Screenhead

Today I want to personally thank the Miller-McCune Group for blowing a whole lot of time and personnel dollars to engage in some serious spreadsheet fun, all meant to reveal one of the greatest truths of the media universe–not all critics are created equal, and some of them just love or hate things unaccountably.

As a token of my appreciation, the Miller-McCune Group will be receiving a large novelty pre-voided check for one hojillion dollars.

Anyway, they’ve built a whole lot of interesting graphs here revolving around a smattering of data from Metacritic, the critic amalgamation site that gives you a general idea of what a whole bunch of critics said.  On a side note, as though anyone would want that–I mean, come on…half the point of reading film criticism is to enjoy the wordplay and the clever comparisons and whatnot.  If you wanted raw numbers you’d play with a calculator.  You want the advance word from a person you can trust.

Some other interesting points include that Michael Wilmington might want to sleep with one eye open lest he be branded a quote whore sometime in the future (most of his work seems to be positive, and interestingly, so does Roger Ebert’s!  Ebert a quote whore?  Say it ain’t so!), Marc Savlov is a tough act to please, and Rene Rodriguez and Mick LaSalle seem to have the best balance of positive and negative work.

Look, I’ve said it before–the best thing you can do is find a critic you can trust.  And the only way you can do that is not with charts and graphs, but rather with a long term commitment and regular readings.  Find the one you know you can trust, and stick with them.  It doesn’t matter if it’s here at Screenhead or somewhere else (though we’d prefer it if it were here at Screenhead), just as long as you can trust it.

Weak sauce, Movieline.  Weak. SAUCE.

So the folks out at Movieline were trying to figure out why Jennifer’s Body turned out to be a stink bomb that audiences could actually smell coming, and they’ve got plenty of blame to go around.  Lousy distro, lousy marketing–pretty much everything except a godawful and derivative script that heavily featured nonsense words.

And then they got to point five: the critics.  Dig the spectacularly pretentious word:

5. The critics. Horror and teen comedy are two genres proven time and again to be invulnerable to reviewers (when they’re even screened for reviewers). Put them together, though — especially in a semi-satirical fashion that turns the first genre’s sex-and-death conventions on their heads — and you get a whole lot of dickheads sniping that Body didn’t do enough to adhere to convention. “Jennifer’s Body falls into the dispiriting category of dumb movies made by smart people, in this case a glibly clever writer and a talented director who think a few wisecracks are enough to subvert the teen horror genre,” wrote the Boston Globe’s Ty Burr. Sigh.

First off, what drove you to actually WRITE “sigh” in there as if you were so deeply stricken with the ennui of the whole mess that you were about to collapse in a graceful heap on your fainting couch? Oh, Little Lord Fauntleroy can’t hang because we’re trashing his favorite movie so he’s just overwrought!

Man up or hang it up, jackass.  And you want to call me a dickhead?  Fine.  I reserve the right to call you jackass.  Of course, considering that this was written by one S.T. Vanairsdale, there’s no way to know whether I’m using the right gender or not, so we’re using the ROYAL he just in case.

Granted, S.T. did call a lot of the problems.  This really should’ve taken advantage of Halloween instead of gunning for last-gasp on summer.  But don’t blame the critics.  That’s just low.  We didn’t like it.  We thought it sucked.  I got sick of this derivative knockoff spewing gibberish every few minutes.

Critics didn’t kill it.  They just wrote the obituary.

News is just in that Danny Boyle has been awarded the Director’s Guild Award for best director for a feature film. His film, Slumdog Millionaire, originally intended for either a DVD release or else a very limited arthouse cinema release, garnered enough critical praise and audience delight that it has slowly been sweeping the box office over the past few weeks. Beating out Chris Nolan, Gus Van Sant, David Fincher, and Ron Howard, Boyle will almost certainly get a directing Oscar, and Slumdog Millionaire looks likely to be this year’s Best Film.

The other notable award was for Ari Folman, as best director for a documentary, the film being the exceptional animated Waltz with Bashir.

Roger Ebert received a Lifetime Achievement Award.

New York Film Critics Circle gave top honors to Milk and its star Sean Penn.

Mike Leigh won the best director prize for Happy-Go-Lucky. Movie’s star Sally Hawkins picked up the trophy for best actress.

In the supporting categories, Josh Brolin was honored for his performance in Milk while Penelope Cruz won for her turn in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Wall-E continues to rack up honors as the Disney/Pixar computer-generated movie won for best animated feature.

A complete list of winners are available here.

In another news, Screen Media Films got the U.S. rights to Alec Baldwin’s “Lymelife”. The film debuted at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, in September 2008 and won the coveted International Critic’s Award.

The film stars The film stars Alec Baldwin, Rory Culkin and Emma Roberts. Martin Scorsese was executive producer. It tells the story of a 15-year-old and his family whose life is turned upside-down after an outbreak of Lyme disease hits their suburban community in the 1970s.

The film was directed by Derick Martini and co-written by Martini and Steve Martini. Jon Cornick, Alec Baldwin, Barbara De Fina, Michele Tayler and Angela Somerville produced and Martin Scorsese and Leonard Loventhal exec produced.

Film and politics have never sat well together. Indeed, Hollywood comprises mainly of liberals, hence we get an unbalanced quantity of output. And when conservatives try to make movies, you get silly films like An American Carol, an attempt to be satirical while being as subtle as a coked-up bull in a Faberge egg store. Arguably, the best political films are the ones that either recognise the complexity of any social situation, or the ones who question their own beliefs and thus avoid the death-trap of dogma. Elite Squad has topped the Brazilian box office, receiving much critical acclaim, but in the UK and US the film has received mixed reviews, with many of the negative comments focussing on the film’s politics. But Elite Squad is a film with more depth than some hard-core liberals want to admit to.

Essentially, Elite Squad is the opposite perspective of modern classic City of God. Whereas the latter explores the history of Rio’s favelas told by its residents, Elite Squad focuses on the city’s police force and their attempts to deal with the resident crime-lords. Captain Nascimento heads an elite squad of super-troopers known as BOPE, a hard-core, gun-touting SWAT team who take no chances when a situation gets dire. However, Nascimento is tired of his violent life and the pressure builds as his search for a replacement is intensified by the need to clear up a particular section of the slums to coincide with Pope John Paul II’s visit. The frustrated Nascimento keeps an eye on two candidates, the proactive Neto and the law student Mathias.

On a superficial level, Elite Squad is a blistering assault on the eyes. Shot using shakey-cam techniques, the plot races past, and boasts a level of complexity including Mathias’s relationship with his fellow, cop-wary students, an NGO set up in a favela under close watch from its suspicious drug-baron, and an affluent youth who seem to be part of the problem as opposed to its solution. The worst thing that can be said about this film is that the director’s methods owe a little too much to City of God, and that its own style would have ensured the film deserved complete distinction. Read the rest of this entry »

 

As I have mentioned before, I am not a film critic.  I love film, so I will never critique a film critique.  

I saw the fourth installment of “Indiana Jones” last night, and enjoyed the film because it was good, old-fashion entertainment.  My daughter and her friend had a blast; they laughed many times throughout the film, and talked endlessly about it afterwards.  Not once did I think it lacked the wallop of the other “Indy” films.  

In the Vanity Fair article (you can still view online) with Spielberg and Lucas, it was mentioned that they did not think the critics would like this movie.

With that all said here is The New Yorker’s review of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” by David Denby.  Warning: There are plenty of spoilers in the review.

You may not have heard of German director Uwe Boll, but you’ve probably heard of his movies. You almost certainly have never seen these movies, but instead passed by Screen 124 while on your way to  the blockbuster on Screen 1.  Boll has directed such classic crap as  Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne,  and House of the Dead. All three are adapted from relatively plotless video games. And with even fans of the games complaining, you can imagine how bad these films are.

In fact, people are so annoyed at Boll that after a facetious remark he made in an interview with The Guardian, stating that he’d quit if a million people asked him so, there is now a petition to do that very thing. Check it out here, and get voting!

In retaliation, Boll posted a hilarious video response, claiming that his work is genius and better than all that “social-critic George Clooney bullshit that you get every fucking weekend”.

It’s pretty obvious that Boll is very aware of himself and is generating self-promotion through such ridiculous claims. This is, after all, a man who challenged 5 of his worst critics to boxing matches (and won all five). His movies are flops, and he is only able to make them through a loophole in the German film industry tax-break scheme (am I the only one thinking of Max Bialystock?). Anyway, I implore you to turn the tables on Boll’s plan, and vote against him. Let th epublic decide!

Julian Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” won best picture at this year’s Prix Lumieres in Paris. The Lumieres are similar to the Golden Globes where winners being voted on by a committee of some 200 foreign journalists based in France.

Mathieu Amalric, who also starred in “Munich,” won for actor of his portrayal of the stricken editor in “Diving Bell.”

“La Vie en rose,” a French domestic and international hit of 2007, won Marion Cotillard the actress nod.

Reportedly the most emotional moment of the awards presentation was master of ceremonies’ Claude Lelouch’s glowing tribute to actor Jean-Pierre Marielle for his 50 years and 54 films as an actor. Marielle is regarded as one of the greatest French actors ever.

Monday night at the 13th annual Critics’ Choice Awards sponsored by the Broadcast Film Critics Association handed “No Country for Old Men” its best picture nod. “No Country” also won best director for Joel and Ethan Coen and best supporting actor for Javier Bardem.

Daniel Day-Lewis for “There Will Be Blood” and Julie Christie for “Away From Her” both won top acting awards. Amy Ryan from “Gone Baby Gone” got top pick for the critics’ best supporting actress.

“Hairspray” and “Juno” each celebrated two Critics’ Choice Awards. “Hairspray” won for best ensemble and best young actress for Nikki Blonsky. “Juno” snagged best comedy and best writer for scribe Diablo Cody.

The Writers’ Strike was mentioned by presenters and rightly so.

I am very happy for Julie Christie. “Away From Her” is on the DVD shelves; it is highly recommend by all. I remember first seeing Christie in “Dr. Zhiavago” (1965) and have enjoyed her ever since.