Mark Wahlberg could have stopped 9/11, according to Mark Wahlberg.
George Lucas wants to retire and make art films. Sure he does.
Rick Perry bows out.
SOPA and PIPA protests not over, says Wikipedia.
TCM unveils list of 10 most influential silent films no one who loves The Artist has seen.
An Oscar shortlist tilts east.
Roger Corman has had as much influence over modern Hollywood as Spielberg or Scorsese. And for good reason: Without him there likely wouldn't even have been a Spielberg or Scorsese. This director/producer of hundreds of low-budget horror, sci-fi, and exploitation films is remembered (rather unfairly) as a B-movie hack, but Corman's aesthetic sensibilities have come to dominate the franchises we now call "tentpoles," and his protégés number among the most influential people in cinema. He's enjoyed every minute of it. Continue Reading »
SXSW's film festival officially ended last night (though the films continue to play just as often for a few days, for those of us who haven't seen our fill yet) and the music festival started today. Watching the mole people of the movie world get replaced by sleeker, more stylish, generally younger musicians and A&R types makes me think of a very clever bumper (one of those short films that precedes each movie to let you know it's part of the festival) for this year's festival. This one, which is by SXSW staffer Joe Nicolosi, shows a bright-eyed young woman who heads into the woods "to get some exercise" and has to fight off one horror-movie monster after another. As she's about to go down, the final supertitles say something like: "Stay indoors. Watch movies."
The People vs. George Lucas (Alexandre O. Philippe). SXSW always has a strong lineup of documentaries, and The People vs. George Lucas is one of this year's best. Smart, funny, and often impassioned, it's entertaining even when it's just exploring the filmmaker's relationship with his rebellious army of fans. But what really hooked me were its insights into why this battle matters to the noncombatants.
Some points are hammered away at too often, and the Stars Wars-style "episodes" the doc is divided into work better as a joke than an organizing principle. I could have done with a little less footage of talking heads too. But those talking heads sure can talk. Their vivid language, self-aware humor, strong emotions, and intelligent observations won me over, as did the generous sampling of impressively creative or endearingly amateurish fan edits and the footage of fans, often surrounded by merchandise or putting their own stamp on the Star Wars myth. I particularly liked a couple of guys dressed as Elvis, one of whom was also a storm trooper while the other was a Jedi. Now, that's participatory fandom. Continue Reading »
"Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was the most disappointing thing since my son."
That's the daffy opening line of filmmaker Mike Stoklasa's "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review," an insightful, rudely funny takedown of George Lucas' prequel. And it's as good a place as any to start an appreciation of a hybrid of the video essay and the mash-up—an emerging format that's often more entertaining than the work it cannibalizes.
Let's start by distinguishing straightforward mash-ups and video essays from works created by Stoklasa and his siblings-in-spirit. The term "mash-up" was first applied to musical works that combined existing pieces of recording music in order to create something new. The YouTube equivalent is defined by Wikipedia as a work that "combines "multiple sources of video—which often have no relation to each other—into a derivative work, often lampooning its component sources or another text." (Examples include those now-ubiquitous clips in which somebody puts, say, Joe Pesci's "Funny how?" monologue from Goodfellas into the mouth of Elmo, or turns Stanley Kubrick's The Shining into a heartwarming family comedy with music cues by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman.)
I was heartened to learn that About.com movie critic Jurgen Fauth put Revenge of the Sith on his Top 10 list, in the number one spot, no less. He even encouraged people to revisit his original review—the most thoughtful, non-condescending piece of writing done on this movie by any critic anywhere. What stones. In the increasingly hermetic world of American film criticism, there are certain things we all know for sure, and one of them is that saying George Lucas' movies have heft is a surefire way to get your Cool Film Critic credentials revoked. Fauth had better go down into a bunker and not come out until at least March. (The movie made my own Top 20; it probably would have made the Top 10 if Lucas had given Padme something to do, and if I'd been able to defend the dialogue some other way besides saying, "If it was in Japanese with English subtitles, you wouldn't be making fun of it.") Continue Reading »
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