Category: Film

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Laughing Matters: Martin Scorsese in “The Muse”

Dan Seeger

Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. This will be two straight weeks with a clip from an Albert Brooks movie in the space. That seems fine to me. As we traipse into the annual part of the film calendar overstuffed with fare that is desperately seeking Oscar, there are little flares of especially intriguing news here and there. For example, after months of speculation as to whether or not Martin … Continue reading Laughing Matters: Martin Scorsese in “The Muse”

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From the Archive: The Vanishing

Dan Seeger

The review was written for my college student-run newspaper. I’d watched the 1988 Dutch original, so I’m not precisely sure why I neglected to note that the inferior remake was directed by the exact same person: George Sluizer. That seems like a pertinent detail for a film critic to share.  The Vanishing is a prime example of how Hollywood can take a great idea and completely muck it up. Based on an intriguing and unsettling 1991 Dutch film of the same name, The Vanishing involves a man’s obsession with his girlfriend’s mysterious disappearance while on vacation. Kiefer Sutherland gives a strong … Continue reading From the Archive: The Vanishing

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Laughing Matters: “The Desert Inn has heart!”

Dan Seeger

Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. What can I type? This is on my mind tonight. Previous entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Laughing Matters” tag. Continue reading Laughing Matters: “The Desert Inn has heart!”

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Branagh, Brooks, Leigh, McGrath, Trank

Dan Seeger

Cinderella (Kenneth Branagh, 2015). It’s grading on the most generous of curves, but as a crass attempt to develop a new revenue stream for a beloved Disney animated class, the live action Cinderella isn’t so bad. It’s certainly a damn sight better than the grotesque senses assault of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which basically established this type of cinematic tomb raiding. Similarly, Kenneth Branagh’s directing is more tightly controlled and snappily efficient than anything else he’s done in ages, the stricter corporate oversight perhaps taming his penchant for dragging indulgence. Most of the acting is merely perfunctory, save for … Continue reading Branagh, Brooks, Leigh, McGrath, Trank

Books, FilmLeave a comment

My Writers: Tom Stoppard

Dan Seeger

There are writers who leave me dumbfounded, so thoroughly dazzled by their inventiveness and command of language that I can’t help but speculate on what it must be like within the interconnected passages of their brain. I make no claim on an exhaustive knowledge of the voluminous works of Tom Stoppard, especially since most of the touchstone efforts are best experiences from a seat positioned to face a stage. Still, whenever I come upon one of his landscapes of intricately interlocking ideas, I feel humbled and blessed in equal measure. Like most, I suppose, my welcoming entryway to Stoppard’s art … Continue reading My Writers: Tom Stoppard

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The Art of the Sell: “Dance with Your Feet”

Dan Seeger

These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art.  I’ve been taking my place within the hallowed cathedrals of movie theaters for long enough that I can remember a time when there wasn’t a sitcom-length sprawl of commercials as the preamble to any feature. While the natural presumption is that I — in proper cranky old man form — find such intrusions of corporate marketing to be deplorable, I see it instead as, at worst, a necessary evil in a time of mounting costs and more … Continue reading The Art of the Sell: “Dance with Your Feet”

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 148 – 146

Dan Seeger

148. Eurythmics, “Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)” There was no way the big bosses of the entertainment business were going to let the calendar year 1984 pass without doing their level best to capitalize of the fact it corresponded to one of the most famous titles in 20th century literature. Given the need to heavily prioritize timetables over creative decisions, there was equally little chance they were going to avoid bungling the whole endeavor. While respectfully reviewed upon its release, the 1984 film version of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was not the sensation, critically or commercially, that the producers expected. Even its … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 148 – 146

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Bernstein with Hooker, Chaplin, Friedkin, Lowery, Taylor

Dan Seeger

Terminator: Genisys (Alan Taylor, 2015). The reeling lesson of the just completed summer box office season is that the recycled repetition of brand-driven moviemaking may finally be sputtering its last. The ideal case study as to why arrived one year earlier. Arriving six years after the previous attempt at franchise revivification, Terminator: Genisys shows precisely how hollow the endeavor can be. The film trots out a procession of touchstones — familiar lines, restaged scenes, echoed character beats — without a hint of a central vision or an ounce of soul. Director Alan Taylor brings that same sluggish blandness that made … Continue reading Bernstein with Hooker, Chaplin, Friedkin, Lowery, Taylor