Great, great movie that completely falls apart with Ryan Gosling doesn’t play Lars perfectly.
Gosling played Lars with the perfect amount of humor, sadness and creepiness. As hard as was to swallow an entire town rallying around a delusion (more likely a psychotic break), everyone played it straight.
It’s a shame that Ryan Gosling won’t get the attention come Oscar time but he really should because can only think of a handful of performance this year on par.
Beginning in May, I began a Netflix project. Being an avid Lost disciple, I wanted to watch one of its forefathers, The X-Files. Despite seeing the movie in the theaters, I had only watched a handful of episodes over the course of its nine seasons. I hate jumping on a show like this from the middle.
I burned through the first three seasons pretty quickly but when summer movie season and then the new fall television rolled around, I found it harder & harder to find time to watch episodes especially when the quality started to lessen.
Luckily, the TV strike came around and I found tons of free time to watch the occasional episode.
Last week, I finally finished the entire thing.
Here are a couple of stray thoughts:
Next up, Twin Peaks (once season one becomes available on Netflix)
Tim and Johnny, all is forgiven for Charlie & The Chocolate Factory.
This is the Tim Burton I race to the movies to see. I’ve never seen Sweeney Todd on Broadway so I have nothing to compare it to (and maybe that’s for the best).
It’s takes about half a song to get used to Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter singing but they both did great jobs.
I think I could watch Alan Rickman read the phone book and I’d be interested. I don’t there has ever been an Alan Rickman performance I haven’t enjoyed.
Warning: it’s very bloody, comically so. Think Kill Bill – The Bride vs. The Crazy 88’s
After the screening, we were bused over to the Knitting Factory to see the final performance of Dewey Cox & The Hard Walkers (until the Oscars with the strike doesn’t destroy it).
The show was hilarious. The best parts were his covers of Rehab (Amy Winehouse),Cocaine (Eric Clapton) and Sabotage (Beastie Boys).
The world needs more Cox.
(I know…another 3 stars)
This movie was stupid and full of dick jokes (and actually some dicks) but you know what, it was fucking hilarious.
It helped that John C. Reilly can sing his ass off and that there were more cameos than a Robert Altman film.
The jokes were coming so fast that I’m going to need to see it again.
My favorite parts were Tim Meadows’ anti-drug warnings to Dewey throughout the movie. “No Dewey, you don’t want no part of this shit!)
There was a lot of stuff in the commercials and trailers that didn’t makethe finalcut so expect a loaded DVD.
While I’m sure better music came out this year and I haven’t had a chance to really listen to a couple of albums I just * I say “some” because these albums are just the ones I thought of when I decided to make this post and not some well thought out list like I was working for Rolling Stone or Pitchfork Media.downloaded acquired (Lupe Fiasco, LCD Soundsystem, Ghostface, Wu-Tang Clan) but here are my some* of favorite albums of 2007 (in no particular order) with my favorite song from each.
“No Cars Go” by Arcade Fire from Neon Bible
“Breakin’ Up” by Rilo Kiley from Under The Blacklight
“Back To Black” by Amy Winehouse from Back to Black
(Yes, I know it really came out in 2006)
“I Feel It All” by Feist from The Reminder
“All I Need” by Radiohead from In Rainbows
“Say Hello” by Jay-Z from American Gangster
“When Your Mind’s Made Up” by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová from Music From The Motion Picture Once
“The Heinrich Maneuver” by Interpol from Our Love To Admire
“Flashing Lights” by Kanye West (featuring Dwele) from Graduation
“Lucky Ones” by Kevin Drew from Spirit If…
“When Everything Is New” by Little Brother from GetBack
“Burn Your Life Down” by Tegan & Sara from The Con
Click either poster for the trailer
This was probably my favorite Will Smith performance ever.
It’s hard to carry a majority of a movie when you are the only person acting. A perfect example of the right way to do this is Tom Hanks in Castaway. I was a little worried for Mr. Smith who has only tried to flat out act a handful of time (Six Degrees of Separation, Where The Day Takes You, Ali).
Well, he did quite well. He didn’t try to force the humor too much (an issue for him). He was the appropriate amount of stoicism, desperation and insanity. There’s one scene during a “conversation” he has in a video store that shows you how much Will has stepped his game up.
The movie was a lot more suspenseful than I expected (one of my female companions who I went with spent various moments in the fetal position). There were a lot of elements that reminded me of 28 Days Later. Also, the creatures sort of moved like the robots in I,Robot when they were vaulting on top of poles and walls.
My problems with the movie: There is an evolution of the vampire-like creatures that goes acknowledged by Robert Neville (Smith) which bugged me. It went more in line with what happened in the book. Also, they completely changed the book. I didn’t read the book but I looked it up after the movie and it was much cooler than what happened in the movie.
I saw this in IMAX, mainly for The Dark Knight prologue which was awesome. I’m a strong believer in seeing any movie shown in IMAX but that was an added incentive.
Ok, I’ll admit it. It was really cute.
Amy Adams was amazing (as expected). I hope this leads to bigger and better things for her.
This was a great parody of old Disney flicks. There were a couple of surprisingly disgusting moments involving vermin which is why there will never be a Disney romance cartoon set in New York City. No one finds singing roaches cute.
One thing did kind of bother me. Given that this was a Disney film, the animated portion of the movie wasn’t very good. I know it wasn’t a large part of the movie but they really slacked here.
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