction genre and one of [...]
Wong Kar-Wai’s Masterpiece of Unrequited Love
2046 is Wong Kar Wai’s rapturously gorgeous and sumptuous sequel to ‘In the mood for Love’. Tony Leung Chiu Wai returns as Chow Mo-wan, now a smooth casanova who has a penchant for gambling, booze and avoiding love. 2046 unfolds over three years, starting in 1966 in a Hong Kong Hotel where Chow lives in [...]
No One Walks Out of this Barn Alive
It doesn’t take long to dislike Jin-shan, the silk dyer factory owner. His brutality and cheap management techniques are directed at his help, who happens to be his nephew. His third wife fares even worse. He killed the first two. I guess this is justice, Chinese style circa 1920. Anybody want to be this guy’s [...]
Assassins in Slo-Mo
As the story goes, Zhang Yimou invested epic hours into planning the use of color and location. Christopher Doyles cinematography is, yes I’ll use the overused cliché, a painting in motion. Zhang Yimou’s directing, with Ching Siu-tung’s dazzling assistance with the effects wire work are often stunning.
Hero launches with assassin Jet Li recounting to [...]
Bad Marriages Never Looked This Good
Kar Wai Wong’s “In The Mood For Love†is a sumptuous feast for the eyes. Carefully composed shots, each scene nearly a still photo portrait. We watch through windows and around corners. This technique creates a feeling of eavesdropping. I felt like I was spying. Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen commiserate and comfort one another [...]
Hong Kong’s Godfather
Last Sunday at BAM ( Brooklyn Academy of Music) I watched the double billing of Hong Kong director Johnnie To’s Election and Triad Election.
Election released in 2005, places you in an electoral year of the Wo Shing society, the oldest triad group of Hong Kong, who believe in democratically electing a new leader. Every two [...]
