Schedule Update

I'll have an off-site review for Sunday. More poster entries will come up as I'm not ready to return to proper Question posts yet.

I'm invited to an advanced screening for the new Romeo and Juliet film, for which I am excited...

See you all Thursday!

"Werner Herzog" Recites Curious George

We all know and respect Werner Herzog, right? I enjoyed Rescue Dawn, as you can read in my review of same. And this fine German filmmaker came up just last month when he made a very important no-holds barred 34-minute PSA about the consequences of texting and driving.

But today's post isn't about this fine artist's voice - it's about his literal, accented voice when he speaks English. Some clever person made a nice video wherein someone impersonating Mr. Herzog reads aloud an adventure with every one's favorite monkey, Curious George. It's a hoot.

Great Moments in... Film Disgust

Ace Ventura Pet Detective is an insane movie. It has tons of flaws but also a lot of laughs, and it performed very well in 1994, when Jim Carrey's popularity was starting to blossom. Since I just used the word "blossom," it's appropriate to stop writing now and just play the first clip.

Ace is reacting this way because Einhorn, who is the aggressive local police chief, kissed him very deeply just the other day. But that's not the real masterpiece of disgust that I want to get to today. It's all just setup for the next clip, which occurs at the end of the film:

QftWo 9/30-10/6: Imposters #10 - Riddick

So... chiseled, mean-looking dude's face; dark background, with nothing else visible; goggles; and glowy eyes.

This isn't really aiming high, is it? Also, if you're going to call back to the premise of the first film, which boiled down to "badass... with perfect night vision!" shouldn't it retain the original's title, Pitch Black?

Reviewing with Others Pt. 56: Dressed

After a break for my September blowout, my Reviewing with Others entries are back!

This week's post is for Dressed, a documentary about a guy who was abandoned by his parents and left homeless. Rather than being a depression-fest, this is a triumphal story about a guy whose hard work helped him overcome such bad circumstances in order to make his dreams come true: displaying his own clothing line at New York's world-famous Fashion Week.

If you'd like to read my review, you can check it out here at Man, I Love Films.

Quick Schedule Update

Long story short, my off-site posts will return, starting with a documentary review that will go live at 6PM today. They should appear every week, but I can't say more than that at the present time.

I was proud of what Net-flixation did last month, truly, but I want to keep the pace going and get even more hits this month. While I could not prepare a review of The Ipcress File for September, it should appear on this site before the year is over. October will have 4 posts per week, as I've done all throughout 2013, with the same schedule I've maintained this year.

Literal Trailer Music: Catching Fire

Tobuscus decided to have some fun with the frankly overwrought trailer for The Hunger Games' sequel, Catching Fire. I very much approve.

Recommended: Netflix gets BBC's Cracker

In 1993, the BBC began airing Cracker, a crime procedural that I feel greatly influenced television series for at least 15 years after - and, no, I'm not just referring to ABC's abortive remake of the show. Just as Graendal and Wide Sargasso Sea were narratives from the point of view of a "villainous" figure, so too was this one of the first real anti-hero TV shows.

Cracker begins with Robbie Coltrane's Fitz Fitzgerald losing money on the horses he just bet on. We immediately cut to the same man delivering a University lecture in which he hurls books by famous psychologists and philosophers straight at the seats of the students assembled before him. He closes this bombastic intro by asking, “Moral. What’s the moral?...” Then he answers by telling the people listening that they have to study themselves and “the dark recesses” of their own souls – and that only then will they have found “the right time to open a book.”

Question for the Week of Sept 23 - 29 : Favorite Romantic Comedy

What's your favorite romantic comedy?

Well, I had a different question prepared for today, but I'm hyper busy, so I had to abandon that incomplete post so I could take on a Question that was almost complete. I'm increasingly unsure that I'll be able to complete my goal of 2 years worth of weekly Questions, but at least this is a question worth answering...

So I'll just give it to you straight: it's a three-way tie between The Princess Bride, Splash, and When Harry Met Sally. It's funny, as they're the same films I offhandedly named as my three favorites in 2011.

Recommended: Arrow

There's no bigger booster than a reformed skeptic. In the early 2000's, I was excited because The WB aired a series called Smallville, which was about Superman's teen years growing up in Kansas. I stuck it out for a variety of eps, but I grew contemptuous of the show - eventually calling it "Small, Vile."

Specifically, Smallville had two failings for every strength. It relied on the monster-of-the-week episode format excessively, and combined this with a refusal to progress the story and character because that would mean that they'd be writing about Superman, not a teen Clark Kent. Every nice bit of good dialogue was balanced out by a few groaners. The fx were used so sparingly as to be silly. And some of the acting was really, really not good.

It got old fast, is what I'm saying.

So 2012 rolls around and I learn that The WB's successor, CW Network, is airing Arrow, a series about Oliver Queen, aka the Green Arrow - DC Comics' vigilante Robin Hood figure who regularly teams up with Superman and Batman and others. And I assumed it would capital-S suck. I was even more skeptical because I heard that Smallville had added the Green Arrow to its cast - and though I had long-since stopped following that program, I did read some hilarious reviews about how bad Clark Kent's adventures really got.

So imagine my surprise when I checked out Arrow and it's actually quite good. I'm recommending it now, right? Surely something must have turned me around when I tuned in prepared to mock it mercilessly. The show was, simply put, a complete 180 from Smallville. Where the earlier series had poor dialogue, Arrow had good lines. Where the WB's effort was in stasis, the CW's showed constant plot, story, and character progression. While Clark Kent's outings featured poor special effects, Oliver Queen's adventures were full of good visuals and great fight sequences.

The story: we begin with billionaire playboy Oliver Queen's unexpected return to his hometown, Starling City. The guy disappeared 5 years ago with his father and some others; all of them were sailing on a yacht and presumed to have perished in a storm. Ollie comes home, but it's not all wine and roses. For one thing, our lead was a spoiled, irresponsible jerk - he never worked, always partied, and he left on that boat trip with his then-girlfriend's sister!

Abridged Scripts, a Fan-made Gem Site

A couple of years ago, Unreality Mag posted a great Fan-made Gem. I'd meant to share it for some time, but only got around to it now. The Editing Room is a site that specializes in writing one-page scripts that neatly mock major motion pictures. They're terribly funny, and since they're often only one page long, you'd have to be quite lazy to not read at least a few.

They're often fairly clever, and can be gut-bustingly funny the more familiar you are with any particular picture. This is a very fine idea, and it's been nicely-executed.

Great Moments In... Film Phone Calls

Today's latest installment comes to me from Clipnation, which has quickly proven itself to be one of the most useful web resources I will ever know - at least for films. You see, a couple of months back, Clipnation introduced me to one of the most insane phone calls to ever occur in the history of film:

The Twisted Death of a Lonely Madman Site Goes Live

Two months ago, I wrote about the teaser trailer for writer/director Will' Terran's forthcoming film, The Twisted Death of a Lonely Madman. I'm happy, then, to share a little more news about it today.

If you read my review, you'd know that I was very excited by Mr. Terran's prior movie, Id-iology. Even in the RwO post for it, I noted that the picture was difficult and thought-provoking. Given the ugly nature of the personalities and relationships on-screen, I might've simply felt repulsed by the subject matter, but it was instead rewarding because I could envision the artist's hand behind it all.