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Salem's Lot 1979 and Salem's Lot 2024
Happy Halloween everybody! Julie's working late and the boy doesn't have school tomorrow so he's heading to one of those crazy f...
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(2007) * First of all let me say that as far as I could tell there are absolutely no dead teenagers in this entire film. Every year just ...
21 comments:
Why are you embarrassed?
Because it looks absolutely awful.
I think it looks good! Like Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And it's great to see them re-teamed from Vanilla Sky. It looks like they're both in top charming form here.
It also reminds me of Wanted, with the genders reversed.
I've grown weary of these overblown, cheesy dialog, super-human spy films. I guess that's why I've been gravitating to indie & foreign films lately. What happened to real acting?
I like the other movies you cite (although I haven't seen Wanted yet). The humor just seems a bit forced to me and Diaz looks too old to be playing this role. I love Cruise the actor and I hope the film is good. I just wish we'd get another Mission Impossible out of him.
I really liked Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I think it's quite underrated.
It could be good, it could be bad. I'm just not getting the "embarrassed for all concerned"/"absolutely awful" vibe that you got.
Catfreek, don't give up on Hollywood! In 2008 alone we had Burn after Reading, Changeling, Benjamin Button, Doubt, The Duchess, Frost Nixon, Gran Torino, Milk, Revolutionary Road, Synecdoche New York, Vicky Christina Barcelona, and The Wrestler.
And, the year before that, American Gangster, The Assassination of Jesse James, Atonement, Into the Wild, Michael Clayton, No Country For Old Men, Sunshine, There Will Be Blood and Zodiac.
I would cover 2009 but I'm reading from my own personal library of DVDs, and I haven't collected much from this past year, yet.
I'm also omitting all the traditional Horrorthon fare, like Beowulf, The Bourne Ultimatum, Hostel Part II, Hot Fuzz, I Am Legend, Peur(s) du Noir, Pirates of the Caribbean At World's End, Ratatouille, The Simpsons Movie, Superbad, 28 Weeks Later (all 2007) and Cloverfield, Iron Man, Quarantine, The Strangers, Wall•E, Wanted (all 2008).
"In 2008 alone we had Burn after Reading, Changeling, Benjamin Button, Doubt, The Duchess, Frost Nixon, Gran Torino, Milk, Revolutionary Road, Synecdoche New York, Vicky Christina Barcelona, and The Wrestler."
Such a terrific list! I haven't seen Frost Milk, or The Duchess, but I loved all the others you list. I can't even say which ones I liked best, they were all excellent. I just gave JSP a copy of Gran Torino.
I haven't given up yet but I am sorely disappointed with the way films are being marketed. Especially the way we are force fed to the PG13 rating so we won't feel bad taking our children to it. I know they have to make money and all but I feel like sometimes they forget that it's we adults that pay for the tickets and it's okay to get a little edgy and push past the PG13 for a full blown R rating.
Yeah, but it's still one of the best periods of all time in terms of the quality of the movies. After fifteen years of suck-o-rama, we're back to a 1970's style Golden Age.
Okay, you're right. I'm jaded from watching too many films and that is a great list you mentioned:)
I'm fairly certain I'll never watch another Tom Cruise movie. He always plays the same smug, arrogant (and supposedly charming) characters and I can't stands it no more. And yes, the Scientology thing irritates the hell out of me. I can't even look at his fat head without picturing him saying "You're being glib Matt". UGH!
And Cameron Diaz looks like the (Jack Nicholson) Joker.
I think Cruise is pretty consistently great onscreen. (He's a total dangerous creepo in real life, of course.) From Rain Man to Born on the Fourth of July to The Firm to Vanilla Sky to Risky Business to War of the Worlds to Collateral to Minority Report to Magnolia to Jerry Maguire, he's been uniformly, dependably excellent as a leading man. (He's a little hard to take in crap like Top Gun, but it's not really his fault; he's just delivering what he's been hired to deliver.)
And Diaz looks fantastic in this. I love her! She's so radiant. I dig her enormous grin.
SPOILER WARNING JORDAN!!!
Cameron Diaz is a delight to be around in real life - pleasant, fun, just a wonderful human being. (Met her on Any Given Sunday & she remembered me on Vanilla Sky - one of my few Big Name Repeat People.)
However, before Hair & Makeup in the early morning? Yikes! Splotchy, blotchy, & pockmarks. Not kidding.
Hope that doesn't shatter too much for you. And this Cruise movie is getting me about as excited as Valkyrie did, which is to say Not Very. However, it looks like it could have the same Unexpected Fun Quotient that Mr. & Mrs. Smith did. But still, Angelina Jolie's lips are just too large for a human being.
I'm really just hoping Diaz can avoid Vanilla Sky dialogue like "I swallowed your come." Yikes!
Any Given Sunday was a great fucking movie!
Diaz described her Vanilla Sky character as the parallel universe version of herself who didn't make it to that level of fame/stardom. It's a very interesting idea. (In particular, I love her line about "I don't need to see all the somebodies; I remember all of them from back when I was somebody too" or words to that effect.) Her character (not the woman she plays, but that woman's character; her identity and characteristics) is absolutely crucial to the story, and Diaz nails it perfectly. I love that movie.
I'll stand by my review here, only because I like the part I wrote about the plot shifting gears, then grinding them, then crashing the car, then hopping on a unicycle.
I was probably unnecessarily harsh in the hopes of gaining an audience, and I didn't really give Crowe enough credit as a writer (and director) who otherwise does really great stuff. "Piece of shit" is probably too harsh, but like I said, I was going for ratings - forgive me :)
Maguire is always watchable, and Almost Famous is completely underrated and unappreciated (which I think came up elsewhere on this blog).
As a name-droppy aside, I worked with Jason Lee over the summer in LA (actually my 3rd film with him, the only other Repeat Sort-Of Big Name: Big Trouble, Vanilla Sky, and Columbus Circle - look for it in '10). Anyway, after one take, he turned to the director and asked, "How was that?" The director was distracted by something else, and as 1st AD, I was right there. So I told him, "That was incendiary, man."
He laughed. Okay, sorry to name-drop like that.
But I concur, AGS was fucking awesome. Hardest job I ever had.
Also, Vanilla Sky has one of the best trailers I've ever seen.
All movie trailers are 2 minutes 30 seconds (or less), but each studio is allowed to make one longer trailer each year. Paramount chose Vanilla Sky in 2001 as the rule-breaker: it's 2 minutes 47 seconds.
I think it's a perfect trailer. I forced my writing partner to watch it like five times as a supreme example of the mechanics of tonal shifts in storytelling. Given the wide range of genre material in Vanilla Sky, they've admittedly got a lot to work with, but still, the trailer makes it look like a movie you couldn't bear to miss.
Also, it's a great example of one of my favorite schticks in trailers: the moment when they start naming the actors, which serves as a kind of triumphant finish line for the point they're trying to make. If you watch the Vanilla Sky trailer, you are absolutely going to get an adrenaline rush and/or a chill at the moment when the music shifts towards the end; when the titles stop narrating and suddenly say "TOM CRUISE," it's like the trailer's saying, "We rest our case."
Watch it here.
You know, I was thinking this looked pretty good right up until the "on the count of three" gag at the end of the trailer. Then I got embarrassed for all involved.
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