Pages tagged “film friday”

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Film Friday: Favorites of 2009

When Chris Anderson used the phrase “long tail” in Wired, he was referring to the way information is gradually detaching from the physical world. Music no longer needs shelf space in stores, and books and movies will surely follow. For businesses who sell physical objects, it’s been helpful to have consumers who cluster around a few big titles. That way they know how many disks to make, how many books to print. But a world where shelf space doesn’t matter looks pretty different. There may still be big hits, but the demand for more obscure items from deep in the...  read more

Film Friday: Comparing Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes to Conan Doyle's Stories

I don’t think I’ve ever been spotted defending a Guy Ritchie movie, and I’m not yet convinced that I’ll defend his latest. It’s premature to say, since I haven’t yet seen it. But I’m eager to defend its subject, the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, not from Ritchie but from those who think the filmmaker is taking vast liberties. Maybe he is—we’ll see—but not everything in the trailer that’s causing some people to roll their eyes is a whole-cloth invention....  read more

Film Friday: Your Favorite Movie Was Snubbed

The schoolyard taunt of the digital age is “you lost all credibility when….” It’s heard following every ten-best list and every set of award nominees. I mention it now because we’re entering what the trade journals have taken to calling award season. Like butternut squash, these awards ripen at the onset of winter, and this year I’m detaching my home from the grid and running it solely from a loss-of-credibility turbine mounted on my roof. Don’t worry about me; I’ll be toasty all season long....  read more

Film Friday: Slice Garlic with Razor Blades

Over the decades, Hollywood has sharply curtailed smoking in movies. And although they may not have had a huge effect, debates about the supposed dangers of sex and violence in film pop up from time to time, usually with the goal of protecting children from unsavory influences. The unstated part of that argument is that we adults are largely immune from the allure of vices on the big screen. Especially critics. Especially politicians. Especially parents....  read more

Film Friday: Claire Denis' 35 Shots of Rum and White Material

A quiet movie called 35 Shots of Rum is traveling around the country, a film of uncommon grace, and I mention this because I’d like to see it again myself whenever I have the chance. I’m waiting for it to come to my town; maybe you’re doing the same. World-class filmmaker Claire Denis made the movie last year, and anyone who’s been keeping score knows that I’m one of her unabashed fans. Name the date, and I’ll be there....  read more

Film Friday: Werner Herzog Goes Nuts Twice (and Other Observations About Crazed Filmmakers)

A new movie called Bronson by filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is traveling around the country, three screens per week. It’s about a man (true story) who’s so incorrigible that British authorities had to lock him up in a jail (or rather, a gaol) for 30-odd years. He’s the kind of chap who hauls off and belts people just for being within arms’ reach: school teachers, police officers, you name it. Bald, mustachioed, and hard-knuckled like a carnival strongman, he has no place in a civil society, even though his crimes don’t seem to warrant three decades in solitary confinement, either....  read more

Film Friday: Drag Me to Where the Wild Things Are

The long anticipated Spike Jonze-Dave Eggers adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are arrives in theaters this weekend, and Sam Raimi’s latest film Drag Me to Hell is newly out on DVD and Blu-Ray. I could be wrong, but I suspect the audiences for these two films overlap more than you might expect....  read more