“Words are magic. Sometimes I think the whole world is strung together by words.” – John Cusack’s character in the movie “ Max”

I’d not realized how amazingly well written this movie is when I saw it before. Gems just falling out of the characters’ mouths.

Well not precisely gems. Not all. Some are lumps of smouldering, white-hot coal.

“I am the new avante garde…and politics is the new art.” – Hitler

Check out the post “AI” fare:
Robot Stories
and
I Robot

I loved AI. It still ranks among my most favorite films. But, hardly anybody else did, it seems.

I have a thing for all things robot. Really.

Denby ticked me off when he reviewed Fight Club so ham-handedly some years back. But he redeems himself here in his review of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion.”

As a father of a now 7 yr old kid who is well on her way to being a very wild kid, I don’t nkow if I can deal with Thirteen.

Can’t wait to start seeing this new series on HBO: Carnivýle. It’s like all the stuff I dig most rolled up into a single TV show. Creepy carnival people, Flannery O’Connoresque desperation complete with faithful misfits, sepia-toned ennui. Mmmmmm….

I have to admit, after seeing MR, I was a little disappointed. I’ve tried not to discuss this with my friends who loved it, because I know I’ll just be frowned upon as a stuffy curmudgeon, but when I read Adam Gopnick’s essay in The New Yorker, I realized I wasn’t alone. Here’s a guy who felt a lot of the same stuff I did. For example:

It would have been nice if some of that complexity, or any complexity, had made its way into the sequel. But–to get to the bad news–Matrix Reloaded is, unlike the first film, a conventional comic-book movie, in places a campy conventional comic-book movie, and in places a ludicrously campy conventional comic-book movie. It feels not so much like Matrix II as like Matrix XIV–a franchise film made after a decade of increasing grosses and thinning material.

Now, I’m not saying I didn’t have a good time. It was mostly really fun. But there was enough repetitive exposition to choke a virtual horse. I felt like I was watching late-vintage X-Files, with all the awkward logic that it took to make sense out of that ambivalent ad-hoc “plot” structure. The action was lovely, and riveting…even edge-of-seat-hanging…but so many scenes were such sci-fi cliche’s that they didn’t even seem to be ‘homages’ or anything…they seemed like filler between cool special effects.
Of course, I’m interested to find out where all this leads in November, but I hope the Star-Trekkish council meetings and retread “you didn’t follow my orders!” intrigue will take a rest and get out of the way of all that phat kung-fu.
(And next time Zion throws a rave, I’ll be curious to see if they include any pudgy people over 30…otherwise, how am I to relate to the protagonists???)

Friday night, our kid was at a sleepover, so we indulged… My wife and I saw Punch-Drunk Love and then right after it went to Secretary. Inbetween we had hot chocolate and cake at the little bistro at the cool theater we go to here.

It was really fascinating to see both of them together like that… a lot of similarities, actually. They’re both about people finding love that doesn’t fit the hollywood-romantic mold, who don’t seem to be merely settling for lowered-expectations geek-love, but who seem to discover another oddball as a real blessing.

Overall, I’d have to say PunchDrunk was more a movie about story and directorial flourish, not so much about characters. But Secretary is really brilliant, and very very character-driven. The leading actress is amazing. She should be up for an oscar — she does incredible character-evolving stuff just with her face in this movie. And Spader is at his best.

Check it out! You can download a whole new 2 min movie: BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Wallace and Gromit film premiÀres