Tag: 2011 movies

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

This week, I tried to satisfy my household’s penchant for films that traffic in monsters and gore by reviewing Stake Land. As is often the case when dealing with this sort of genre fare, it was ultimately disappointing, the promising, inventive elements ultimately unable to outweigh the portions of the film that were pure retread. I’m still longing for that amazing discovery moment that comes from watching something Ti West’s The House of the Devil. I also reviewed the new album from Vivian Girls, which was a little odd having already worked with the band as performers who played at … Continue reading Spectrum Check

Film, MusicLeave a comment

Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

There was a time when Uma Thurman was an actress that demanded attention. If she was in a film, it merited at least some amount of consideration. Maybe the finished project was actually not very good (or even downright awful) but she alone made it something that at least went into the “maybe” pile when sorting out film-going options. Sadly, I’ve noticed lately that, as I spin the digital dial considering movies to add to our overstuffed DVR, the opposite is now true. Uma’s inclusion in the cast list–especially at the top of it–is a signal to stay away. I … Continue reading Spectrum Check

FilmLeave a comment

Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

This week, I looked to current events to help explain why I find Barbara Kopple’s masterful 1990 documentary American Dream so damn powerful. Sometimes I feel a little sad that Kopple has largely concentrated on comparatively lightweight fare for the bulk of her career, but realistically the amazing quality of first two films are enough to make her the deserving recipient of boundless admiration. I also reviewed a new documentary about exotic animals like lions and elephants kept as pets. It’s a measure of how crazy my week has been that I kind of miffed the review initially and had … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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Dugan, Lubitsch, Mangold, Reitman, Taccone

Dan Seeger

One Hour with You (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932). It’s a basic necessity to mention “The Lubitsch Touch” when evaluating one of the films from the great comic director, even if it’s simply to point out the absence of his trademark deftness in the work in question. One Hour with You is considered a fairly early effort–nearly a decade before revered classics like Ninotchka and The Shop Around the Corner, but, in the way of the era, the director already had dozens of films under his belt by this point. The film is a pretty odd duck, a soft-stepping musical about flirtations … Continue reading Dugan, Lubitsch, Mangold, Reitman, Taccone

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

While I abandoned the Interweb all this week, I still had a couple fingerprints show up here and there. My one contribution that landed at Spectrum Culture was a review of 3 Backyards, the long-gestating follow-up to the fine Judy Berlin from writer-director Eric Mendelsohn. Sadly, I didn’t have many kind things to share, but it did provide further proof for the theory that Edie Falco is always worth watching. I was supposed to contribute to the the feature on the country’s best microbreweries, but in my rush to leave last week, I goofed up in submitting my piece. It … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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Boorman, Capra, Jarecki, Koster, Lang

Dan Seeger

No Highway in the Sky (Henry Koster, 1951). This murky little thriller casts James Stewart as an American engineer working with Great Britain’s Royal Aircraft Establishment. He’s convinced that the design of the flagship Reindeer airliner is tragically flawed, causing the tail to fall off after a certain number of hours in flight. His worries comes to an head when he’s taking a transatlantic journey on the plane in question and discovers it’s nearing the fatal number of logged hours. It’s a fun premise, but the film unfortunately lacks either the ratcheted up suspense of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller or … Continue reading Boorman, Capra, Jarecki, Koster, Lang

Books, FilmLeave a comment

Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

This week, I made my usual contribution to the movie review section, offering up an assessment of Putty Hill, a film that has, in my opinion, some clear forefathers. It’s the sort of lo-fi cinema wonder that gets extra credit when it’s discovered at a film festival, where its unassuming nature always feels a little fresher. It’s very good, but has some of the hard-to-dodge flaws built into its understated methodology. Then there were a couple pile-on pieces that included my humble contribution. The first was the latest List Inconsequential, which focused on books that elicited tears. I’m not sure … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

I’ve had a little more modest output over at Spectrum Culture the past couple of weeks. I reviewed a Russian film called How I Ended This Summer about a burgeoning conflict between a couple of technicians at a remote weather station. Unfortunately, the frigid terrain they moved through looked a little too much like what was outside of our Carolina windows at the time. Luckily, that’s changed. Then this past week, I tapped into that distant part of me that stared down the copy of Dry that we received at the campus radio station nearly twenty years ago and tried … Continue reading Spectrum Check

Film, MusicLeave a comment

Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

It was another fairly busy week for me over at Spectrum Culture. I contribute my first offering to the Film Dunce feature, which invites writers to watch and consider seminal movies that had previously eluded them. I confessed to having neglected the debut feature from Mike Nichols, the film adaptation of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Then I proceeded to rave about it to such a degree that it made it doubly embarrassing that I’d avoided it for so long. Then there are new movies, which led me to When We Leave, which was Germany’s official entry for … Continue reading Spectrum Check