Roger's little rule book - Roger Ebert's Journal
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Monday, January 3, 2011
From Roger Ebert
This is a nice little article from Roger Ebert, one of my favorite film critics, providing for others a list of rules for film critics. In the event I should ever make money for doing film reviews, I shall make a note to follow these simple and ethical rules.
Roger's little rule book - Roger Ebert's Journal
Roger's little rule book - Roger Ebert's Journal
Sunday, January 2, 2011
True Grit impressions
Perhaps there is something about westerns that I just don't get. It isn't that I don't love them or anything, or that they don't keep my attention. But its rare that I come across a western that gets me excited and keeps me on the edge of my seat, or embraces me with the beauty of the open world that the era of that time begs to age itself with.
I haven't always cared for western, they never seemed to be my cup of tea. Say 15 years ago, I would have rather sat down and watched an old black and white horror movie before I chose to turn on a battle between cowboys and Indians.
But with age and maturity, I've found myself looking on at those movies as something more than just two people shooting at each other. There's an opportunity for a story there, just like any other movie. To pit two characters against each other and see how they grow.
Now, I haven't seen that many western in my life. Silverado was the first one I ever recall seeing and falling in love with. Unforgiven gave me chills. Still trying to think of the last western I saw, and I can't really think of it. They are so few and far between anymore that its hard to remember sometimes.
True Grit, a remake which I have yet to see the original, did not, for me at least, blow me out of the seat. It did not have that openness that most films of its genre have. I can't help but think to myself that there will once come a day when western will no longer be able to get made. They will no longer have the landscape, the towns or the props to make their film. I can't think of the last time I saw a passenger train like the ones featured in westerns.
Even if Jeff Bridges does not blow you away, however, with his performance, the young girl played by Hailee Steinfeld will. Her proper eloquence with the educated world can make a person chuckle as she verbally walks over a man easily 4 times her elder. But its with her youth, and the naivete with the rugged world of guns and wilderness is where she shines. She is young, uneducated, and fragile in this world. But her stubborn thick-headedness pushes her to seek out he man who killed her father.
Where most characters learn something by the time their journey is done, I never got the feeling that anyone had learned anything. Everyone certainly got what they had been looking for, in a way, but no one learned anything about themselves, save for maybe Rooster Cogburn, who shows that there's a heart under that crusty leather he calls skin and fat. Then again, one could certainly tell that the fatherly instincts he has for Mattie Ross were there from the beginning.
Matt Famon, always a trooper is present, gives the film a level of comic relief, but never the bumbling nincompoop that he could have been turned into in less compliant hands. But he is there, he does his job, and that is all. I don't expect to see this particular character remembered very much in the years to come, not unlike Damon's turn in The Departed. Josh Brolin failed to live up to the hype that his character had built up over the course of the movie, but that's expected. Where stories of men being 7 foot tall, voices as dry as the dust bowl, and being able to kill 7 or 8 men with one bullet and their eyes closed will all certainly echo through time, the man that is Tom Chaney, is exactly that. A man. Not living up to the hype does not degrade the character at all, but reminds us all that no matter what stories are told of us, we are who we are, no more, no less. Not quite the man he was in No Country For Old Men, Brolin appears on the screen for a short moment, has his time, and is gone.
The Coen's are at the top of their game again with True Grit. While not as sensitive as No Country was, nor as witty as Barton Fink, their newest work of art will be remembered, at least until their next film...
Expect a couple nods for Bridges. Not exactly a Crazy Heart role, but he certainly outshines The Duke in terms of grit.
**** out of 5.
I haven't always cared for western, they never seemed to be my cup of tea. Say 15 years ago, I would have rather sat down and watched an old black and white horror movie before I chose to turn on a battle between cowboys and Indians.
But with age and maturity, I've found myself looking on at those movies as something more than just two people shooting at each other. There's an opportunity for a story there, just like any other movie. To pit two characters against each other and see how they grow.
Now, I haven't seen that many western in my life. Silverado was the first one I ever recall seeing and falling in love with. Unforgiven gave me chills. Still trying to think of the last western I saw, and I can't really think of it. They are so few and far between anymore that its hard to remember sometimes.
True Grit, a remake which I have yet to see the original, did not, for me at least, blow me out of the seat. It did not have that openness that most films of its genre have. I can't help but think to myself that there will once come a day when western will no longer be able to get made. They will no longer have the landscape, the towns or the props to make their film. I can't think of the last time I saw a passenger train like the ones featured in westerns.
Even if Jeff Bridges does not blow you away, however, with his performance, the young girl played by Hailee Steinfeld will. Her proper eloquence with the educated world can make a person chuckle as she verbally walks over a man easily 4 times her elder. But its with her youth, and the naivete with the rugged world of guns and wilderness is where she shines. She is young, uneducated, and fragile in this world. But her stubborn thick-headedness pushes her to seek out he man who killed her father.
Where most characters learn something by the time their journey is done, I never got the feeling that anyone had learned anything. Everyone certainly got what they had been looking for, in a way, but no one learned anything about themselves, save for maybe Rooster Cogburn, who shows that there's a heart under that crusty leather he calls skin and fat. Then again, one could certainly tell that the fatherly instincts he has for Mattie Ross were there from the beginning.
Matt Famon, always a trooper is present, gives the film a level of comic relief, but never the bumbling nincompoop that he could have been turned into in less compliant hands. But he is there, he does his job, and that is all. I don't expect to see this particular character remembered very much in the years to come, not unlike Damon's turn in The Departed. Josh Brolin failed to live up to the hype that his character had built up over the course of the movie, but that's expected. Where stories of men being 7 foot tall, voices as dry as the dust bowl, and being able to kill 7 or 8 men with one bullet and their eyes closed will all certainly echo through time, the man that is Tom Chaney, is exactly that. A man. Not living up to the hype does not degrade the character at all, but reminds us all that no matter what stories are told of us, we are who we are, no more, no less. Not quite the man he was in No Country For Old Men, Brolin appears on the screen for a short moment, has his time, and is gone.
The Coen's are at the top of their game again with True Grit. While not as sensitive as No Country was, nor as witty as Barton Fink, their newest work of art will be remembered, at least until their next film...
Expect a couple nods for Bridges. Not exactly a Crazy Heart role, but he certainly outshines The Duke in terms of grit.
**** out of 5.
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Movie Afternoon
Every now and then I take an afternoon and go see a couple movies in the theatre. Usually I het here early enough to catch both matinee showings of whatever I see, today, not as lucky. Oh well...
So for the first couple movies I'm going to see this tear, I'm starting with True Grit. After that, Black Swan.
I'm particularly excited to see Black Swan as I've been a fan of Darren Aronofsky since Pi. And then there's Natalie Portman. *swoon* Mila Kunis, she's hit or miss a lot of times, but I rather liked her in Book of Eli last year.
Curious. The first movie I saw in theatres last year was Book of Eli which she was in. This year, its Black Swan. Perhaps I shall be making Mila my new years girl.
So for the first couple movies I'm going to see this tear, I'm starting with True Grit. After that, Black Swan.
I'm particularly excited to see Black Swan as I've been a fan of Darren Aronofsky since Pi. And then there's Natalie Portman. *swoon* Mila Kunis, she's hit or miss a lot of times, but I rather liked her in Book of Eli last year.
Curious. The first movie I saw in theatres last year was Book of Eli which she was in. This year, its Black Swan. Perhaps I shall be making Mila my new years girl.
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Monday, December 27, 2010
...A night on the town - Stream of Thought...
People are, regardless of location, the same, in every way, ideal, and mental perception of existence. They are, without a doubt, flawed and ignorant; a childish continuance that mutates and regenerates, rarely reconciling it's own ill conceived behaviors, yet concretely instilled to follow a path of destruction, ego-fueled ignorance, and grasping at a retarded extension of the moment at hand.
Whether stimulated by alcoholic tenancies to dream up and live out bloated day dreams that flicker without talent into the evening, searching out a lustful companion for what may be no more than an evening, or to sadistically enrapture upon the moment, vicariously, disgusting one's self upon the glee that is of others. We are all the same.
Be the city itself big, small; an event with audiences or a gathering amongst friends, we fail to, and always will, desire nothing more than what is instilled in these whimpers of ones' throng of singularity. Grasp at fragile hope to be different for change, hoping that when we find ourselves, we will neglect those previous urges, cravings of flesh, liquid, or masochism. But the cycle of a single individualistic existence is only left in the day-dreamers mind, locked away into the sarcophagus that houses the remnants of being once a child.
Bastion of our wills that this proves wrong, if we venture out into the night, seeking a glazed mirror of reflection, triumphing in our psyche that this person before you is not who we really are; and we, the beings of sound mind, thought, perception, vision ourselves as being those deviators, the anarchists that strike out against the status quo, state "We are a valiant and contrasted persons. We do not accept this which is before us, but we step outwards, breaking out from the granted scenario placed before our feet. We are change in our world. We are free."
As we stand fickle and shaken-minded on a stagnant business plan; one witness sees every molded vagrant wishing upon the masses a change harboring in themselves, cast out to others this sublimation upon them and stand aside. The pigs will run to the troth, the wolves will retreat to the forest, and lemmings will dive from the hills. Standing alone in the world, does the view upon the stool you stand, peering down upon the lakes of blood, mind you a decent view.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Tiddy Bear Infomercial...
Really? This is what people are trying to get other people to buy? Really? At least it's not another extension of themselves so they can wipe their own ass...
*sigh* Humanity...why?
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