One of the people who accompanied me to see the latest Bond film, Skyfall, had the misfortune that it was the only Bond movie she had seen. This is a shame, because Skyfall is Bond at its worst: offensive, misogynist, uninspired, bloated, and even corny, with cringe-inducing writing, a couple poor performances, and lackluster direction. …
Category Archive: Film
Jun 14 2012
Something that confuses me about other people's viewing habits
Imagine that during the course of a conversation I ask you what your favorite song is, and suppose that you answer "Stairway to Heaven". Suppose that I am unfamiliar with that, and so I ask you who the artist is, and you answer that "I think John Paul Jones is playing bass on it." That …
Aug 13 2011
L.A. Noire is good. Really good.
Judging whether Rockstar's latest, LA Noire is artistically successful hinges on two things. The first is whether it fits into the genre its purports. The second is whether it does so well. The answers are yes, and hell yes. Film noir wasn't so much a genre as it was a movement, spanning the 1940s and …
Mar 07 2010
One critic's feisty defense of Avatar
Airtalk had their annual roundup of critics at the Egyptian Theater to comment on the films nominated for the Academy Awards this year. I haven't yet seen Avatar, but I'm a pretty big admirer of James Cameron as a filmmaker. Most of the panel frankly hates Avatar, degrading it as a childish ripoff. This leads …
May 03 2009
A classic Bernard Herman story
ok, so I'm an NPR-listening lefty. Anyway, I was surprised to find no reference on the web to this classic story that Henry Sheehan told on Airtalk's Filmweek (which I highly recommend) about Oscar-winning composer Bernard Herman: A director poked his head into the scoring stage where Herman was conducting the score he had written. …
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