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From the Archive: Loaded Weapon 1

Dan Seeger

  Lest anyone think horrendously bad spoof movies was a result of the trailblazing of the Wayans clan, there was an ugly little flare-up of them in the early nineteen-nineties, largely responding to the surprising success of the Naked Gun films. Yes, friends, there are times when being a film critic is pure misery. This review was written for The Pointer, the student-run newspaper at my undergraduate institution.  One of the difficulties in creating a Naked Gun style parody film is throwing jokes at the audience as if fired from a machine gun, so there’s not much room for flat, unsuccessful … Continue reading From the Archive: Loaded Weapon 1

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Greatish Performances #26

Dan Seeger

#26 — Michael Douglas as Grady Tripp in Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson, 2000) When Michael Douglas was cast as Grady Tripp, I was mightily disappointed. Wonder Boys was a book I adored, and the news that it was being adapted for the screen by the writer of The Fabulous Baker Boys and the director of L.A. Confidential filled me with brave belief that the commonplace degradation of a literary work by the Hollywood machine would be skillfully sidestepped. I figured it would be easy from there. Cast Jeff Bridges as the lead character, and all would be well. Instead, director … Continue reading Greatish Performances #26

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The Art of the Sell: “The House of the Devil” poster

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 have a longstanding appreciation for movie posters, going back to the days when my trips to the theater were sadly infrequent. I’d wander the hallways staring at these vivid promises of cinematic wonders to come, resigned to the knowledge that taking in this one design and promotional statement would likely comprise the totality of my experience with the films in question in the palace of flickering lights where they were best seen. As official movie posters … Continue reading The Art of the Sell: “The House of the Devil” poster

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Landis, McDonagh, Nichols, Parks, Trevorrow

Dan Seeger

The Blues Brothers (John Landis, 1980). I routinely think of this musical-action-comedy as the strongest film of the many that have been spun off from Saturday Night Live recurring characters, though we’re admittedly looking at a shallow, fetid pool. A recent fresh viewing suggests I might have been inflating in, undoubtedly on the basis of how freely I and my cohort of dopey high school friends quoted it, as if reciting a bar order of “three orange whips” at a purportedly clever moment would position us as comic geniuses. The movie is more slapdash than I remembered and spotted with … Continue reading Landis, McDonagh, Nichols, Parks, Trevorrow

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From the Archive: Used People

Dan Seeger

Several weeks back, I offered up several short reviews I’d written for the “Best of 1992” episode of our movie review show on the radio. On the back of one of those pages was a true rarity from my time doing that program: a hand-written script. I wonder if that means I wrote it in an odd place, far away from a word processor, as if I needed to get my animosity down as quickly as possible, hoping to lose none of my spite for the film in question in the journey to a more familiar writing space. Regardless, from … Continue reading From the Archive: Used People