Author: Dan Seeger

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Top Ten Movies of 2009 — Number Ten

Dan Seeger

We buy our tickets in an era in which remakes have given way to reboots, as good an indicator as any as to the degree to which major studios have planed away any remaining aspirations towards art in their respective business models. Instead creative efforts are tagged with the same term used to describe the latest outpost of a nationwide food chain, and possess a level of quality akin to mass-produced burgers. To find something operating well within that framework that also manages to be fresh, inventive, witty, smart and wildly entertaining is plainly stunning. Director J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2009 — Number Ten

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Top Ten Movies of 2009 — An Introduction

Dan Seeger

Sometimes a movie year just breaks me. As I noted around this time last year, designating an end to a movie year is matter of choice instead of obedience to the calendar. I live in a place where a year’s official releases take some time to trickle into town, especially at this time of year, when smaller films are held back in the hope of capitalizing on interest generated by award nominations. I do my best to dutifully see everything I should to be, in my view, a responsible contributor to the public discourse about film excellence, using the Oscar … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2009 — An Introduction

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One for Friday: Trotsky Icepick, “El Kabong”

Dan Seeger

I’ve always been a sucker for pop references, at least pop references I was fluent in. Throughout college, I had a strong band of friends, many of whom regularly seasoned conversation with lines of movie dialogue or quoted song lyrics. We built metaphors around obscure television characters and routinely proclaimed one another “like school on a Saturday” in tribute to Fat Albert. Since this was my daily language, I was always very pleased when I would discover a kindred approach to such communication somewhere within the music I built into my playlists at 90FM, some band namechecking Alan Moore or … Continue reading One for Friday: Trotsky Icepick, “El Kabong”

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Abraham, Hiller, Lau and Mak, Lynch, Swanberg

Dan Seeger

Flash of Genius (Marc Abraham, 2008). Based on a New Yorker article, Marc Abraham’s directorial debut relates the story of Bob Kearns, a Detroit man whose invention of the intermittent windshield wiper was illegally appropriated by the big automakers. Dutifully tracing events from the early nineteen-sixties when Kearns drew his sizable family into the process of creating the device through the nineties when the court cases he pursued to get due credit finally reached their culmination, the film is serious, somber and sorely lacking in verve or any other enlivening spirit. It’s thankfully not overly pompous about its subject, but … Continue reading Abraham, Hiller, Lau and Mak, Lynch, Swanberg

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The loser standing small beside the victory, that’s her destiny

Dan Seeger

You know how I’m like Penelope Cruz, Vera Farmiga, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Anna Kendrick? When it comes to the Oscar competition I’m a part of this year, no matter how hard I try and how strong of an effort I put up, I know I’m going to lose. As you may recall, every year I go head-to-head with my longtime friend and former movie review show colleague in a friendly competition to see who can best predict the nominees in the six biggest Oscar categories. And every year I lose, except in those couple of years in which we tie. … Continue reading The loser standing small beside the victory, that’s her destiny

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Predicting the Oscar Nominations, or How to Lose a Competition in Six Categories

Dan Seeger

This morning I watched Roger Federer win the Australian Open for the fourth time, his sixteenth Grand Slam title overall. And it made me think of the Oscars. Specifically, it made me think of a yearly wager I’ve been participating in for around twenty years. The radio show The Reel Thing began on 90FM-WWSP in the fall of 1990. It was a movie news and review program, and this time of the year a remarkable amount of time was devoted to the Academy Awards, including attempts on the part of both myself and my on-air colleague to predict the films, … Continue reading Predicting the Oscar Nominations, or How to Lose a Competition in Six Categories