Tuesday, March 20, 2007

The Trim Bin #55


- It's time for another quiz over at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, administered this time by Professor Irwin Corey (if you just said "who?", then Dennis can fill you in). For the uninitiated, these quizzes are a lot of fun, very thought-provoking, and have plenty of room for both Wim Wenders and Short Round.

- In my Zodiac review I described Jake Gyllenhaal as "not a great actor." After Nathaniel at the Film Experience Blog reminded me of this moment, I must admit that I may soon be forced to change my tune.

- Boston-area readers: the Harvard Film Archive is screening Roman Polanski's version of Macbeth on April 9. It's a great, unheralded movie, and I can't imagine it screens on 35mm all that often, so I highly recommend checking it out.

- While the writing at Ain't It Cool News is notoriously indefensible, I can't help but appreciate their enthusiasm. They just started a retrospective series about the summer of 1982 (a high point for geeks), and the piece on E.T. does a fine job of capturing what makes that film so perfect.

- Finally, this video from the set of I Heart Huckabees has been all over the web today, and I couldn't resist passing it along. How very zen:

1 comment:

Dr. Criddle said...

Wonder if Russell is drinking buddies with Troy Duffy?

Love the article on E.T. too. I also reject the popular opinion of snot-nosed critics that the 80's were a cinematic wasteland and that Lucas and Speilberg "killed" the creativity of the 70's. I actually think they were the best time for Hollywood big-budget studio movies since the, 40's and probably the best decade for genre movies, period. And E.T. is of course one of the best.

By the way, my buddy Arran from the Tim Burton Collective has started a similar site called "Imaginary Cinema" (imaginarycinema.com), with articles on George Lucas, James Cameron, and Tim Burton, and will soon contain a comprehensive history of sci-fi, fantasy and horror movies from '70 to today.