2/17/2007
Blooper: Readers 2
In Episode 20, Stephen did it again.
2/16/2007
What Were You Thinking When You Made That??
Everyone’s a critic, right? A few are lucky (well, eloquent) enough to get paid for it, but the rest of us do the job for free, cheerfully offering our services wherever and whenever they may be required. We love talking about the achievements and failures of arts and entertainment, and when I say “we” I truly mean to include myself at the front of the pack.
One cliche of criticism that gets repeated over and over again — aptly, I might add — is “What were you thinking??” We might normally love Will Smith, and therefore it practically offends us when he makes something like Wild Wild West and leads us all astray. He tends to make good movies, which suggests he is astute at selecting only the best scripts, and so how could he have made such a grievous error and wasted himself on a stinker?
But perhaps we are analyzing these situations from the wrong perspective.
2/15/2007
Vintage: Ads For Artists, Part 2
Continuing the theme of Ads For Artists, Part 1, let’s look at some more accomplished filmmakers of 1927 that were featured in full page ads in the Film Daily Yearbook. Last time, I drove home the point that so many of the big names of the day no longer even ring a bell, but this time let’s kick off with one that’s, if anything, bigger now.
2/14/2007
DGA, WGA, and BAFTA Awards
The last of the major Oscar prognosticators have trickled in. Martin Scorsese won the Director’s Guild Award, which solidifies his front-runner status for the Oscar. For Best Original Screenplay, the Writer’s Guild picked Little Miss Sunshine, beating out, among others, fellow Best Picture nominees Babel and The Queen. Best Adapted Screenplay went to The Departed.
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts gave its Best Film award to The Queen and its Best British Film Award to The Last King of Scotland — somewhat bizarre, since both films were nominated in both categories.
Don’t forget to play the Academy Awards Predictions Game, especially since this year we’re giving away DVDs and books as prizes to the top three. Learn more details in Episode 18 of our podcast.
2/13/2007
All Movie Talk, Episode 20
Show contents, with start times:
- Film Style Spotlight: Film Noir (1:56)
- Trivia Question: Eating a Boot (21:53)
- How To: Pull Off a Caper (22:40)
- Top 6: Distinctly Different Sequels (33:13)
- Movie Books: Making Movies and On Directing Film (52:53)
- Closing: Trivia Answer, Preview of Next Week (58:40)
Press the Play button below to listen to the podcast, or the Download link to save it. Here’s how you can download new episodes automatically.
2/13/2007
Top 6: Distinctly Different Sequels
In Episode 20, our Top 6 list is about sequels that are distinctly different from their originals. Usually, sequels are purposely fashioned to recreate the experience of the original, just bigger and better. Most that do this fail, because usually the element of surprise is what makes the originals successful in the first place. But here are our favorite sequels that attempt to do something entirely new and different. Well…maybe “favorite” is putting it too strongly. Neither one of us could resist throwing in a couple of interestingly appropriate bad movies.
What are your own favorite distinctly different sequels?
As always, we recommend listening to the episode before reading further.
2/12/2007
Vintage: Theatrical Bookings
Editor’s Note: This post was intended to be posted last Thursday but was mistakenly marked as a private post.
The conversation thread in the Vintage post from two weeks ago brought up the question of distribution patterns in the late 1920s, and I thought we’d explore that a little further. Basically, today, every big movie opens wide, which means it appears in theaters nationwide the same day. Even smaller movies with limited releases still get released with more synchronicity than movies ever got 80 years ago.
2/12/2007
Idiocracy Worth Tracking Down
In 1999, writer-director Mike Judge — until that point, best known for creating the cartoons Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill — made a little film called Office Space that was pretty much dumped into theaters by its studio, 20th Century Fox. It received fair reviews and almost no buzz, but its quirky tale of life in a modern workplace resonated on video, and it soon become something of a modern cult classic. Knowing this, what I can’t figure out is why Fox did exactly the same thing to Idiocracy (2006), Judge’s next film.
2/10/2007
Blooper: Famous Scene
This tongue twister from the German Expressionism segment of Episode 19 is probably quite appropriate, since it’s talking about a really twisted style of filmmaking.
