This past weekend was our annual Can’t Stop the Serenity event in Tucson, and I thought I’d share a few observations about the evening. There are still many upcoming CSTS events for 2013 scheduled around the world (including Melbourne, Phoenix, London, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta and Philadelphia), so you might be able to find one near you. If not, there’s always next year.
This year’s CSTS in Tucson was at the gorgeous 1920’s Fox theatre, for the 3rd year in a row. Continue reading
Every movie fan has been annoyed by inconsiderate people in the audience. Worst of all might be the people who check their phone during the movie, not caring about the bright screen that’s hugely distracting. Every theater has some sort of pre-show behavior warning, though some are better than others. (We’ve come a long way since the days where “no smoking” was the most important warning that theaters had to give.) Here’s one, from the famous Alamo Drafthouse, which has a very strict etiquette policy.
That’s Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller Continue reading
Welcome to “Friday Favorites” which highlight some of my favorite movie-related things.
After last week’s super-sized Friday Favorite, today’s will be a bit simpler. For some reason, I absolutely love this joke. It might be my favorite part of the whole movie. Take a look and then read on:
Generally speaking, I’m not big into arts and crafts. Writing is my creative outlet, and my hands shake too much for most kinds of artwork. However, cross-stitch is something I can do, and it’s something relaxing and fun that can be done while watching a movie or TV show in the evenings. However, I often get bored with most cross-stitch designs, because there’s not a lot out there that interests me. So I set out to see if I could find one based on the TV show Firefly. (I previously did one based on the Dick Tracy poster, which I might post sometime in the future.) Continue reading
If RED and RED 2 were supposed to be “James Bond with senior citizens”, then Last Vegas is “The Hangover with senior citizens.” Take a look and read on for my thoughts:
This year’s D23, a conference every two years exclusively for members of the D23 fan club, was full of news about upcoming projects, but unfortunately it wasn’t the news that people were expecting to hear. There was no Star Wars casting announcement, no surprises from Marvel or Pixar, no Pirates of the Caribbean sequel. What there was, however, was lots of smaller casting announcements, plus an in-depth look at some films which we previously only knew the title of. I’m a D23 member, but I wasn’t at the conference this year, but read on for the highlights of what was announced and shown, along with some of my opinions. Continue reading
Welcome to “Friday Favorites” which highlight some of my favorite movie-related things.
For today’s Friday Favorite I’m going to do something a little different. I just finished another rewatch of the James Bond series (minus 1967’s Casino Royale and the Thunderball remake, Never Say Never Again) in order, with the exception that I started with Skyfall and ended with Quantum of Solace. So for today’s Friday Favorite I’ll be highlighting and listing some of my favorite, and least favorite, things from 50 years of James Bond movies. And at the end, I’ll list all of the films based on my preference. (Maybe I should start calling them “favourites” for this post?)
It’s interesting as you rewatch the films in order and in a short amount of time how the bad moments fade away and the good moments stick with you. It’s like a sensory overload of Bond, and your brain can only hold so much so it picks the good stuff. Continue reading
I really hadn’t planned on writing any more about The Lone Ranger, but a series of news articles and quotes that have been floating around this week, along with countless commentary, have me feeling like I should weigh in. First, Disney has projected that it will lose $160-190 million on The Lone Ranger. At the same time, or possibly in response to this, several people behind the film have piped up to blame the critics for the box office failure of their film. Continue reading
Welcome to “Trailer Tuesday” where I talk about trailers for upcoming movies, since I’ve always found them to be endlessly fascinating.
I’m not a Ben Stiller fan. I tolerate him in a few things (Dodgeball, Tropic Thunder) but I only really enjoy him in The Royal Tenenbaums. Also, I’ve never read “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber. So imagine my surprise when I saw this trailer before a screening of The Wolverine, and was fascinated by it. As things currently stand, I’m really looking forward to this. Take a look, and read on for my thoughts:
How fair is it to review one film while comparing it to another? It would be easy to simply say that The Wolverine is better than its predecessor (2009’s terrible X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and leave it at that. But that would be grading on the steepest of curves, and would unfortunately give The Wolverine too much credit. It’s true that it is a better film than Origins, which wasted an otherwise interesting character in boring backstory surrounded with a mess of jumbled X-Men mythology. The Wolverine is undoubtedly more interesting and enjoyable, but for me it’s perhaps the final nail in the coffin for X-Men spinoffs.
The Wolverine opens in 1945 with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. Continue reading
The Love Pirate 