Archive for the ‘Drama’ Category
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
Both of these pictures are real good pictures that happen to be inspired by the Leopold and Loeb murder case. Who those two are is two rich kids who thought they were smarter than everyone else and above the law and decided to kill one of their cousins and destroy the body with acid just for the thrill of it.
Rope is Alfred Hitchcock’s picture which started the real time gimmick where you try to make the movie look like it was all done in one shot. The movie is actually done in 8 shots because you can’t put that much film on a camera I mean gimme a break, it’s too much. So they shoot until the roll of film is about to run out and then they zoom into the back of a guy’s jacket and then zoom out from the jacket on the next roll of film and you pretend it’s continuous. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dean Stockwell, E.G. Marshall, Hitchcock, James Stewart, Orson Welles, Richard Fleischer
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
First of all I want to point out I don’t think this picture is really about disco. I mean it gives a different view of the phenomenon, showing it only in the early ’80s when it was taken over by a bunch of yuppies and it tries to explain what it meant to those people. This is not the young and exciting working class disco of Saturday Night Fever. This is at the point when you had to look a certain way to get in. For one of the main characters jimmy the club is his life, but not because he loves to dance. Because he works in advertising and he brings his clients there to impress them. That’s the kind of bullshit scene we’re talking about here.
But even though it makes that point it’s not a disco movie, it’s not one of these movies about dancing and partying and what not. What it is about is a bunch of young rich kids fresh out of college talking endlessly about a bunch of pretentious bullshit about their generation or relationships or which is the best cocktail for their image or what is the true meaning of Lady and the Tramp. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale, Whit Stillman
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
Well if you know what this movie is then I know what your thinking. How the fuck does a motherfucker like ol’ Vern end up watching a picture like Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty. Well the answer is the Bravo network. Ever since I saw The Getaway on Bravo a week or two ago I started watching this channel pretty regular. I think you know about inside the actors studio so I won’t mention it except to say, at the end, he always asks them what their favorite curse word is, and they either say fuck or more often motherfucker, and the audience always laughs like it was completely unexpected. Kind of like how everybody always laughed when arnold said “Whatyou talkin about Mr. Drummond?” even though for fuck’s sake we all knew the joke was coming, jesus let’s not pretend it snuck up behind us fer cryin out loud.
So anyway, Stealing Beauty is a picture about gorgeous 19 year old Lucy who comes to an equally gorgeous Italian villa where all the artists work and what not. This is like the prettiest god damn place you ever seen. The houses are huge and old fashioned, there are perfectly clean streams to swim in, plenty of nature and olive groves and beautiful wooden statues everywhere. I mean it’s like going camping, only in the garden of eden. Everyone there loves a laidback lifestyle, they appreciate the arts and the nature and beauty more than anything. It seems like none of them ever go to work, but they have huge houses and property and big parties with candles everywhere and yet they don’t come off like a bunch of soulless rich fucks. It takes place in the modern day but it wouldn’t have to. People ride bicycles and read books. Nobody watches TV and the only connection to the media or the outside world is an occasional call on the cell phone or a CD that Lucy plays. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bernardo Bertolucci, Liv Tyler
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Romance | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
A little while back I saw a real good documentary called DERBY which on the surface was about a guy trying to become a professional roller derby artist but really was about how he was cheating on his wife and there was a dude with no shirt on reading playboys, and other weird stuff. I don’t know how to describe it man read that review if that’s what you’re interested in. get off my fuckin back, jack.
Anyway there’s a reason I bring this up, it has to do with this review also. The director of that picture was Robert Kaylor, who according to amazon.com presents the internet movie database only did three other movies, and of those three this here CARNY is the only one in print. So I watched it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Craig Wasson, Gary Busey, Jodie Foster, Robert Kaylor
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Monday, December 31st, 2001
First off friends welcome to 2002. Sorry about that 2001 business. Just a couple more of these and Bush’ll be gone, we hope. Auld lang sine, etc. etc.
Anyway, enough holiday theme shit, let’s get to the point here. If I had a most anticipated movie of last Wednesday, it woulda been ALI. Why? Because it’s a movie about Muhammed Fucking Ali. To my knowledge it is the ONLY movie playing in theaters right now that is about Muhammed Fucking Ali.
I didn’t know what to expect from this movie though, on account of the casting. The real Muhammed Ali already played himself in the movie THE GREATEST and in the documentary WHEN WE WERE KINGS. And why fix what ain’t fucked? I didn’t understand this new casting of Will Smith in the part. I gotta admit I was pretty pissed, like the nerds get whenever they cast somebody new as Superman, James Bond, Dr. Zauis or Green Aqua.
And that’s what Ali is, is a super hero. Not the kind who wears a cape, although I must admit he does wear boots. Anyway I think we all agree that Muhammed Ali is one of the greatest american heroes there is. You don’t even have to like sports – and I don’t – to understand that Ali is what the kids call “the mothafuckin MAN.” They don’t make ’em like Ali anymore. In fact they never did. It was probaly some typa mistake on the assembly line. Some freak accident that only happens once or twice every thousand-thousand years. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Michael Mann, Muhammad Ali, Will Smith
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Sport, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 8 Comments »
Friday, November 30th, 2001
Remember for a little while there people thought Quentin Tarantino’s job was to find washed up actors who can’t get good roles anymore, put them in a great role and revive their career. He did it for Harvey Keitel and John Travolta anyway, and sort of for Bruce. He also helped bring attention to Steve Buscemi, outlaw award winner Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen and others. But somehow, when he gave both Pam Grier and Robert Forster in the best roles of their careers in the great JACKIE BROWN, the same magic didn’t work.
I mean these two were incredible in JACKIE BROWN. And what do they get? Oscar buzz that amounts to nothing, and some more really bad roles. Poor Pam Grier was in JAWBREAKER and SNOW DAY. Robert Forster kept doing straight to videos, with only an occasional bit part as a generic cop or doctor in things like MULHOLLAND DRIVE and the remake of PSYCHO PART 1. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Donnie Wahlberg, heists, Robert Forster
Posted in Drama, Reviews | No Comments »
Saturday, November 10th, 2001
In Hollywood they have a saying that goes something like, “if you can’t think of anything funny, put a movie star in a fat suit.” On some magazine I saw on a news stand they had another saying that goes, “Fat suits: the new blackface.”
It’s true too. I mean the less acceptable it becomes to make fun of the gays, the more people need somebody else to pick on. So they start pickin on these big folks.
I don’t know why but for some reason people think it’s hilarious to see a celebrity made up to look all fat. They did it on Big Momma’s House. They did it on one of those sitcoms that is popular now, I believe it was either Friends or Cheers. The one about the kids in the apartment who have relationships, etc. Also Eddie Murphy did it. He thought it was so funny he based two movies around it. And within each movie he had to play four or five different fat characters in order to try to fill the whole movie with laughs. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Farrelly Brothers, fat suit, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Black, Jason Alexander
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews, Romance | No Comments »
Saturday, November 3rd, 2001
I have to admit, the digital video is starting to look more promising. For a while there I was about to declare it my arch-enemy. It never looked like a real movie. It always looked like crap. But it was winning over directors like Spike Lee, lowering their standards. Either it looked muddy and ugly (like Bamboozled) or like a TV special (like Original Kings of Comedy). Even in the best cases it just looked like cheap film stock (Chuck and Buck) and in the only case where it looked really great (Julien Donkey Boy) it was because they transferred it to film and then back to video and then back to film, or some crazy shit like that that nobody else is gonna bother to try.
I’m still skeptical but I must admit that the technology is improving, making it more acceptable. They’re even using digital video for important works like the next Soderbergh film and the third installment in the Mariachi trilogy. I saw an ad for Star Wars Part 2 and although it looked more artifial than part 1, I would never have guessed it was all shot on some super high tech rich guy camcorder. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ethan Hawke, Richard Linklater, Robert Sean Leonard, Uma Thurman
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 2nd, 2001
Hey folks, Harry here with the latest from that insane man… VERN. Vern comes from another planet…. or so I’ve heard. They apparently herd sheep into trailers there. He’s using this grazing ability to sum up the cornstalkability of this latest film from the Coens…. Here ya go…
THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE
by Vern
Monday I saw the new movie by the Coen Brothers.
First I gotta say, I am not exactly familiar with these brothers. The hughes brothers I know. The wachowski brothers. The Maysles brothers. The doobie brothers I know a thing or two about. For example, they have two drummers don’t they? I don’t know. The point is, you know more about the coen brothers than I do. Are they twins? I don’t know. Maybe they aren’t really brothers, it is only a stage name like the blues brothers, the smothers brothers or the isley brothers. The point is, I wouldn’t know. Because I know jack shit about them, if jack shit was two things. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Bob Thornton, Coen Brothers, Frances McDormand, James Gandolfini
Posted in AICN, Crime, Drama, Reviews | No Comments »
Sunday, October 28th, 2001
I gotta admit I was surprised by this picture. It is about a young man (named Donnie Darko [that is why the movie is called Donnie Darko, it is the dude’s name]) to whom all the weird shit happens. Like for example a demonic rabbit lures him out of bed to a golf course, whispering mysterious type business to him in a spooky voice. In the morning he comes home and, you know, a plane engine has fallen onto his bedroom. Only one thing is, nobody knows what happened to the plane the engine fell off of. And it would be bad enough to have a plane engine fall into your room in the first place, then you gotta throw in all this mysterious bermuda triangle type business too. I mean he has a hard enough time just with school work now he has to deal with this shit.
This movie didn’t get much of a release and I don’t know, maybe it’s because it’s coming out in a time when Donnie Darko’s life doesn’t seem all that different from ours. Engines do fall out of the sky. I mean they have ax fights on planes now. They have shoe bombs and shit. They’re gonna have baboon attacks pretty soon, the way things are going in my opinion. Pilots gored by elephants after that. I mean why do they allow elephants in the cargo hold anyway is what they’re gonna say. We shoulda seen that loophole. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Patrick Swayze, Richard Kelly
Posted in Drama, Mystery, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 1 Comment »
