Imagining a movie about /b/, the other social network.
We’re weeks away from the release of a movie which chronicles the making of a popular social network. I am reading the Encyclopedia Dramatica and having a...
Category: movies & television
Movie math: the Descent.
(((The Bat Boy * 10) + Hot Babes) – believable characters) – believable plot = The Descent. It also grossed $57m on a $7m investment.
Mother, the movie, is a milestone.
The movie Mother is the best all-out movie I’ve seen in a while. Directed by Bong Joon-Ho, written by Park Eun-kyo and Mr. Bong, with amazing shots by Hon...
Movies: Inception, a parade of ornate MacGuffins.
Movies look like dreams because we make sense of movies the same way we make sense of dreams, ignoring the gaps between scenes, the discontinuity, the leaps in ...
Movie: The Damned United
My second favorite soccer movie of the last two years. If Rudo y Cursi is an “A+”, The Damned United is a solid “A”. Michael Sheen’...
Machete, box office proceeds and ballot box forecasting.
I’m about halfway through Inglourious Basterds and spent some time yesterday thinking about the forthcoming Machete. Both are perfectly wrought genre pict...
Movies: Duplicity and Prince of the City
Two wonderful, expertly made movies about deception. Duplicity: can professional liars experience love? (Directed by Tony Gilroy of the Bourne movies and Michae...
Movies as a vehicle for time travel: not so much.
Reading about the recently discovered graves of Roman gladiators and their lives, as best we can imagine them, I wondered if any movie can reproduce the experie...
Party of one.
We are, each of us, multiple people: a composite of diverging traits, a constant battle of wills, a mind regarding itself. This truth echoes throughout history,...
Albert Brooks’ Real Life; liking, favoriting, sharing, commenting.
Some online activities are already or could easily be made into formal games. Take, for example, the activity of using a news reader like Google Reader to ̶...
Having the last laugh.
Why is it fun to watch a really bad movie on TV? It’s like outwitting an adversary. The filmmakers tried to sucker you into paying for a bad experience bu...
American Psycho in light of the Great Recession.
Will Mary Harron’s American Psycho turn out to be one of the most telling movies of the last decade? Felix Salmon for Reuters as quoted by The Browser: Th...
Are more close-ups inevitable?
The other day someone asked me and some of my colleagues if the availability of shows on mobile devices is changing the way shows are shot. I answered not yet b...
The past is a scary place.
I’m almost always behind the times when it comes to television and movies. Last night, I began watching Mad Men. (Go Maggie!) It’s one of the darkes...
Ahead of our time.
I watched most of War Games last night. That movie has barely aged. A wonderful story and awesome achievement.
On Quentin Crisp, the movie character.
For the minority of my friends who will read this, are familiar with “technologies of the self” and fans of The Naked Civil Servant: an excellent es...
A fresh American movie. Or is it a TV reality show?
Watching The Girlfriend Experience on Netflix Instant Play: it’s like a movie, but not. It’s also like a reality TV show, but not quite that either....
On seeing the new Titanic a second time.
I’ve read and heard bits and pieces of arguments that claim Avatar is an old, racist narrative: the white man who comes to rescue the dark natives. Yes an...
Caramel, the movie, is excellent.
The movie Caramel, set in Lebanon, can steal your heart as quickly and effortlessly as the best of Almodóvar’s movies. A little sentimental like Amélie bu...