The nominations for this year’s Academy Awards were scheduled to be announced at 8:38am (Eastern time) this morning. On my drive in to work at about 8:20 am, NPR had a segment with Kim Masters of The Hollywood Reporter where she was asked to make a predictions about what would be announced. [Read more…]
In his keynote talk at the 30th Chaos Communications Congress (30C3) conference last month to an audience that consisted to a large extent of computer professionals and systems administrators, Glenn Greenwald talked about one encouraging sign that he has observed, and that is the increased resistance he has observed among ordinary people, especially those in the tech industry. [Read more…]
The Onion’s head film critic Peter K. Rosenthal reviews It’s a Wonderful Life. He is just like me. I too hate it when people in films do something mind-bogglingly stupid just in order to drive the story along. (Language advisory) [Read more…]
I enjoy watching and talking about films but have learned never to discuss them with one person because when you mention one, she will say something like “You mean the one where X happens at the end?”, completely spoiling the film. As readers may notice, when writing about films, I try to give notice as to whether there will be a spoiler or not, because part of the enjoyment of a film is not knowing how it will end. [Read more…]
I watched this film recently and I want to thank reader rq for recommending it, as it is certainly a good one. Like The Prestige (2006) and Now You See Me(2013),both of which I reviewed recently, this film is about magic and magicians but I found it to be far superior to the other two. [Read more…]
There are some film characters who are so indelibly linked to the actors who created them that it is almost impossible for someone else to take it over. One case is Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in the long running Pink Panther franchise that consisted of eleven films. Sellers acted in five of them that were the most successful. Other efforts, even with extremely good actors like Alan Arkin, Roger Moore, and Steve Martin fared abysmally. [Read more…]
Joan Fontaine has died at the age of 96. I remember her most for her performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film Rebecca, as the young bride tormented by a sense of inadequacy compared to her husband’s first wife, whose memory is jealously preserved by one of film’s classic villains, the malevolent housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, played to perfection by Judith Anderson. [Read more…]
One of the greatest actors has died at the age of 81. At home in both dramatic roles and in wacky comedies, I wrote an appreciation of his career when he retired last year so I won’t repeat myself. Peter Bradshaw provides a much fuller appreciation of a mercurial film and stage career in which he received eight Oscar nominations but failed to win any. [Read more…]
I love the Muppets, and the Sesame Street parodies using them are often hilarious. Parodies tend to be better appreciated if you are familiar with the items being made fun of but I found this parody of the newly released The Hunger Games: Catching Fire to be enjoyable because even though I have not seen the original films, I had read enough about them to be aware of the story. [Read more…]
Sesame Street parodies are fun to watch and I liked this James Bond one. Note how the music is evocative of the originals without infringing on the copyright, though I doubt anyone would be so crass as to sue Sesame Street
Interestingly, this parody featured a woman as the villain and it got me to wondering if any of the villains in the Bond films had been women. I have seen many but not all of the films, and all the evildoers have been men. [Read more…]