Garland, Howard, Mangold, Ross, Taylor
Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015). Novelist and screenwriter Garland makes his directorial debut with this smart, chilly science fiction film about a reclusive tech magnate (Oscar Isaac) who flies up an employee (Domhnall Gleeson), supposedly selected at random, to help him test out some remarkable new artificial intelligence he’s created. Complicating the test subjects reactions is the little detail that the A.I. has been loaded into an android with a notably lovely female form and visage (Alicia Vikander). Garland builds his script with almost malicious psychological cunning, fomenting uncertainty as to whether the genius inventor is a simmering madman or … Continue reading Garland, Howard, Mangold, Ross, Taylor
My Writers: John Irving
When I was a kid, few things drew me to a book more assuredly than the existence of a corresponding movie. This could go in either direction, by the way. The nineteen-seventies and eighties were a sort of golden age for novelizations of movies, and I was happy to devour them. Similarly, if a movie was based on a book, inexpensive paperback copies were usually readily available, stocked generously into racks at the supermarket. In retrospect, I think I used it as a rough guidepost as to which books were worthy of my scattered attention. If the story existed in … Continue reading My Writers: John Irving
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Nine
#29 — Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944) There is something about film noir during its heyday that bought out the twisty darkness in every filmmaker who waded into its murky depths. While director Otto Preminger had a career that was varied enough to defy easy categorization, I generally think of his works as clean and resolutely open-eyed, utilizing careful craft to tell relatively straightforward stories. Even a great film fringed with darkness like Anatomy of a Murder becomes methodical under Preminger’s guidance, almost anticipating modern procedurals in its keen attention to the simple progression of events, the whirring machinery of a court … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Nine
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 30 – 28
30. Bush, Sixteen Stone A few year backs, when I called a different online space my digital home, I spent an entire day watching Michael Bay films and chronicling the experience for anyone who cared to read. I’d sworn off the efforts of the director following the appalling Armageddon, and decided, for reasons that escape me now, to watch everything I’d missed, in chronological order, across one morning and afternoon, culminating with an evening viewing of Transformers. I tried reading a book afterward and couldn’t do it. That’s how bad the endless march of terrible filmmaking scrambled my brain. While recently … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 30 – 28
From the Archive: Problem Child 2
As Ted 2 arrives in theaters, now seems like a good time to offer a reminder that puerile comedy sequels have been a part of summer since the days when Seth MacFarlane was only bothering his friends with inane pop culture references and his sexist, racist, self-involved nonsense. Now he makes millions of it and inflicts it on the whole culture. Thanks again for rescuing Family Guy, Cartoon Network! Anyway, we used a four-star rating scale on our radio movie review show, but one star was generally as low as a film could go. We reserved the 1/2 star and zero star assessments for the … Continue reading From the Archive: Problem Child 2
One for Friday: Daryl and the Chaperones, “My Baby’s a Spy”
As happens periodically in this weekly space, I’m drawing the song to share from the bevy of splendid musical wonders I plucked from an old blog called Little Hits. As with other material parked on the World Wide Web, all of the writing on the blog remains, though it’s approaching ten years since it’s been updated. All the song links seem to be defunct, so consider this entry another modest attempt at preserving some of the extraordinary music shared on the blog that first inspired me to dig into my own collection to help fill Fridays. (With rare exceptions, I don’t … Continue reading One for Friday: Daryl and the Chaperones, “My Baby’s a Spy”
Thinking, wishing, hoping that you’ll never feel the same again
Late in the closing credits of Inside Out, the latest feature from Pixar Animation Studios, there’s a dedication offered out by the filmmaking team to their collected children, urging them to never grow older. Ever. That’s hardly an original sentiment for parents to express. It even borders on the banal. That’s not what makes it notable. What makes it truly stand out is the way the wish for eternal childhood is at complete odds with the message of the movies that’s just preceded it. The creators may want their kids to stay kids. The film argues, persuasively, that growing up … Continue reading Thinking, wishing, hoping that you’ll never feel the same again
Top 40 Smash Taps: “Just a Little”
These posts are about the songs that can accurately claim to crossed the key line of chart success, becoming Top 40 hits on Billboard, but just barely. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 40. Brenda Lee saw two straight singles climb all the way to the top of the Billboard chart in 1960, when she was still a teenager. It was the beginning of a stretch of enormous success that allowed her to claim a quantity of chart hits in the sixties surpassed by only Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and Ray Charles. “I’m Sorry” resided at #1 for … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Just a Little”
That Championship Season: Justified, Season Two
By now, there are enough smart, fitting adaptations of Elmore Leonard’s work to the screen — big and small — that it obscures the long, problematic history the prolific writer had when turning his work over to Hollywood. And it wasn’t from lack of trying. According to some sources, there have been over two dozen whacks at transforming Leonard’s fiction, which is lean enough to sometimes read as if it’s a script treatment, into film or television. Even though it seemed the curse was broken with 1995’s Get Shorty, a story fittingly inspired by Leonard’s dismal encounters with Hollywood studios, there … Continue reading That Championship Season: Justified, Season Two
My Misspent Youth: Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers by Jack Kirby
I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. While I was a committed student of the history of Marvel Comics upon devoting myself to their stories at the age of ten, I was shamefully slow to come around to the art of the creator who was arguably the most important figure in the groundbreaking, foundational years of the publisher. Working with writer Stan Lee, artist Jack Kirby was the architect of the early Marvel Universe, officially co-creating almost every … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers by Jack Kirby
Coffee for Two 