I don’t know why I never got around to seeing the THE CROW sequel from the director of SIX-STRING SAMURAI. Always was curious. Still took me 19 years. Lance Mungia’s THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER, just like the previous one, was meant for theaters, but I think it only played somewhere around here? Wiki(dprayer)pedia says its theatrical run was only in Seattle and only for one week, and I do remember seeing an ad for it and being confused, but I was thinking it was in Eastern Washington. Anyway, I didn’t go.
When I saw DOMINO on opening day in 2005, I really thought it was the worst shit ever. In fact, at some point I earnestly added a “the worst shit ever” tag to my review of it. Tony Scott’s most chaotic ever visual style and editing just scraped against me and took me out of the story (to the extent that there was one), and I fixated on that and raged against it in my review. This had happened to me only a couple of times before: first with CON AIR, then ARMAGEDDON, and later it would happen with TRANSFORMERS and DOOMSDAY. But DOMINO is the most stylistically aggressive of any of those, and arguably the most pretentious.
In my review I said Scott was trying to seem young and edgy, compared it to getting his ear pierced. In my mind at that time he was the guy who directed TOP GUN, and TOP GUN was a movie for jocks, military lovers and top 40 listeners. When that one came out I didn’t notice that its style was revolutionary, I just knew everybody loved it including my entire sixth grade class, which meant it was the height of mainstream popular culture about a year or two before I would start kneejerk rebelling against such things. So to have the TOP GUN guy, almost 20 years later, trying to do what screenwriter Richard Kelly calls on the commentary track “punk rock,” was just a joke to me. (read the rest of this shit…)
“He had an uneventful childhood. He played baseball with the other kids on the block, became fascinated with the antics of what later became his heroes – The Three Stooges, read Spiderman comic books, thought Jerry Lewis was hilarious and the Little Rascals even more so. What influenced Raimi to become the ‘horror meister’ of slash and gore films is not found in his past.”
—Dead Auteur: How a 20-year-old ex-college student carved out his horror niche in Hollywood by Sue Uram, Cinefantastique, August 1992
Immediately following Raimi’s very serious director period, his career changed drastically again. After so many stabs at the mainstream, he finally made the leap to genuine blockbuster filmmaking, bringing one of the most famous characters in the history of American pop culture to the big screen for the first time. This is not the use-Intro-Vision-to-stretch-the-budget-enough-to-try-to-compete-in-summer of DARKMAN and ARMY OF DARKNESS, or the work-with-huge-stars-but-scare-off-boring-people-by-doing-something-different-with-them of THE QUICK AND THE DEAD. I’m talking a super hero event movie with ten times the budget of DARKMAN, working with Sony Digital Imageworks to pioneer effects techniques that nobody was even sure would be possible, and finally sharing his talents with pretty much the widest audience possible for a movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
THE PAPERBOY is the new one from Academy Award nominee for Best Director Lee Daniels. That’s the guy that did PRECIOUS, BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE as well as SHADOWBOXER, BASED ON THE IDEA THAT HELEN MIRREN AND CUBA GOODING JR. ARE ASSASSINS AND SHE RAISED HIM BUT ALSO THEY’RE FUCKING AND SHE HAS CANCER. I feel like the critical community embraced PRECIOUS without really picking up on how nutty it was, or doing a background check on Mr. Daniels’s previous work. So they did cartoony “wh-wh-whUHHH?” double-takes when THE PAPERBOY played at Cannes and had a part where Nicole Kidman territorially pisses on Zac Efron from HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. Because it’s a Lee Daniels movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
JeffG on Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: “I have found the discourse around this one interesting, because I have heard everything from “worst in the franchise” to…” May 29, 12:41
Hammer Time on Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: “Re: Editing – my takeaway is that we need to adopt more specific film language for what is happening in…” May 29, 05:41
Skani on Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: “I’m actually same as Adam as far as my recall of this series. For me, the plot is incidental, and…” May 29, 04:52
Jules on Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: ““Also I enjoyed their “final reckoning” at the very end when we get to contemplate whether Junior purposely made it…” May 29, 01:00
Edgard on Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: “Once again, fully aligned with Vern here… not the best of the series but still a lot to enjoy. Messy…” May 28, 21:26
MaggieMayPie on Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: “Vern, yeah that’s what I figured. It just felt like I had to dig for it through all of the…” May 28, 19:56
Skani on Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: “I’m Team This Was Fun. I’m more or less on the same page as Vern. It’s a self-indulgent, bloated mess,…” May 28, 17:55
VERN on Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: “Maggie – Her loyalty was to Gabriel, who betrayed her, believing she would betray him because Ethan spared her. A…” May 28, 16:39
Ben C. on Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: ““Ethan trying to convince President Angela Bassett and company to give him an unlimited budget and carte blanche is probably…” May 28, 14:07
Jake on Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: “The Phelps Jr. reveal doesn’t quite land but I can understand why they wanted to at least try. Ethan losing…” May 28, 13:46
When I saw DOMINO on opening day in 2005, I really thought it was the worst shit ever. In fact, at some point I earnestly added a “the worst shit ever” tag to 
“He had an uneventful childhood. He played baseball with the other kids on the block, became fascinated with the antics of what later became his heroes – The Three Stooges, read Spiderman comic books, thought Jerry Lewis was hilarious and the Little Rascals even more so. What influenced Raimi to become the ‘horror meister’ of slash and gore films is not found in his past.”
“If anyone’s gonna pee on him, it’s gonna be me!”
