Don’t Disappoint Me, Freak
I’m starting to get worried about The Dark Knight.
Movies
Box Office Power Rankings: July 4-13, 2008
With surprisingly strong reviews, Hellboy II: The Golden Army topped the most recent Box Office Power Rankings, unseating WALL•E after a two-week reign. Guillermo Del Toro’s sequel fared better with critics than its forebear, and it will be interesting to see how The Dark Knight fits into the Box Office Power Rankings picture with three (and possibly four) top-10 competitors at 72 or above on Rotten Tomatoes and 64 or higher on Metacritic.
Tagged: Box Office, Box Office Power Rankings
Postscript: The Self-Involvement Blog-a-thon
The Self-Involvement Blog-a-thon ended yesterday, and while participation was … selective, I couldn’t be happier with the submissions. My own writing aside, the blog-a-thon generated 14 15 new essays (as of July 15) and gave new life to a handful of others. More importantly, the work was often searching, naked, funny, touching, real, and resonant.
Aborted Ideas for the Self-Involvement Blog-a-thon
These are things that just ain’t happening for the Self-Involvement Blog-a-thon, for reasons of time, energy, and tone. Feel free to steal an idea – the blog-a-thon runs until Sunday, and we’re not much for deadlines. Or beg me to complete one in particular.
A Letter to My Daughter
Dearest Emily, Right now, your primary activities are eating, reaching, sleeping, pooping, laughing, peeing, bouncing, crying, sitting up, and spitting up, but before I know it you’ll be running around and saying all the nasty words you’ve learned from your parents. And before we get too wrapped up in soccer practice and homework, I want to ask a favor: Each year on my birthday, I want my present from you to be sitting with me and your mother and watching a movie, and talking about it afterward.
BOUNCE•E
A documentary short by Jeff Ignatius. Starring Emily. And the voice of Pamela.
Reconstructing a Life
For many years, I’ve said honestly that I have no idea what trigger pushed me from being an ardent consumer of movies to a film lover. Alternatively (and ultimately less truthfully), I’ve said that there was no specific movie/incident, instead placing the transformation some time in the early 1990s. Occasionally, I’ve credited seeing Fearless in fall 1993, and the connection between Peter Weir’s movie and my father’s death. The vagueness of my answers has long bothered me, but I didn’t do much about it. Watching the new Criterion release of Before the Rain was epiphanic, though: I recognized that the movie was a critical event for me.
The Humans Are Dead
A few caveats at the outset: Bad Dog Ginger was causing disruptions resulting from her intense interest in a cat at the drive-in, and five-month-old Emily was causing disruptions because her normal sleep schedule was itself disrupted. So I did not have the opportunity to concentrate fully on Pixar’s WALL•E. But I doubt that my attention would have been rewarded. Once the movie zooms to a bustling cruise (space)ship, WALL•E is fine, but it felt like Monsters, Inc. 2 – manic and bright and silly.
Tagged: Animation, Pixar, Reviews, Science Fiction, WALL-E
The Self-Involvement Blog-a-thon: July 9-13, 2008
It was a summer in the early 1980s. We were on a family vacation. Perhaps to Disney World. It seemed that at every stop on our journey, Under the Rainbow was in a constant loop on HBO on our hotel television. We must have seen parts of it a dozen times. Memory is a fickle thing, but I remember that the PG-rated farce had one bare breast that pops out when the little people are running through a communal dressing room, or somesuch. I mention this because I can, as we have arrived at the Self-Involvement Blog-a-thon, running Wednesday, July 9, through Sunday, July 13. This is the official Culture Snob birthday party, with this little site celebrating its fifth birthday on July 10. So give me a present: Write something for my blog-a-thon!
Box Office Power Rankings: June 27-29, 2008
It will come as no surprise that WALL•E is the champion in this week’s Box Office Power Rankings. But there was one shock: Pixar’s latest didn’t earn a perfect score, because Wanted actually earned more money per theater.—–
POOP:
Box Office Power Rankings: June 27-29, 2008
