1. Slings & Arrows
I don’t know how this incredible show managed to not really show up on my radar over the last six years, what with my routine checking of former Kids in the Hall cast members’ IMDb pages, but I’m glad it finally did. Eighteen episodes over three seasons of quality Canadian television, set at a fictional Shakespearean festival. Those eighteen episodes pack a lot of emotional punch, and the show’s case for great theatre and performances and the value of art is exhilarating. William Hutt’s Charles Kingman’s King Lear is one of the most devastatingly beautiful performances I’ve ever seen, and I can only wish that I could see him do the play front to bakc.
2. Now and Then, Here and There
There aren’t all that many new things on this list. This is an anime originally aired in Japan in 1999. It plays like a beautiful combination of Castle in the Sky and Grave of the Fireflies, set in the world of Nausicaa. Studio Ghibli references aside, it’s a powerful and thoughtful piece about violence and war, as well as the potential for goodness humanity has. It’s pessimistic and optimistic in the same breath. It’s wonderful.
3. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
There are few, few things I have found more satisfying than putting on my fucking demon pants and punching some demons in the fucking face. Like an inverted, Persona 3, this mainline Shin Megami Tensei game is light on story and dialogue, but incredibly expressive through its mood and design.
4. Little King’s Story
I’ve just begun this game over the weekend, but I’m already completely smitten. It’s an ingenious mix of time management, real-time strategy, kingdom simulation, charming design, and beautiful music. May be the best Wii original title I’ve played.
5. The Thin Man
I’ve been watching quite a few of the great screwball comedies of the thirties lately. Most charming in this recent batch was the incredibly funny 1934 film, The Thin Man. The banter between William Powell and Myrna Loy’s Nick and Nora Charles is some of the best stuff that’s ever been committed to celluloid.
A photo essay by John D. Moore
 Fig. 1. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson twiddling his fingers |
 Fig. 2. The twiddled fingers of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson |
Even if you don’t have time tonight to honor Chow Day by watching a film featuring on made by Stephen Chow Sing-Chi or didn’t get to attend a kickass Chow Day (observed) party yesterday, take just a bit of time to enjoy this amazing clip from 1994′s Love on Delivery (featuring the old “Gar Fei Cat” English translation). Film comedy doesn’t get any better than this, folks.
Quoth director Sam Raimi,
As far as Spider-Man, I’ve learned a lot of lessons about what people didn’t like and missteps that I’d made. But I learned those lessons on the previous two, I was just a little quieter about them. I made a lot of mistakes, and it’s part of the reason I so want to make this next story of Peter Parker.”The Spider-Man films, I’ve made mistakes, but I really do look at them as things that I’ve learned, and hope that when I apply what I’ve learned to this next one, I really make a film that people enjoy and is really true to the character in a fresh, original way. That’s my goal.
So, I take this to mean that Spider-Man 4 will run a smooth hour and forty minutes. There will be almost no action sequences, save for a couple of short, very visceral mano-a-mano showdowns. Scheming villains will get very little screentime. The bulk of the film will consist of Young People having Young People Problems to amusing musical cues whilst delightfully mugging for the camera.
How he can hope to carry this off without James Franco, I don’t know. But if he’s truly learned about what works and doesn’t in a Spider-Man film, I’m very much looking forward to this. You have my attention, Mr. Raimi!
I went into this film expecting it to be like every other movie and I was pleasantly surprised! My expectations were firmly set to “generic” so I was much pleased to find that it wasn’t as generic as I thought it would be. Whereas most movies in this genre would have been content to simply follow formula, this movie perfected that formula up to the point where it dodged its genre’s conventions just enough to be fresh and exciting! What I really liked most about this movie is that, unlike other movies, it makes you think.
I like movies that make me think. They are so rare in Hollywood these days. As I walked out of the theater, I was thinking. This movie made me do that.
I could explain to you why I brought the following image into existence last night, but I think I’ll pass on that. There’s a story behind it, but I suspect it might work best as a non sequitur.
Yesterday, I discovered that there was, at long last, a trailer for the second of four films in the Rebuild of Evangelion project, Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance, as well as a release date a little over two months from now (in Japan). This is thrilling news to me. While the first film in the project was a fairly straight retelling–and filled with familiar scenes and compositions–of the first episodes of the 1995 series Neon Genesis Evangelion, this film looks to make major steps in the promised deviation from the established narrative, with characters appearing earlier, new characters, and a curiously red ocean. The imagery in this new trailer is gorgeous.
This is easily one of my most anticipated films of the year. The first film still hasn’t had an official English-subtitled DVD release, so I’m hoping the fansub groups act quickly to make this available to those who don’t want to wait till 2012 for this most anticipated of movies.
Earlier this year, I raved about the incredible international teaser for the Coens’ new film, Burn After Reading, finding that even as a standalone one-minute film, it was fantastic. Of course, the movie itself was one of the best of the year.
Oliver Stone’s W., a chronicle of America’s not-so-esteemed 43rd president has been much whispered about since it went into pre-production. Until just earlier today, I was highly skeptical of the project. Then this afternoon, I saw its newest trailer, brilliantly scored to Talking Heads’s “Once in a Lifetime.”
It’s a positively brilliant trailer. Full of bombast, it appears to be taking extreme subjective liberties to depict the Bush ascendancy and administration as the surreal and sometimes nightmarish experience that it’s been over the last eight years. Even independent of its film, this trailer is excellent. One can only hope it will maintain enough energy and wit to sustain the whole movie. It looks like it could very well be there. On October 17th, I fully intend to find out.
Directed by Andrew Lau & Alan Mak. Written by Alan Mak & Felix Chong. 2002.
This film is slick. If features slick commercial stars that have ruled the Hong Kong box office for about two decades, ageless Andy Lau and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai. It features a slick directing team that has brought us such slick films as the Young & Dangerous series. It’s got Chris Doyle’s slick and beautiful cinematography. It’s got a slick, tightly written script. And it’s got a slick, misleading American DVD cover. Damn, this film’s slick.
It’s very likely you’ve seen Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, which was a pretty faithful remake of this film. However, I’d happily contend that what that film does, this film does pithier, with more resonance (compare the emotional weight of Sheen’s disposition to that of Wong’s), and, yes, slicker. It’s interesting to watch both films deal with the same plot elements and introduce a lot of similar themes, but to read entirely different in its view on those themes. Strangely, the Hong Kong incarnation comes off as much bleaker, not indulging in such luxuries as moral justice. That this is the territory of a wildly successful (speaking financially, now) motion picture is a nice thematic callback to the heroic bloodshed films of John Woo (a scene atop a roof is even quoted directly from Hard Boiled, giving Little Tony much the same role) of old, with high tension and mistrust taking the place of the high octane gun battles.
The individual elements of filmmaking really all come together for this one to sing. Doyle’s cinematography is claustrophobic and desolate at once. I’ve never seen the Lau and Mak team so on their game. There are several action pieces (particularly the warehouse scene) that rank with the best ever shot.