This story might not be true, but it’s alleged that during the filming of Fitzcarraldo in 1982, the great yet insane Polish actor Klaus Kinski, fed up with months of grueling shooting in the jungles of South America, told his director he was escaping by boat up the Amazon and never looking back. Werner Herzog, [...]
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McCarthy novels sap adrenaline from films
Ours is a violent generation, and Cormac McCarthy knows it. He knows it, and he knows how to exploit us for it. The final third of Joel and Ethan Coen’s adaptation of McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men was one of the most divisive acts of cinema committed this decade. After establishing a violent and [...]
Read the rest of this article »Single-screen theaters cultivate best and worst of indie film
What can you say about a movie in 200 words? At the Daily Trojan, the word count for film reviews stands at somewhere around 800. At other papers, that number runs higher or lower depending on the editor and, more frequently these days, the bean counters behind the arts section. Put all those words together, [...]
Read the rest of this article »Von Trier’s arrogance pays off in Antichrist
As Saw VI festers in theaters, American horror and the torture-porn subgenre have become inextricably connected. And just about nobody sees this as a step in the right direction. The main flaw usually assigned to these particular horror films is the nihilistic quality of the violence. After all, without characters identifiable on a psychological level, [...]
Read the rest of this article »Morgan’s style proves Hollywood standout
James Bond and archenemy Ernst Blofeld meet for a tense discussion of global espionage. Their guns are holstered, but their hands are ready to draw. At the emotional high point of the confrontation, we cut jarringly to M giving his reaction to the whole affair. This Bond versus Blofeld scene might sound like a parody [...]
Read the rest of this article »Game creators crave validation
Video game designers — especially those looking to produce something truly meaningful — must have some self-esteem issues. After all, their medium simply doesn’t command the same level of respect as film. Just read Roger Ebert’s creakingly unprogressive columns about the inability of video games to attain the same art and business status that film [...]
Read the rest of this article »Women directors break out in 2009
In the film industry, the battle of sexes might better be regarded as a massacre in favor of the men. This year, however, is arguably one of the most productive for women directors in recent memory. At face value, the distinction “women directors” seems condescending — a “good for you” kind of backhanded compliment that [...]
Read the rest of this article »Apatow’s films reveal limited range of character writing
Like many of his characters, Judd Apatow really needs a new lease on life. It’s exceedingly easy to hit the former USC student-turned-Hollywood-money-making-machine from the sexism angle — a criticism that became rather trendy among critics after Katherine Heigl confessed she had problems with her character a week after Apatow’s Knocked Up was released. Apatow [...]
Read the rest of this article »Comedians abide by their own rules
Where were you the day the laughter died? For me, it was summer of my senior year of high school when Chappelle’s Show began to die a prolonged death. Granted, the importance of Chappelle’s Show hit me retroactively; its creator can be accused of nothing if not equipping friends and classmates with a dozen lines [...]
Read the rest of this article »Tarantino once again proves maverick status
Quentin Tarantino is such a punk. Against all reason, Inglourious Basterds might just be cinema’s final word on World War II and the Holocaust. And, Tarantino is a punk for making it that way. Without giving too much away by suggestion, the much-discussed ending of his highly stylized, spaghetti Western influenced movie explosively rewrites history. [...]
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