Yesterday afternoon, my buddy Julio Angel Ortiz quote-tweeted this to his Twitter timeline: I thought about it for a moment or three, and one scene came to mind: I ran out of characters while typing that, hence some brutal edits that resulted in the double “and” I noticed five seconds after hitting “Tweet.” The longer … Continue reading Contact
Category: Film
Yesterday afternoon I was cleaning up my bookshelves, and I took a moment and looked at my shelf of Nick Hornby books, as one does: his novels (except the latest, Funny Girl, which I’ve not picked up), his screenplay for An Education, his book on music, even some of the Polysymphonic Spree books. As I … Continue reading A Long Way Down
In 2014, the British Imperial War Museums approached Peter Jackson, the award-winning director of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, with a request. They had 100 hours of digitized film footage and 600 hours of audio recordings from World War I of Tommies in the trenches, behind the lines, and in battle. … Continue reading They Shall Not Grow Old
The teaser trailer for next autumn’s Downton Abbey movie dropped yesterday. Let’s take a look, shall we? There is not much there. Lovely shots of Totleigh Towers… err, I mean, Downton Abbey there. Lots of shadow, lots of light. Shots that could have been stock footage from the original television series. Some crane pans (or … Continue reading The Downton Abbey Movie Teaser Trailer
Tonight after work I went to see Christopher Robin. I went into the film with a deep misgiving, and I left the film with a deep misgiving, but the misgiving I had going in was not the misgiving I had coming out. Christopher Robin, the character in the Pooh stories, was based on Christopher Robin … Continue reading Christopher Robin
At Shore Leave over the weekend I was asked by some friends what I thought about Disney’s Christopher Robin film, which comes out next month. They knew I’m a Winnie-the-Pooh fan, and they were sure I would have an opinion. I’m not sure it was the opinion they expected. Christopher Robin is live action/CGI hybrid, … Continue reading Misgivings on Christopher Robin
Last week the news broke that Fox is working on a film adaptation of Spamalot, the musical by Eric Idle based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I’ve wanted a film adaptation of Spamalot for a while now. I wrote on TrekBBS a year ago, “I’d have preferred it ten years ago with the … Continue reading Spamalot: The Movie, Coming Our Way in 2020
Today, Warner Bros.’ Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, an animated film in which a Gilded Age Batman battles Jack the Ripper, is available for download, followed by a DVD and Blu-Ray release a week and a half later. The film made its world debut at the Newseum in Washington, DC on January 12th, and I was … Continue reading Batman: Gotham By Gaslight
As was my Halloween tradition, last night I watched a Dracula movie, specifically Hammer’s Dracula Has Risen from the Dead. The fourth film in Hammer’s Dracula series, and the third that starred Christopher Lee as Dracula, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave sees Christopher Lee’s Dracula seek his revenge on a monsignor who had traveled … Continue reading Dracula In Space
On Monday Warner Bros. dropped a new trailer for Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to Blade Runner, starring Ryan Gosling and, reprising his role as Rick Deckard, Harrison Ford. To say that I’m looking forward to this film is an understatement. It’s quite possibly the film I am most anticipating this year, edging out even Justice League. (For … Continue reading Things Were Simpler Then
With Disney’s recent announcement that the fifth Indiana Jones film is due out in July 2020, I decided I should revisit the last Indiana Jones film, 2008’s The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Crystal Skull has a reputation of being a bad film — an over-reliance on CGI effects, a nonsensical story, “nuking the fridge,” … Continue reading Revisiting the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
In the mid-90s I bought an audiobook read by John Hurt. The book was Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I found the cassette one day at Big Lots, along with some others (Ian Fleming’s “The Living Daylights,” read by Anthony Valentine; Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the … Continue reading John Hurt, a Reminisence