11.21.07
Posted in musical, comedy, classic, reviews at 3:29 pm by FilmFemme
Just in time for the Thanksgiving, Holiday Inn, the best instance of Bing Crosby in blackface you can get on digitally remastered DVD!
No, but seriously, this movie is kind of adorable (blackface aside). Jim (Crosby), Ted (Fred Astaire - who’s IMDB url is 0000001! cool! And who is also, turns out, an awesome dancer!) and Lila (Virginia Dale) are all starring in a stage show, with lots of singing and dancing. Jim wants Lila to marry him and move to Connecticut to get out of show business and she keeps saying she will right up until she says “Um, no thanks, I’m going to stay here with Ted.” So poor Jim goes up to CT all by his lonesome and finds out being a farmer kind of blows. He decides to turn his farmhouse into an Inn that has stage shows, but is only open on Holidays (get it? Holiday Inn?). There is lots of singing and dancing and a hot blonde and some more conniving and threats to marry a millionaire, more dancing, Ted shows up, Ted steals the blonde, takes her to Hollywood, Jim realizes the blonde loves him, but she needs to be wooed so he goes to Hollywood and brings her back to CT and happily ever after. Then some more singing and some dancing. Hooray!
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Posted in animated, action, reviews at 2:30 pm by FilmFemme
Beowulf in 3D cost like $3 more than Beowulf *not* in 3D. But it comes with glasses. In my opinion, there should be a lot more movies that come with accessories.
Besides that, I went into Beowulf with basically no expectations. Well, that’s kind of a lie because I basically expected it to suck. I was surprised because it really didn’t suck. It wasn’t great - it was okay and I wasn’t bored out of my mind and it was kind of interesting to look at - as much because of Angelina Jolie dripping in gold as because it was in 3D. I was a little distracted from the story (not very complex or anything) by trying to figure out who all the actors were (is that John Malkovich? It is!).
I was never assigned this book in high school (god knows I wouldn’t have read it anyway) but I have the gist of it now enough that I could probably answer a Jeopardy! question about it, and isn’t that what’s most important, after all?
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Posted in romance, comedy, reviews at 2:23 pm by FilmFemme
I watched (re-watched for about the umpteenth [who says UMPTEENTH?] time) Forget Paris on the same day I watched Miami Rhapsody. There is something about both of them that is distinctly Woody Allen-esque. This one specifically reminds me of Melinda & Melinda, mostly because there is this frame story of friends sitting around drinking and telling stories.
Andy (Joe Mantegna - I could say his name all day long and not get tired of it!) is going to marry Liz (Cynthia Stevenson - why I always get her confused with Hope Davis makes no sense…) and she’s going to meet his friends but while they’re waiting for the friends to show up, Joe starts in on the story of Mickey (Billy Crystal, who also directed) and Ellen (Debra Winger - who I kind of love for every reason that *isn’t* the movie Searching for Debra Winger which I kind of loathe because it just reeked of self-indulgence). They met in Paris where she worked for the airline that lost his father’s body and fell in LOVE in PARIS. But then Mickey had to go back to the States to keep being an NBA referee. Of course, eventually she comes to be with him and they get married - awwww. But from there it all turns to shit because he’s always on the road, she’s always on the Rocky Road (she gets fat - that wasn’t a great joke, was it? sorry), she wants a baby, her dad comes to live with them, she goes back to France. This whole story is intercut with Andy and Liz and their friends getting all involved in the story.
There’s nothing groundbreaking about Forget Paris and though he’s charming enough, I find it a tiny bit hard to buy this version of Billy Crystal as a romantic lead with Debra Winger. Also, apparently it used to be OK, in like 1995 or whatever, for the main chick in a movie to have frizzy hair and wear sensible shoes. Go figure. But in general, this is a really cute little story that is romantic and sweet without making me want to cry into my salad because I’m single.
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11.14.07
Posted in romance, comedy, reviews at 4:54 pm by FilmFemme
While all of our friends in the WGA are on strike, why not watch Best Friends, a heartwarming romantic comedy about two screenwriters and their tumultuous romance?
I’ll tell you why not: because it sucks.
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Posted in romance, comedy, reviews at 4:51 pm by FilmFemme
Recipe for Miami Rhapsody
Take One (1) Annie Hall
Subtract 1 star (2.5 out of 4)
Substitute Sarah Jessica Parker for Woody Allen, some WASPy dude for Diane Keaton, Miami for Manhattan
Add a Mia Farrow/Antonio Banderas romance
Let simmer until sufficently charming and completely quotable:
I figure marriage is kind of like Miami: it’s hot and stormy, and occasionally a little dangerous… but if it’s really so awful, why is there still so much traffic?
Watch & repeat
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11.09.07
Posted in armchair marketing, comedy, animated at 4:26 pm by FilmFemme
Is it just me, or does this poster kind of give you a headache? It’s so busy and brash and loud and colorful but something is most definitely missing. It doesn’t make me think whimsy and magic, it just makes me glad I don’t have a kid to drag me to see this cheesy piece of crap.
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Posted in documentary, reviews at 4:07 pm by FilmFemme
Ira Glass basically forced me to watch How’s Your News? because he talked about it for a while on This American Life about a thousand years ago when I could still podcast. So I got it from Netflix and it sat on top of my DVD player for 2 or 3 weeks until I tried to watch it last weekend. I got about 15 minutes into it and it was just too much!
A group of developmentally disabled adults get in a Winnebago with some filmmakers and interview people on the street and sing songs. I guess it’s meant to be heartwarming and/or provocative but I just found it incredibly uncomfortable. The part that made me turn it off was when they put a camera in some glasses (you know, like those ones they use on the blowjob [btw, this text editor thinks blow-job should be hyphenated?] amateur porn videos, um, not that I know anything about that) on this one guy who doesn’t speak English. I should rephrase that - he doesn’t speak *any* language. Rather, he communicates with grunts and pointing and some very scribbly writing. And they just sent him up to people on the street with a little notecard that said “How’s your news?” (this phrase annoys me too - is it a colloquialism? Who says this?) and he proceeded to grunt at them and they either ignored him or smiled politely and looked horribly uncomfortable. I mean, what is the point of this, really? What does that prove? How does that give me insight into the human condition? I would argue that it doesn’t, because the guy doesn’t know what he’s doing, the people don’t know what he’s doing and it’s just, like, creepy.
There was one lady, Susan Harrington, who was kind of awesome and would sing crazy songs in this loud operatic voice and maybe I could stomach more of that. But like, if I’m going to be that uncomfortable, I expect a Happy Ending…
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11.06.07
Posted in opinion, industry news at 3:14 pm by FilmFemme
In case you’re living in a cave or the Midwest (same diff), the WGA went on strike yesterday. Let’s take a moment to collect our thoughts and mourn what might be the last few episodes of Private Practice.
Done? Let’s move on.
This strike is going to have no tangible effect on my life. And you know what, maybe Hollywood could do without a pilot season this year. Because if The Big Bang Theory is the best they can do, it seems like they might need a break. And maybe a few weeks or months trudging around picketing studios will give these writers the perfect kind of self-loathing and existential crises from which they can mine brilliant ideas and scathing dialogue.
If you want to be serious about it, I don’t know the specifics of the strike, but from what I gathered over at Defamer, it seems like the WGA is being pretty reasonable (read: don’t want to be fucked over by studios making money on the internet off of stuff that they created from nothing) and the studios are being dicks (read: acting like studios). I also feel bad for other production-types that are going to be affected. So cheekiness aside, I hope the strike comes to a swift and fair end. But I’m still glad it’s not the grocery stores again.
UPDATE: Apparently I’m not alone in my assesment of the dismal Television landscape (from the L.A. Times)
Dana Gould, a former writer on “The Simpsons,” described the studios’ tactic as a “controlled burn” strategy that would save these giant companies millions of dollars. He said the timing couldn’t be better, amid television’s recent poor ratings.
“It’s a reboot. They want to hit Control-Alt-Delete on the fall season,” Gould said.
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11.05.07
Posted in romance, drama, reviews at 3:12 pm by FilmFemme
Do you ever hear the premise of a movie and feel really compelled by it to the point that you get a ‘that was a good movie’ feeling without even having seen it? This is how I felt about the very vague idea I had about Sweet November. I remembered it was supposed to be about Charlize Theron as one of those quirky-and-beautiful-but-damaged-free-spirit-type girls (I’m thinking Kirsten Dunst in Crazy/Beautiful or The Virigin Suicides or Drew Barrymore in Mad Love or, to a lesser extent Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) who dates and loves a different man each month because she’s dying and for November that man is Keanu Reeves.
So, I didn’t see this movie when it came out but I always felt compelled by the story. It seemed so romantic and promising. I sort of wish I had just kept holding it up in my mind that way, because the movie actually completely sucked.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in comedy, drama, action, sci fi, reviews at 11:02 am by FilmFemme
UPDATE: Remember how I was smitten with Carina Chocano like 2 weeks ago for her sort of neo-feminist Hollywood commentary in the LA Times? Her ‘review’ of Southland Tales is so lame, I’m going to have to retract my statement. Not like she gives it a thumbs up or anything, but it’s just so unimpressive. Try and say something meaningful…or at least try to be funny.
Southland Tales is Richard Kelly’s follow up to the cult favorite Donnie Darko.
I spent all of the 3+hours of Southland Tales thinking one or all of the following:
a) Wait, what?
b) Why isn’t this over yet?
c) Mandy Moore is adorable!
d) The Rock should never wear shirt, ever.
e) Seriously, how is this not over?
There was a Q&A with Kelly following this screening. Boy is that guy dumb and untalented.
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