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2009 | 2008

6 articles from 2009

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The Best Non-Dysfunctional Movie Families ... in Honor of Thanksgiving

26 November 2009 6:03 PM, PST | Cinematical | See recent Cinematical news »

In honor of Thanksgiving, we're recalling one of our favorite turkey day-themed posts from last year.

By: Jette Kernion

A few years ago, I wrote a Cinematical Seven on my favorite dysfunctional families in films. Everyone has a crazy messed-up movie family they love, whether it's the Hoovers in Little Miss Sunshine or the Bullocks in My Man Godfrey or the Corleones in the Godfather saga. I thought that this year, it would be fun to make a list of families that got along, worked together, and supported one another. You know, happy families ... but not dull, one-dimensional bundles of endless cheer.

It's a lot more difficult to find seven movies with happy-but-not-sappy families than it is to find the screwed-up kind, especially if you are looking for something more interesting than the Cleavers. Since I'm visiting my relatives for the Thanksgiving holidays, I asked them for suggestions. They were all very helpful, »

- Cinematical staff

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Watch: My Dear Enemy at MoMA

18 November 2009 10:00 PM, PST | TribecaFilm.com | See recent Tribeca Film news »

An older version of this piece originally ran as a Q and A during the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival. More often than not, the romantic comedy is an utter wasteland of a film genre, giving the world two one-dimensional characters played by very pretty actors with some amount of platable quirks - She likes getting married! He likes drinking beer! - and pushes them together at the end. The results, more often than not, are insulting to the average moviegoer. There's a reason that Woody Allen's masterpiece Annie Hall is, across the board, the only romantic comedy cited as a favorite or influence in the past thirty years. (And not enough people give the delightful, sex-charged interplay of your average 1930s screwball comedy credit these days; say, something by Preston Sturges or Myrna Loy and William Powell in The Thin Man.) That said, there's something special in the South Korean »

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What are Your Favorite Winter Holiday Themed Movies?

26 October 2009 2:39 AM, PDT | Rope of Silicon | See recent Rope Of Silicon news »

I wasn't quite sure how to properly word the headline for this post considering I want to make sure you understand I am talking about the season pretty much running from Thanksgiving to Christmas, but I also want to make sure you know the film itself doesn't have to necessarily be about the holidays.

Take Die Hard for instance, it's set during Christmas time, but it isn't a Christmas film. However, it fits in with what I am looking for here. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Eyes Wide Shut, Fanny and Alexander, Batman Returns, Gremlins, The Thin Man and When Harry Met Sally are other examples. Hell, I would even say Rocky IV and Lethal Weapon count. As a matter of fact, I would say the non-Christmas, Christmas movies are the more interesting additions. How about The Shining or even Psycho?

Then, of course, I personally love films such as Love, »

- Brad Brevet

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Back to the 1930s for Bones

21 October 2009 1:19 PM, PDT | TVfanatic | See recent TVfanatic news »

Bones won't air a new episode until November 5.

But fans of the Fox hit now have something interesting to contemplate during that time, as producer Stephen Nathan told TV Guide Magazine that the show might head back to the 1930s for an upcoming installment.

“A lot of shows have done those 40’s film noir episodes,” Nathan said. “But what we’re thinking of doing is going back a few more years to a 1930’s era homage to Depression-Era comedies like (1936's) My Man Godfrey or (1934's) The Thin Man, where they’re living the high life in the midst of the Depression - drinking and having a good time while solving murders.”

The episode would be filmed entirely in black and white, but that isn't the strangest part of the idea: would Temperance Brennan drink and have a good time?

That we'd love to see!

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- matt@iscribelimited.com (M.L. House)

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The Claustrophobic Cinema of Paul (W.S.) Anderson

24 September 2009 12:13 PM, PDT | ifc.com | See recent IFC news »

The old Hollywood studio-hand W.S. Van Dyke -- who directed, amongst countless other things, "The Thin Man" -- once advised a young Orson Welles to "just keep it close, and keep it moving." And an unlikely inheritor of this wisdom is Paul W.S. Anderson, whose latest work to hit screens is this week's "Pandorum," which he executive produced, leaving the directing to German up-and-comer Christian Alvart. Rivaled only by Uwe Boll for the title of worst-reviewed director of the past decade, Anderson's also been one of the most resourceful. Working with the flimsiest material (video game adaptations and remakes) in the least respectable of genres (sci-fi, horror), he's managed to construct a remarkably coherent body of work. With his longtime producer Jeremy Bolt and a loose coterie of actors, he's created a series of films that focus on the expressiveness of claustrophobic spaces and the physical grace of his (mainly) female protagonists. »

- R. Emmet Sweeney

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Why Do So Many Romantic Comedies Suck?

11 March 2009 12:16 AM, PDT | Rope of Silicon | See recent Rope Of Silicon news »

A reader sent in a link to E's interview with Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (featured to the right) and the interviewer asks the two stars of the upcoming 500 Days of Summer, "Why do you think so many romantic comedies suck?" A valid question and Deschanel beats around the bush to ultimately come to the conclusion that once you tell the same story 100 different times just with different people it kind of gets old. Gordon-Levitt believes the films seem to fall into the trap of pandering to their audience rather than say something true, which sounds to me like a roundabout way of saying filmmakers are treating the audiences as idiots when they aren't. I haven't seen 500 Days of Summer yet, but I have heard good things, but this question of why have romantic comedies gone so far downhill in the recent years is something I have talked about with »

- Brad Brevet

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2009 | 2008

6 articles from 2009

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