- The season opener of Lost had a great opening, but the rest of the episode, while gripping, felt a bit off (and marred by too many commercial breaks). But whenever M.C. Gainey, as an "other" named Zeke, entered a scene, I was completely creeped out and riveted. Gainey is one of those great, unheralded character actors that consistently does dependably strong work (check out his hilarious brief turn in Sideways). Gainey may be the closest thing we have to a Tom Atkins working today; if you're still not impressed by Lost's dense (and unusually meditative for television) central mystery, than check it out for Zeke.
- Taschen, publisher of the Kubrick Anthology, continues to do strong work with Erotic Cinema, a history of sex in the movies. The text covers a variety of sexual preferences and fetishes that have been represented over the years in film, as well as the ongoing calls for censorship surrounding sexually frank cinema. And the book is gorgeously illustrated - it did what any film book should do, which is to motivate me to seek out films I've never seen (Querelle and In the Realm of the Senses are at the top of the list). We found our copy at a Borders, so if you, like me, are both a cinema devotee (I assume you are if you're here) and a perv (who isn't?), I highly recommend keeping an eye out for it.
- The teaser for 300 is visually stunning and promises the sort of unapologetic phallocentrism that we associate with the name "Frank Miller." Let's just hope it's not another Troy (which also had an awesome trailer).
- Dennis Cozzalio at SLIFR and Jim Emerson at Scanners both recently linked to a survey at Andy Horbal's No More Marriages that asks, "What is the single best American fiction film released during the last 25 years?" Like The Gauntlet, it's an attempt to identify the definitive films of our time. And besides, these things, whether they are at all important or just completely trivial, are always a whole lot of fun.
- While I won't be writing a review of The Departed due to my obvious bias, I will note its 95% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes and encourage you to check it out (if for no other reason, because if that Dane Cook movie beats it at the box office, I'm going to eat my own hands). And, just to remind you that Martin Scorsese is the greatest director alive, here's his majestic short "Life Lessons," from New York Stories:
Films watched this week:
Phantom of the Paradise 10
Dennis the Menace 3
U-Turn 8
Clue 7
The Road to Guantanamo 6
Mean Streets 10
Shaun of the Dead 10
Maximum Overdrive DOES NOT COMPUTE
2 comments:
Obvious bias?
I worked for a day as an extra on the film in Boston last year, so I don't know for sure if I can separate the experience from the film itself. That happened the last time I did extra work, on War of the Worlds - I loved that movie more than most people, and I think I would have anyway, but there's no way I can really be sure.
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