A big part of the charm of Lost in Translation is that there is no epiphany and little character development; it’s a gentle, intimate study of two specific but relatable characters with the detail and resonance of a good short story. It approaches modest perfection.
On paper, Shattered Glass sounds like an earnest bore. It’s the now-familiar story of Stephen Glass, a writer for The New Republic who in the late 1990s made a bunch of shit up in his articles. Oh, the stuff of great cinema! Yet the film is amazingly peppy, smart, and light. It might be the most fun you’ll ever have watching a movie that’s good for you.
As dismissive as many people are when it comes to blogs, what’s often neglected is that they can sometimes represent genuine grassroots movements. And Minneapolis’ Tapes ’n Tapes has been a major beneficiary.
Up to six times the resolution of DVD! Perfect picture and sound! Sparkling high definition! The marketing push for Blu-ray players and discs has been full of these and similar pronouncements, trying in a shitty economy to get you to upgrade your DVD player and (ideally) replace your current movie collection with this relatively new format. Concurrent with that has been the debate about whether Blu-ray will “survive” after winning the “format war” with HD DVD in February 2008. Concurrent with that have been silly partisan arguments using adoption rates and sales figures to show that Blu-ray reigns victorious! or that Blu-ray is already dead!
Edward Copeland at Edward Copeland on Film has tagged me, which must mean he doesn’t like me. Join the club, buddy! People who have been tagged are required to reveal eight facts about themselves and to post and obey the following rules, which I’m copying from Edward’s site and to which I’ll add my own anal-retentive commentary, because somebody really needs to revise them for clarity and elegance.
It might sound like a lame excuse. But if a man cheats on his wife, he might explain himself this way: “I couldn’t help it. My evolved psychological mechanisms made me have an affair.” And he’d be right. Sort of.
(Part of the Misunderstood Blog-a-thon.) Edward Zwick is a more-than-competent director who has made some capable movies, and some that I physically detest. This is largely the fault of his love of the “ideal worth dying for,” which is central to most of his movies. I, on the other hand, feel few ideals are worth even discussing, let alone dying for. “Idealist” isn’t a snide put-down without reason.
Why is it that the skillfully made and human Babel doesn’t resonate more, and feel more honest and rich?
For the past three decades, Tim O’Brien has been trying to tell true war stories – even though most of them, strictly speaking, are fiction.
When OK Go turned a backyard rehearsal tape into the video for “A Million Ways,” it was the act of a rock band that’s not afraid to have fun. While critics fawn over dance-rock and new-new-wave acts such as Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, and The Killers – with good reason – OK Go is simply one of the world’s most enjoyable bands.
