Just a heads-up that today marks the first FILM FREAK CENTRAL review by Bryant Frazer, who'll be joining me on the increasingly unwieldy Blu-ray beat. (The nice thing about getting in on the ground floor of a new format is that because the screener pool isn't yet spread thin, the studios send you everything. The downside? The studios send you everything.)Readers of this blog have long heard me sing the praises of Monsieur Frazer and his excellent website DEEP FOCUS. As a fan of his work, it's an incredible honour to be working with him in this capacity; he's a true-blue cinephile who will undoubtedly only improve our street cred.
Join me in welcoming him aboard. Bryant's first review for us, The Other Boleyn Girl, is online now--and be sure to check out his own formidable archive of reviews while you're at it.
29 comments:
Anybody happen to catch Armond White's review of the new Hulk flick yet?
"Hulk comic fans should reject it, grow up and become cineastes who appreciate Humphrey Bogart's masculinity crisis in Nick Ray's In a Lonely Place"
I always thought my life was missing something....turns out I just had to become Armond White. At last, my life has meaning again!
Welcome, Bryant! Your first review for the site is definitely a goodie. Looks like Bill scores again in his flawless recruitment of writers for thsi site.
Who the hell is this fucknut??
Ah — thank you, anon, for the "blogger's welcome!"
And thanks, Jack. I'll try to do good.
Welcome from an Italian reader of FFC, Bryant. You are a fan of Carpenter's The Thing, I notice... so am I! (hell, who isn't?)
Ste
Welcome to the party, Bryant--I'm quickly becoming a fan of your work at DEEP FOCUS, and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing your brand of expert analysis on FFC.
Hurrah! Welcome, Bryant.
One of the few critics cool enough to recognize that aesthetic pleasures of this year's most criminally underrated movie, Speed Racer. Welcome Bryant!
Indeed, welcome Bryant!
Welcome Bryant!
Walter:
You think Shyamalamadingdong should've played the crazy ol' lady in The Happening?
Crazy Ol' Lady: The world doesn't care about me and I don't care about it.
I dug the movie by the way, critics are biased on this one. It makes no sense but still very entertaining.
Glad to have a new outlet to check out your work, Bryant. Welcome.
io9.com has a critical view of the Happening that I thought made good reading.
Jefferson:
I think that review you linked to is fairly biased. The reviewer, during all his diatribe, fails to mention the critical scene at the end in the old lady's house, where she has a mummified girl in her bed and pictures of Jesus all over the room. Also I love how anytime I see American reviewers speak about creationism, they always attribute everything straight to Christianity, as if rest of the religions believe in something otherwise. And to attribute it to Shyamalan who is NOT an avowed Christian is plain insulting.
Another celebrity passing for 2008: Stan Winston, this time. Man, looking back through his IMDB page, it's amazing how many of his films were deeply rooted in my childhood: Aliens, Predator, T2, Batman Returns... Even stuff like The Monster Squad and Gargoyles. Damn.
RIP, Stan.
His designs have become some of the most iconic in American cinema, and at the same time if the stories about him are to be believed, his personality was just as magnificent as his remarkable creations.
I usually don't care much for Aint It Cool News, but the kind words put forward by plenty of those who worked with him make for excellent reading - here
I think Winston's best work was on the original Terminator, where he had to make creative due with only a $6.5 million budget, and did so remarkably.
I can't believe Walter nearly gave The Happening a pass solely because of its purported cynicism. The Village and Lady in the Water may have been idiotic, particularly the latter, but they were at least marginally competent, especially the former. There isn't a single element in The Happening that works... it's astonishingly, bafflingly incompetent. Wahlberg's performance is one for the books.
Humor break- answering the age old question, "can a movie really be faithful to the trailer?"
From The Onion
And speaking of comedy:
RIP George Carlin
Damn. Carlin (along with Richard Pryor) were the two giants of comedy in my youth.
It's almost halfway through 2008 and it feels like we're falling back into cinematic mediocrity. The first half of this year has been pretty awful, and although there's lots to look forward to (new Nolan & Pixar & Fincher amongst others) I can't help but thing we're back in a slump, especially after the fantastic 2007. Intrigue me - anyone have thoughts on the best films of the year thus far?
1. Standard Operating Procedure
2. Shine a Light
3. Chapter 27
4. Funny Games
5. Speed Racer
Also liked Be Kind Rewind and Horton Hears a Who.
There is, in fact, a whole lot that I've missed though so I'm reluctant to call it an awful year. But of the big summer releases, I've seen a large proportion of them: Indiana Jones, Sex and the City, Zohan, Harold and Kumar, Iron Man, Chronicles of Narnia, The Happening, et cetera and Speed Racer is actually the most interesting one of the bunch so far. And even then, I'm not sure I'd really out and out argue in favor it. I just liked that it was cheerful and weird and never exactly disintigrates into camp.
at this point there are only one movie that i've seen this year that i believe to be great:
Wall-E (got to catch it at an early preview on Father's Day): best things to come out this year. so much better than everything else that it's ridiculous.
I too have had poor luck with the year's releases. Loved the genrific Cloverfield. Of possible upcoming interest:
-Baghead (although even the trailer is tedious)
-Monster Camp (although it seems doomed to Jesus Camp redundancy)
-Hellboy 2 (although nothing)
-Choke? Dark Knight? what else?
Cloverfield is still probably the best release this year, but Doomsday remains severely under-appreciated. It was about as much of a 'ripoff' of its sources as Death Proof is of Vanishing Point - which is to say not really at all. As an unofficial Grindhouse feature, Doomsday was directly between Tarantino and Rodriguez's entries in terms of quality.
The Visitor was nice when it wasn't proselytizing. I'm also a big fan of Cloverfield and Taxi to the Dark Side.
Looking forward to the release of Wanted and Wall*E this week as well.
Mister Lonely is a masterpiece and The Fall was pretty awesome as well. I can't wait until The Road.
-Genericcactus
Cloverfield was fun, but it could have been so much better if the characters hadn't been so vapid, trite and utterly uninteresting. Loved how the monster was handled though (although I wish the filmmakers hadn't chickened out at the end - why did they feel the need to give us that last close-up shot of the beast in broad daylight? It worked so much better until that scene).
Ste
Loved the Dirty Harry reviews. But man, that is one UGLY background color you picked for that page. And considering the length of the review and how long I had to look at it, well, I think my retinas have detached...
salmon always SEEMS like a good idea...
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