Posts Tagged ‘Shane Salerno’
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2025
I’m not gonna waste your time pretending you need my opinion whether to see AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH or not. If you don’t like these movies, no, don’t bother. If you do, obviously you’re gonna see it, it’s a new AVATAR! A new James Cameron! You’re not a heathen. And he’s still pretty much undefeated. The streak continues.
If I were to offer viewing advice it would be to avoid HFR (high frame rate) projection at all costs. I recklessly decided to see it at my favorite theater (SIFF downtown, f.k.a. Cinerama) despite my hatred for that format, and as soon as it started my heart just sank. When projected in this format, what seems like the majority of the movie is presented with the ugly screen saver sheen of 60-frames-per-second, but it repeatedly switches back to aesthetically pleasing 24 fps and if you’re like me you sigh with relief until it goes back and then you start grumbling to yourself again. It felt like I spent the whole 197 minutes fighting over the remote control with some guy who wants the motion smoothing on, so my level of concentration was not ideal for maybe the first 45 minutes. I was so taken out of the movie that a James Cameron directed air battle dropped dead in front of me like some Stephen Sommers clatter. Should be illegal. I’m never doing HFR again. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amanda Silver, Britain Dalton, David Thewlis, Edie Falco, Giovanni Ribisi, Jack Champion, James Cameron, Jemaine Clement, Josh Friedman, Oona Chaplin, Rick Jaffa, Sam Worthington, Shane Salerno, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Zoe Saldana
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 25 Comments »
Tuesday, July 24th, 2018
July 1, 1998
“There was some criticism that I made NASA look dumb in certain places. In fact if you heard some of these asteroid theories of what they are thinking of doing, it just sounds asinine.” –Michael Bay
ARMAGEDDON is Michael Bay’s third movie, but in some sense it’s the one where he revealed his true face to the world. There were plenty of examples of his style and character in BAD BOYS and THE ROCK, but it was ARMAGEDDON that first presented the full breadth of his trademarks: awesome awesome macho bros, pretty pretty sunsets, government employees portrayed as insufferable weiners even though they’re in the right, spinning cameras, haphazard editing all over the fucking place, chaotic mish-mashes of explosions and sparks and machinery and debris and smoke and crap, beautiful shots of people in various locations around the world, weirdly hateful characters presented as cutesy comic relief, an army of highly qualified writers seemingly locked in a cage and forced to duct tape a bunch of dumb ideas into the most unwieldy structure they can come up with that has a running time at least 30 minutes longer than the story has earned, and of course an ensemble of talented actors improvising jokes with no regard for any sort of desired rhythm or tone of storytelling. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ann Biderman, asteroid, Ben Affleck, Billy Bob Thornton, Bruce, Bruce Willis, Charlton Heston, disaster movies, J.J. Abrams, Jerry Bruckheimer, Jonathan Hensleigh, Liv Tyler, Mark Goldblatt, Michael Clarke Duncan, NASA, Owen Wilson, Paul Attanasio, Peter Stormare, Robert Roy Pool, Robert Towne, Scott Rosenberg, Shane Salerno, Steve Buscemi, Summer of '98, Tony Gilroy, Trevor Rabin
Posted in Action, Bruce, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 53 Comments »
Saturday, July 7th, 2012
SAVAGES is the new crime film from Oliver Stone, about two young idealistic pot entrepreneurs taking on a ruthless Mexican cartel (which is one of the most common types of cartels). The tale is narrated to us by O (GREEN LANTERN’s girlfriend Blake Lively) who is the shared lover of botany genius/philanthropist Ben (Aaron KICKASS Johnson) and Iraq vet/muscle-of-the-operation Chon (Taylor JOHN CARTER Kitsch). The two grew up together as surf bums in Laguna Beach and then one day decided to bring home marijuana seeds from Afghanistan and create a new strain. And the shit blew up like Apple. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Johnson, Benicio Del Toro, Blake Lively, Demian Bichir, Don Winslow, Emile Hirsch, John Travolta, Oliver Stone, Salma Hayek, Shane Salerno, Shea Whigham, Taylor Kitsch
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 62 Comments »
