Wonderful Radio

The Trailer Issue Vol. 8

2009-07-20T07:50:00.003-05:00

Inglourious Basterds - More like Inglourious BasTURDs, Zing!

The Hurt Locker - This trailer gave me high blood pressure

Sherlock Holmes - Skip this and wait for the Ferrell, Baron-Cohen, Apatow one.

Cold Souls - Could writer/director Sophie Barthes be the stage name for the next Gondry/Kaufman collabo?

Paper Heart - Overdosed on Twee

Zombieland - It's the role of a lifetime for Woody Harrelson.

Flame and Citron - It's a Danish spy thriller!

A Year in Movies, Part I

2009-07-19T07:42:00.003-05:00

This year, I resolved to get my Netflix queue to zero. The goal has evolved a bit, as I now realize that'll be impossible and the goal is really to just watch movies, preferably ones I haven't seen before.

Here's what I've watched so far:

Movies from Country
USA - 57%
France - 10%
Japan - 8%
Sweden - 4%
Italy - 5%
UK - 6%
Other - 10%

Movies from Decade
2000 - 37%
1990 - 11%
1980 - 5%
1970 - 10%
1960 - 15%
1950 - 14%
1940 - 5%
1930 - 3%

Top Directors Watched
Ingmar Bergman - 6
Alfred Hitchcock - 5
Hal Ashby - 4
Akira Kurosawa - 3
Robert Altman - 3
Howard Hawks - 3
Alex Gibney - 3
Danny Boyle - 3
James Cameron - 3

The Cream of the Crop
Gomorra, Kings and Queen, Up, Last Days of Disco, Harakiri, Scenes from a Marriage, Sin Nombre, When We Were Kings, No Direction Home, Aliens, Once Upon a Time in the West, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Nashville, Bicycle Thieves, Barry Lyndon, The Last Detail, Tell No One

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

2009-06-25T17:39:00.000-05:00

The only thing I was curious about was why David Fincher would waste his considerable talents on such a vapid, saccharine script.

Hack Director Releases Awesome Publicity Photos

2009-06-24T17:43:00.002-05:00

When you think of the movies of Tim Burton without remembering how much fun you had watching Beetlejuice on Saturday afternoons when you were 10, you start to realize that he's easily one of the most overrated directors working today. But, to his credit, he might be the greatest set (and costume?) designer of all time. So there's no surprise that the first publicity stills of next year's Alice and Wonderland are simply mouth-watering.

Normally I'd only sit through a Tim Burton movie to confirm how bad I thought it was going to be but these photos have me eerily looking forward to AIW.

Mad Hatter, Red Queen, White Queen

The Trailer Issue Vol. 7

2009-06-23T16:40:00.006-05:00

Moon - Space used to be the place filmmakers would go to explore life's more metaphysical issues. But the non-actioner Sci-Fi film has gone the way of the western. Will Moon lead us back to space for the answers to our more existential questions? No, but it does look pretty good

Outrage - You can make a documentary making bold accusations based entirely on innuendo and rumor? Not that I mind, but how are they getting away with this?

Girlfriend Experience - The similarities to Soderbergh's Bubble are troubling (low-budget, improvised, hd-cam), but a closer look suggests the Girlfriend Experience has a bit more to offer (Manhattan vs. Belpre, Ohio, Sasha Grey vs. Debbie Doebereiner)

Tetro - If you're a bonafide auteur like F.F. Coppola and your newest film gets denied to screen in competition at Cannes, that's not a positive sign. You'd think from the looks of this banging trailer that the selection committee passed because they're still upset at Francis for Godfather III.

Whatever Works - I saw that Larry David was starring in Woody Allen's new movie and I got excited. I saw that Woody was making his return to shooting in New York City with a script written in his Annie Hall glory days and I got very excited. I read the middling reviews and I got unexcited.

Transformers: the Revenge of the Fallen - Straight from the horses mouth, "On the foreign front, from the terrible amateur cut down trailer I received which had a 23 frame flash cut of Megatron, if someone would of given me just one call, I could of told them the whole point of the trailer was the reintroducton of Megatron." Noted Michael Bay

Taking Woodstock - Watching this trailer, you'd think Ang Lee was more invested in the Hulk than he was in the story of the guy who ran a motel next to Woodstock.

We Love You So!

2009-05-23T14:42:00.002-05:00

Spike Jonze has a blog! Spike is kind of a bit player on his own site, but We Love You So, like Kanye’s blog, highlights Jonze approved culture bits and Where the Wild Things Are supplements.

We Love You So!

New York Philharmonic in North Korea

2009-04-08T08:00:00.001-05:00

Photographer Chang Lee, traveling with the New York Philharmonic to Pyongyang, was given a rare opportunity to shoot photos inside North Korea and post the results outside. The mix of governmental propagandizing with the citizens going through their mundane everyday lives is fascinating.

The Philharmonic in Pyongyang

The Trailer Issue Vol. 6

2009-04-07T19:18:00.003-05:00

Terminator: Salvation – After the Dark Knight, there is now an opening to direct edgier, darker summer movies. Look even McG (he of Charlie’s Angels fame) is doing it. Unfortunately for G, the economy went to hell and we want escapism in the form of mall cops and apparently Vin Diesel.

Public Enemies – I’m a geek for prohibition era America and roaring twenties gangster stories but despite plenty of films set during that time, none have quite satisfied my imaginations of the genre. After this trailer, I believe in Michael Mann.

Up – The most consistent studio ever delivers again, this time by tying balloons to a house and dropping a grumpy old man and a fat boy scout into an amazon inhabited by talking dogs.

Star Trek – If I’m talking to someone about Science Fiction movies and that person is lumping all of Science Fiction into one big bag, I’m quick to point out that yea I like Star Wars and the Matrix but I’m not like a trekkie or anything. That line of defense ends on or around May 8th.

Observe and Report – Another fucking mall cop movie! But don’t worry, director Jody Hill assures us that his is good and not just bad economy good like that piece of shit Paul Blart. After Eastbound and Down, I’m willing to believe him.

Tyson – Sports (and mankinds) most fascinating character gets a long-deserved documentary. Which route will Toback take? A manic roadshow absorbing Tyson’s bizarre history or a solemn tale of Iron Mike, the pigeon lover. A little bit of both would be my guess.

Adventureland – My three Netflix movies I have at home are Kieslowski’s Decalogue, Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage and Antonioni’s l’Eclisse, which are all following similarly weighty European films. Thank God for Adventureland. I need some levity. Update: Now all I read is saying that A-land is kind of melancholy. :-(

Fanny & Alexander

2009-03-23T14:21:00.009-05:00

Fanny & Alexander was Ingmar Bergman's supposed but not actual swan song, the culmination of his talents as a filmmaker. It was a challenging and personal story to tell, epic in both its length and execution, yet the film is light, unencumbered by its morality.

Centering on the Corleonesque Ekdahl family, Fanny & Alexander is about young ten year old Alexander (Fanny is like John Oates in this regard, a glorified backup singer) and how he deals when his father, the head of a theater troupe, dies and his mother is remarried to a strict bishop. Where Alexander's imagination was once cultivated, it is now squashed.

One doesn't have to look to hard to see Bergman in Alexander, who acts as megaphone for Bergman's love of creativity, art, and imagination and his distrust of anything that gets in the way of those pursuits.

Out of the venerable masters of cinema, Bergman has been the one I’ve avoided. His work seemed bogged down, bleak as a Swedish winter. It was this quality that pushed me away from Bergman, yet there is much joy and whimsy in Fanny & Alexander.

I Lego NY

2009-03-19T18:24:00.001-05:00

Illustrator Christopher Niemann has a New York Times blog. Recently, his son's legos inspired a quirky and lo-fi depiction of living in New York.

I Lego NY

The Magnificent Ambersons

2009-03-18T14:22:00.001-05:00

The rumors that swirl around this film – mainly that there exists a version somewhere that is superior to Kane – have certainly helped the Ambersons standing as a masterpiece. However, watching the film in a vacuum, you'd have to say it's more of a tragic case of what could have been than actually a great film – after all it is unfinished, rushed. It's the Love of the Last Tycoon.

Well what could have been? You have Welles, who at the age of 24, wrote, directed, and starred in the greatest movie ever, in control of Booth Tarkington's classic tale of the decline of an American institution (something tells me he might be able to pull this off). You have a couple exemplary stylistic devices – the intoxicating opening scene, the haunting lighting, Joseph Cotton in a top hat.

Had Welles put his full attention to Ambersons (instead of running off to South America) wouldn't this be the second best movie of all time?

August: Osage County

2009-03-04T15:49:00.004-05:00

The most astonishing piece of art I've consumed in quite some time, August: Osage County is a sponge of a work wrenched dry in three hours: all-encompassing and devastatingly true to life. Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize winning epic is the best of tragicomedy, where you'll feel guilty for laughing so hard at a family totally coming apart at the seams. The play's tragic turns are earthquaking, yet usually sandwiched between two gut-wrenchingly funny setups. This is a timeless work, a snapshot of an American generation which should be read next to Miller, O'Neill and Williams in the years to come.

Grizzly Bear at the Howard Gilman Opera House

2009-03-03T19:28:00.003-05:00

It was Owen Pallett who early on in his performance on Saturday explained how the night was a trust exercise. A self-labeled control freak, Pallett, accustomed to playing by himself with nothing but a violin and a computer, was giving an awful lot of collective responsibility to the Brooklyn Philharmonic. It was Grizzly Bear, however, that didn’t truly let go, calling on the Philharmonic for a flutter of strings here and triangle hit there.

As much as he likes to keep things intimate on stage, Pallett’s music is designed for this. As a violinist first, it’s no stretch to translate his music for a full orchestra - a normal Final Fantasy concert would have had 1 violin player, this one had 8. The outcome, I would guess, wasn’t that different than his other concerts just bigger, louder and fuller. (Anecdotally, however, a few people around me were pretty disappointed by it. In fact, a Final Fantasy superfan behind was so embarrassed trying to explain to her irascible boyfriend that she wasn’t lying when she told him how good he was. “He seemed nervous,” she defended. “I won’t be able to listen to his albums without thinking of this concert,” he responded ridiculously.)

Grizzly Bear was an exciting choice for the Philharmonic’s now second annual presents series. Last year, they invited Joanna Newsom, like Owen Pallett, an artist who makes her living playing a stringed classical instrument. Grizzly Bear stoked the imagination - would their songs be completely reworked, would their cloudy haze and reverb be converted into slow pulls across the strings and melodic hums from a brass instrument. In most cases, unfortunately no. Perhaps they came in with the best intentions to give it a go and maybe it wasn’t feasible but too often the Philharmonic faded into irrelevance, an ostentatious yet unimportant backing band (even taking 5 or 6 songs completely off). It was a shame no doubt, as the night’s two best songs, Central and Remote and Colorado, were greatly improved by grand orchestral flourishes.

Those comments were only relating to orchestra to band interaction, their performance as a whole was phenomenal.

Notes
* The Howard Gilman Opera House is a perfect venue for them - a classical space with an off kilter sensibility; high ceilings both expansive and intimate; ornate and grand.
* They played 5 songs off the upcoming Veckatimest, and there’s still not a bad one in the bunch.
* The video below doesn’t do it justice.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

2009-03-02T22:22:00.000-05:00

01.) It’s creepy that Woody Allen made such a sexy movie.
02.) Spain should scrap it’s marketing budget. Instead, they should mail interested parties a copy of this DVD.

Documentaries of 2008

2009-02-23T19:10:00.000-05:00

05.) Surfwise
04.) Operation Filmmaker
03.) Encounters at the End of the World
02.) Man On Wire
01.) Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

#1

2009-02-14T17:59:00.003-05:00

A Christmas Tale
Arnaud Desplechin

Arnaud Desplechin's film is a beautiful mess. Rootless and toneless, the near two and a half hour film bounces along, playing with story lines like an attention deficit child. Despite the film's ramblings, there is a core, though one that's not easy to pinpoint. It's a movie where a lot happens but then again nothing happens. A family film (a Christmas film) that's unsentimental, character expose their issues but return to their individuals lives much in the same way they arrived. It's an emotionally dense film yet charming and funny and even a bit whimsical. It's an intellectual movie but one that doesn't force you to overthink. It's a lot of things working in perfect harmony together.

#2

2009-02-13T17:58:00.002-05:00

Wall-E
Andrew Stanton

Blanket statements are tossed around when people talk about the movies. You'll hear stuff like "I don't like to watch movies in black & white" or "I'm not gonna watch that, it has subtitles. If I wanted to read I would have picked up a book." Seldom, however, is the component being railed upon the actual reason behind why someone might not like a movie. In the case of Wall-E, that nearly silent first act was cause for concern for some: "My kid ain't gonna be able to sit through that!" Starting a movie with thirty minutes of silence interspersed with songs from Hello Dolly was Pixar's way of raising the degree of difficulty and ignoring parents that are worried that their restless kids couldn't handle it: "Sit down and relax, Pixar wouldn't release an arthouse film."

Well they kind of did. Pixar could rest on their laurels and release just about anything and still make money. Instead they released their most ambitious film yet. A thought piece of a movie intended to also sell plush toys. A movie for children that skewered our country's over-consumption and ambivalence towards the environment more so than any "serious" work.

Admitting to liking Pixar movies is so in right now. It's like a way to say that you're comfortable in your own skin by admitting you like cartoons. Admitting to liking Wall-E is a little more than that. This thing is a masterpiece and no "animated feature" qualification is needed.

#3

2009-02-12T17:53:00.003-05:00

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
Cristian Mungiu

Romania has become fertile ground for international arthouse cinema and nowhere else in the world is there such stylistic unity as to suggest a national film movement. Like 12:08 East of Bucharest and Death of Mr. Lazerescu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is stripped down to nothing, leaving interpretive wiggle room for the birds.

Mungiu's film is one tragic and dreadful day in the life of pregnant student planning an abortion and her roommate who agrees to help. Since having an abortion in Communist Romania was against the law, the girls are forced to get one on the black market, turning a difficult situation into an unbearable one. This is a document of life in an oppressed society, where laws are still broken but must go to hell and back to do so.

Mungiu pulls no punches to the point of being unsympathetic to his viewer. If it wasn't executed this well it would have been exploitative. Just utterly devastating.

#4

2009-02-11T17:56:00.003-05:00

Let the Right One In
Tomas Alfredson

What people keep talking about when discussing this Alfredson's precise Let the Right One In is how many genres it covers. You'll hear how it's a vampire flick and a coming of age tale, and some will even discuss it's Swedish origin as if that were a genre onto itself as well.

Treating it as if it were a minor work that succeeds almost entirely because of the way Alfredson mixes doesn't give the film the credit it deserves. Like Paranoid Park, Let the Right One In is story on the tribulations of growing up the outcast and the desire to be something different. While yes, there is a vampire involved, Alfredson never betrays the film's emotional core by dwelling on this horror subplot. It's more like, "yea Eli is a vampire, she needs to suck blood from time to time. Can we talk about something else now?"

#5

2009-02-09T17:50:00.004-05:00

The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan

Forgetting the obvious for a second - Heath Ledger's one for the ages performance and two "WEEEE!!!!" action sequences, what I found most impressive was how Christopher Nolan has, from scratch, created a world both completely realistic and original. It's of course a superhero movie and Gotham is basically a toontown. The possibilities were endless, as Joel Schumacher would regrettably point out. The Gotham Christian Bale's Batman lives in has a history, diverse neighborhoods, a working government. I guess, Gotham and its citizens are the main characters here and Nolan has just chosen to follow Batman around.

I would guess my interest in the creation of cities would be of minor concern to most. The Dark Knight was the event movie of the year; the type that you'd go see at 2 am on a Wednesday before work. It was a billion dollar earner that met almost everyone's (including my way up in the sky) expectations that, for some, was a little bit more.

i.e. "Enthralling...An ambitious, full-bodied crime epic of gratifying scope and moral complexity, this is seriously brainy pop entertainment that satisfies every expectation raised by its hit predecessor and then some."

While I would agree that The Dark Knight was more thought provoking than your average Summer Blockbuster, the execution was a bit off. I think the Nolans had a tough time weaving all of these ideas about terror, evil, heroism and vigilantism into a movie that has to have an action beat every twenty minutes. Which is why, despite being awesome, it sits at number 5.

#6

2009-02-08T14:37:00.002-05:00

The Edge of Heaven
Fatih Akin

Akin's multi-narrative film about misunderstanding and loss is a subtle look at the collisions that take place as our world gets smaller. In the film, there are Turks living in Germany and Germans living in Turkey, there's an argument about the EU and revolutionaries in Turkey, there's a Turk killed in Germany and a German killed in Turkey and of course all of this, in the end, becomes one story.

Edge of Heaven has plenty in common with Babel, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's film about an interconnected world still hampered by many barriers. While Inarritu's film stumbles over itself trying to connect the stories, Akin's movie isn't dependent on a gimmicky reveal intertwining the threads. It's two stories, telling two side of the same coin and it's inconsequential whether those sides come together at all.

#7

2009-02-07T10:06:00.003-05:00

Chop Shop
Ramin Bahrani

After watching Chop Shop, you'd think director Ramin Bahrani was recycling stories from his youth, cribbing dialogue from his days spent at the Iron Triangle – the Queens neighborhood of industry, expressways, and auto-repair junkyards the film takes place. But Bahrani was raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and although he went to Columbia, I'm gonna presume that he didn't spend a lot of time in this neighborhood. Where then, did the ingredients for his slice of life come from, and how does it taste so true?

#8

2009-02-06T10:04:00.002-05:00

Slumdog Millionaire
Danny Boyle

After coming out of nowhere (ok, it was the Toronto Film Festival) to position itself as the frontrunner in the best picture horserace, Slumdog was in the backlash stage of its existence when I went to see it. "The premise was flimsy and my god isn't it cheesy."

While many might have choked up the sickly sweet mixture of destined love and game show theatrics, I didn't mind it. The story is compelling, in the same way that City of God is – the life in a third-world slum is rife with violence, crime and corruption. And I don't mind the business about a predestined tale, as a number of films are setup on a similar structure. It's not the best picture of the year (although it'll win that prize at the academy awards) but it's far better than Gladiator. Danny Boyle is a good director, he deserves this.

#9

2009-02-05T10:01:00.004-05:00

Paranoid Park
Gus Van Sant

Like Steven Soderbergh, Gus Van Sant has adopted a one for me one for you strategy. But while Soderbergh's for you films have been the uber-successful Ocean's # films, Gus Van Sant sells out to studios in the form of biopics of gay activists (he also directed Milk this year). What's frustrating about GVS is that you'd wish he add more experiment into straight narratives.

Conversely, what I've always wanted was a little more narrative in his experiments. Paranoid Park is Van Sant's most accessible of experimental projects. Van Sant's avant garde tendencies have always manifested themselves in a sort of filmmaking by slacker style, which suits Paranoid Park's skateboarder coming of age tale nicely. Alex, our protagonist, accidentally finds himself in more trouble than anyone could handle. How he deals with it, largely through internal turmoil veiled by slacker indifference is poignant - more so than most films in this genre. Like I wrote when the movie was first released, this is a movie that simultaneously bores you to death while gripping you with a clenched fist, and I meant that as a compliment.

Bonus points for the GVS entourage cameo, where at a backyard bbq in Queens, everyone knew what "a new Gus Van Sant movie" is and was really excited by it.

#10

2009-02-04T09:58:00.003-05:00

Boy A
John Crowley

George Lucas once famously (infamously?) quipped "any idiot can get sympathy from an audience, just grab a kitten and wring its neck." There are a number of these movies released a year – those that wish to trade you over-the-top melancholy for your empathy. Seldom do you actually care about anybody on the screen.

As the story of a young man reentering society from his prison stay resulting from a tragic crime he committed as a child, I imagine Boy A could have been one of those movies. But because of Andrew Hatfield's head-turning performance, you have a character that you actually care about, like you were watching a documentary of one of your buddies.

Maybe this is supposed to be some sort of a comment on the prison rehabilitation system but who cares?