QUOTE: Cesar Romero is the real Joker.

Wrong and wrong, snobby. Mark Hamill is the real Joker.

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They should have got Crispin Glover to play the Joker in The Dark Knight.

The last two films I watched just happen to be both directed by Edward Zwick...The Last Samurai (3rd viewing I think)...I love this film, plain and simple, probably my favorite Tom Cruise performance (of which there are literally a handful) and Ken Wantanabe is phenomenal (made me look forward to the Letter From Iwo Jima DVD)...

...rewatched Blood Diamond. This film I have already reviewing.

Attention: Little Children comes out on Tuesday, watch this film if you haven't seen it yet.

"Every day holds a new beginning and every hour holds the promise of an Invitation to Love." 

Speaking of casting outside the familiar racial guidelines, I wonder why they didn't go ahead and make Billy Dee Williams Two-Face in the third film? It probably would've been a lot more interesting than Tommy Lee Jones. (Though the choice of Aaron Eckhardt for this next one is very exciting.)

I too think Returns is the better bat-film (though very few agree with me on this), but the '89 film holds a lot of warm childhood memories for me (not to mention some childhood nightmares). Joker's always been my favorite bat-villain. I'm interested to see Nolan and Co.'s new take.

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I always thought Reba McEntire should play Joker.

But that might be a little too on-the-nose.

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"Did they scoff the whole damn Smörgåsbord?" (Audrey) 

"Gimme a donut!" (Coop)

Lets see.... a few days ago I watched a Russ Meyers double feature (taped from TCM, not in theaters unfortunately...) Faster Pussycat! Kill Kill!, and Mudhoney. Pussycat was priceless, one of those really great "bad" movies... Entertainment doesn't get better than that. I'm sure this was a big influence on Tarantino, a director I love. It's about three three crazy, tough, big breasted chicks  (Varla, Rosie, and Phyllis) who (on their day off from go go dancing) go around fighting each other, racing cars, talking tough, and killing people (Varla at any rate). After they kill a man and kidnap his girlfriend they run into a bizarre family in the California desert, including a lecherous old man, and his mentally damaged, unstable, and muscular son, who Phyllis tries to seduce. Turns out the old man has a big stash of money hidden somewhere, and Varla's determined to find it... yeah the plot is beside the point, but the movie's got guilty pleasures, and lots of style. Terrific cinematography and editing, great (cheesy) soundtrack, and a beginning I loved. The only let down's the ending. I don't know if this was meant to be taken seriously or not, but it's a great comedy.

Mudhoney was not as good, and I'm still not sure whether it was total trash, or something unique. The acting is a mix of horrendous and bizarre performances, and the film makes Douglas Sirk look like a master of subtlety. The plot involves a drifter (Hal Hopper) who winds up in a middle of nowhere town on his way from California, and winds up working for an old man (the same actor who played the old guy in Pussycat) on his farm. Problem is the old man has a beautiful daughter, who's married to one of the nastiest, most evil characters in movie history, Sidney (John Furlong). The drifter of course, winds up falling in love with the wife, which leads Sidney to slowly slip into madness. He makes an attempt to use the town preacher to turn the tables on the adulterous couple, but Sidney winds up being the one paying for it. At times nothing but utter trash, but some scenes are bizarre, exploitative, surreal set pieces worthy of Wild At Heart, especially towards the end, and the ending is strangely stirring. You have to have a taste for overheated acting to get any enjoyment from it though. I was oddly sucked into the movie, despite myself.

I also saw Marie Antoinette. Not really that different from other costume dramas, though the soundtrack and young director injected it with more life than most have. Kirsten Dunst was great, but Coppola never lets you get into Marie's head... she's more occupied with showing you her lifestlye... which is well done, and there are some magical scenes, but the end leaves you feeling frustrated. Great use of music though.

That god damn trailer's more popular than Uncle's Day in a whorehouse!

I finally saw 300, and despite it being hyped-up, it met my expectations.

It was a visual feast with battle after battle, elaborately costumed bad guys, and great use of slow mo for dramatic fight moves.  Loved the music that went along with it also.  Thin on plot, but big on entertainment.

Watched Spiderman 3 last night. Reasonably entertaining without breaking any boundaries....

[SPOILER IN WHITE TEXT] I must say I really liked the whole 'bad' Spidey deal - for me that was the best bit of the whole movie. Unfortunately I don't think the writers took it far enough, Spidey could have stayed 'bad' for longer and the movie might have taken some really interesting twists and turns. His take on the Travolta strut through NYC really had me in stitches! [/SPOILER IN WHITE TEXT]

Sam Raimi pretty much stuck to the same formula as the other two, only this time there is an almost vomit inducing morality sub plot which is spelt out in baby words at the end just in case anyone didn't get it.

I know Raimi has to stay faithful to the Marvel legacy, but I just feel he needs to take a few more risks with the next one, as its all a bit too 'formula' now. I mean, how many times can Spidey rescue MJ after a dramatic battle with the bad guys?

That aside...

The special effects were as you would expect - pretty spectacular! Especially the scenes involving the guy made of sand. Tobey Maguire puts in a great performance and let's you see a totally different side of the Peter Parker we are used to.

Great little cameo by Bruce Campbell as the French Maître D'.

Overall: Enjoyable without being memorable - 6/10

x-ray
if your back's against the wall, turn around and write on it...

Tiwn Pekas, Fie Qalk with Me

Finishing off my viewing of the TP franchise with this, the last bit of Peaks any of us will ever see. Ever!
On what may be my fifth or sixth viewing (I know, and I dare call myself a Peaks freak!), I felt a little more ambivalent toward the whole thing. I found myself wanting certain things to slow down a little bit, like the Jeffries scene. I started to see how certain elements were a little too over-the-top (Laura saying "fire walk with-- ME!" in a "creepy" voice didn't quite work for me). On the flip side, I appreciated details I hadn't before. Recognizing Deputy Cliff in the drug deal scene tied the first and second story together a bit better. Recognizing elements ("Bobby killed a guy", "I've been with Laura and Dale", "He hit me over the head with a beer bottle") that tied in with the series I had just watched made the whole world a little more cohesive.

The Prestige (second time)

Another movie with David Bowie in a short but memorable role!
I enjoyed it more the second time around, as I figured I would. In the theaters, I wasn't relaxed enough to let the details seep in (not to mention the intense pressure on my bladder I had felt during the film's climax). It's now obvious to me that Fallon is played by Christian Bale throughout, and the complexities of his relationship with Borden is a lot clearer. Like a lot of films with twists, this one endeavors at the end to show the audience many of the clues that it had planted earlier, but it's not done artlessly.

This film is a wonder of accents. You have actors from the US (doing "posh" London accents), Wales (doing Cockney), England (doing Austrian, Cockney, and Brooklyn), & Australia (doing nondescript American and "proper" British). Also, watching the special features, British Chris Nolan's brother Jonathan is quite obviously American. And I have finally heard what I think is Christian Bale's real accent, since he does an American accent in most of his interviews.

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Damn, for a second I thought that you'd discovered some bizarrely titled, obscure continuance of Twin Peaks: "Fie Qalk With Me", only to discover that you meant the messy TP movie that we've all seen... Thanks for letting me down!

Last movie was Y Tu Mama Tambien... very good, but may be uncomfortable viewing for many due to the frequent graphic sex scenes. I liked how it started out as very light and funny, but was terribly sad at the end. The plot twist in the last scene made me rethink the entire movie... it was one of those plot twists that isn't only surprising, but emotionally devastating, like Oldboy for instance, or Mulholland Dr. I live for moments like those...
 

That god damn trailer's more popular than Uncle's Day in a whorehouse!

Hot Fuzz - F-ing hilarious!! It will be hard to top this comedy this year...these guys have definitely done it again...I don't want to give anything away, so if you enjoyed Shaun of the Dead then I am certain you'll find Hot Fuzz highly entertaining...

Kingdom of Heaven director's cut - I thoroughly enjoyed this version of Ridley Scott's Crusades epic. I thought the overture and Entre' acte was a nice homage to David Lean's (and by extension Stanley Kubrick (Spartacus)use of this technique in Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago. I thought the whole sideline about Sybillla's (spell check) son and how he was crowned for a while and all that...I think I wouldn't mine owning this one...at over three hours it really doesn't seem like it's that long even with having to change discs halfway through...

going to watch Notes on a Scandal for a second time and let me remind you that I highly recommend this film...   

"Every day holds a new beginning and every hour holds the promise of an Invitation to Love." 

Spiderman 3

Saw it this afternoon, was very impressed. It's a loaded movie, so I can forgive the two hour twenty-three minute running time. The dramatic scenes didn't strike me as being too cornball, I thought the first two were worse offenders in that sense. The one note that struck sour was the bit with the butler that we've just been introduced to convincing Harry of the truth about his father's death. Not the most artful way of getting that across, but then that's one storyline in a sea of them.
Mary Jane whines again in this picture, but this time she has good reason: Peter becomes a real self-centered jerk. One of the funniest bits in this movie is watching Tobey become a giant douche (figuratively, not in the literal, South Park sort of sense) as the symbiote takes control of Spidey's personality.
The plot twists are pretty easy to figure out, especially since many of them were revealed in the trailers. The action sequences are top-notch, and every penny of the exorbitant effects budget is on screen. I also liked the incredibly low key ending occuring after all the hoopla of the climax.

While Spidey 2 is still the apex of the trilogy, 3 is still miles better than the first one.

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That god damn trailer's more popular than Uncle's Day in a whorehouse!

"Every day holds a new beginning and every hour holds the promise of an Invitation to Love." 

Nothing new, but I just rewatched Minority report to have mixed feelings about it. I think it is good because it draws away from the original Philip K. Dick short story idea of a pre-crime team. Let's see, the worst things in this movie are Tom Cruise and the house in the prairie at the end. I loved the storyline and the structure though, it is pretty noirish and Sci-fi distopian. The actress playing Cruise's wife had some good points in the end and I liked the way Colin Farrel's character was developed throughout the movie. I think this is maybe the only film we see him totally dressed and unsexy. I hated with all my heart the scene with the Hineman, the inventor of precrime, played by Lois Smith. I used to like her a lot, but her performance here is absolutely disgusting. I loved Max von Sidow in the role of the despicable magnate of precrime killing everybody to get ahead.

Room with a view, a classic by Ivory that I didn't see. I loved it. Maybe because the first and final parts take place in Florence, which is my hometown.

"Did they scoff the whole damn Smörgåsbord?" (Audrey) 

"Gimme a donut!" (Coop)