1. "Bald eagle soars off endangered list": America, fuck yeah!
["The bald eagle, America's national symbol, is flying high after spending three decades in recovery. On Thursday, the government took the eagle off the Endangered Species Act's "threatened" list."] Continue Reading »
By Matt Zoller Seitz
In the original 1988 Die Hard, Alan Rickman's bad guy, Hans Gruber, taunts stalwart hero John McClane by asking him if he's "another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he's John Wayne...Rambo...Marshal Dillon..." McClane jokes that he was always partial to Roy Rogers because "I really liked those sequined shirts," then ends the conversation with the now-iconic kiss-off, "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker." Continue Reading »
1. "FIRST PERSON: John Pierson: An Open Letter to Michael Moore." At IndieWire, the producer of Moore's breakthrough, Roger & Me, blasts Moore as an egotist who thinks he's infallible, and endorses the anti-Moore documentary Manufacturing Dissent, which claims Moore did land an interview with GM's then-chairman for Roger & Me, but omitted it to preserve the film's catchy concept. Continue Reading »
By Kevin B. Lee
[Editor's Note: This is the 928th entry in House contributor Kevin B. Lee's Shooting Down Pictures, a record of his ongoing quest to see every title on the list of the 1000 Greatest Films compiled by They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?]
Opening sounds of cheering - man stalking game
tourists on boat: sound of a gunshot as a man's hat gets blown of by a gust of wind
shots of spectators on boat intercuts with wounded animal in its death throes in the water = distance/ detachment emphasized across cuts
zebras blood on its black and white stripes - cut to a black woman's face - emphasis on skin textures, surfaces
sensual
talking of tourists - mystery science theater commentary imposed on the footage
similarly, nightclub music imposed on footage
agitated cobra - cut to: woman's naked torso
white man offering an African man a smoke - collusion?
two white men eating
shot of animal's flesh being stripped from its carcass
trapped giraffe - shot of giraffe's buttocks
woman's bare breast
man emerging from hut - insinuation of sex
nightclub music
man with a gun - cuts to shot of the prow of a boat = phalluses
cut to: gaping cavity of animal carcass
cut to: woman pounding stick into a mill
cut to: woman's naked breast
cut to: men eating - consumption...
1. "The Unknown Soldier." At The Reeler, Lewis Beale says Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn is yet another racist Vietnam war movie. Continue Reading »
By Keith Uhlich
If one experiences a slightly hollow feeling upon the completion of Deadwood's stellar third season, it's due, in part, to the fact that it wasn't meant to end this way.
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To read the rest of the review, click here.
My first impression of Farscape is forever burned into the ol' gray matter. I was at a friend's abode and the Sci-Fi Channel was on in the background. Dominar Rygel the XVI—a mainstay of the series, as well as a creation of Jim Henson's Creature Shop—filled the screen. Within seconds a judgment was made: "This looks fuckin' stupid."
Good thing I gave the show another chance a couple years later. Continue Reading »
1. "Kanye West's 'Stronger' Video." By Brandon Soderberg of No Trivia. Continue Reading »
By Matt Zoller Seitz
"This is the story of a man marked by an image of his childhood."
Though far from perfect, the films are revealing, because they suggest that Pacino, who started out on the New York stage, is still a theater artist at heart-—a fact apparent not just in his choice of material (and in his often grandiose acting), but in his direction, which manages to be at once cinematic and stagy; all three movies boast odd images, edits and effects that catch the viewer off guard.
In his autumn years, swivel-hipped belter Tom Jones has become a huggable icon of '60s kitsch. One of the many pleasures of this three-disc compilation of material from his 1969–71 variety show is its confirmation that Jones's talent was no joke.
By Matt Zoller Seitz
McGee says that Rescue Me star and executive producer Denis Leary demands deference from costars, ostracizes those who don't grant it, and avoids taking responsibility for unpleasant creative decisions, preferring to subcontract the delivery of bad news to his fellow executive producers, Peter Tolan and Jim Serpico. "He's a bully, is what he is," McGee says. "Bullies most of the time don't have the guts to do things themselves."
By Keith Uhlich
The films of Sergio Leone are cobbled together from disparate parts and influences. As Sir Christopher Frayling notes in his audio commentary for A Fistful of Dollars (the first of four films included in the recently released DVD box set, "The Sergio Leone Anthology"), the opening credits—with their galloping, target-practice-ready silhouettes—are meant to mimic the James Bond series, then tremendously popular in Leone's home country of Italy. But to label this and Leone's subsequent productions as quintessentially Italian is to neglect the films' cosmopolitan realities: financial backers from Germany, Spain, and America; primary location shooting in Franco-controlled Spain; stars of all stripes, among them Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach, Gian Maria Volontè, Marianne Koch, and Klaus Kinski; and vocal post-dubbing tailored to the country of exhibition. Leone presides over these celluloid mish-mashes like a master chef; he isn't the only purveyor of these so-called spaghetti westerns, but he is the one whose worldwide reputation is most secure.
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To read the rest of the review, click here.
1. Wells on Spielberg. By Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere. Continue Reading »
Midway through Monday night's episode of Big Love, "Reunion," Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) sits in front of a video gambling machine and pokes at the screen, paging through the various games offered. Bill has made a point to the leader of the Juniper Creek compound, Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton), of how immoral he finds gambling, but Roman claims that this is the way to go. Continue Reading »
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