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| Quo Vadimus |
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Saturday, September 27, 2003 Love Hater(s). "America's Sweetheart" has been pushed back from a 10/28/03 release to 2/10/04. This news prompted this SOMB thread, which has the standard, recycled anti-C stuff, along with good retorts from Love loyalist "Bhickman" and a nice page 2 riff by "Jase". posted by QV | 11:06 AM Friday, September 26, 2003 Fun Movie News. #023: "Imagine Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon made by Scorsese during his cocaine phase, and you're halfway there." ---------- [SPOILER Warning on the links. Info on yakuza death tolls and severed body parts revealed!] "Wednesday's lead piece about Quentin Tarantino's KILL BILL advanced some questioning, mostly negative views set down in last weekend's London OBSERVER article by Sean O'Hagan. The basic points in the piece ("So has Quentin Just Shot Himself in the Foot?") are that (a) Tarantino has produced a let-down experience that amounts to "a crash course" in his Asian martial-arts cinematic obsessions, and (b) that it's been weakened by Tarantino's decision to not deploy his usual arch and sassy pop-flavored dialogue. I'm under a review-embargo agreement, but have you ever read and heard so much negative stuff about a movie you've started to believe it's your own negative stuff, and on top of this you've allowed your cynicism about the editing and selling of a film to affect your view of what this film may actually turn out to be? But then you finally see the film and you come out staggering and amazed and resolved never to let advance hype affect your expectations again? I'm not referring to anything specific, of course, but you know what I mean. Never believe anything you read and only half of what you see. Unless you've just seen a movie that's re-written and re-booted your programming and left you startled and turned around. Hypothetically speaking, that is." - from Jeff Wells's 9/26/03 "Hollywood Elsewhere" column. [UPDATE: Harry saw it.] posted by QV | 5:57 PM Thursday, September 25, 2003 Fun Movie News. #022: Parker Posey, vampire. posted by QV | 8:23 AM Wednesday, September 24, 2003 That's pop pedagogy, homes. J. Hoberman reviews School of Rock. [UPDATE: Motorhead shout out.] posted by QV | 7:21 AM Tuesday, September 23, 2003  posted by QV | 7:55 AM Meatballs, not so much. To: < my_toe_still_hurts@hotmail.com > From: < b_harris@suntory.com > Subj: Tokyo trip. "..." ---------- (.rtf) posted by QV | 7:29 AM Ritter nails that "gosh." (I remember it, and he does!) And Sarah Vowell's my fact-checkin' cuz. (aww...) posted by QV | 7:13 AM Monday, September 22, 2003 Fun with Roth. #013: Rockcritics Daily points us to: Bill Tuomala's wonderful "Best Band in the Land", which will be included in the Matt Groening-edited Da Capo Best Music Writing 2003 collection. The whole thing is great, but the 1981/Fair Warning section is particularly masterful, ending with: Fair Warning was the album where Van Halen, appearing to have given up hopes of stardom, settled for mere greatness. The critical response was overwhelming. Greil Marcus wrote that Fair Warning was "where Van Halen stared down these bleak eighties and barely won. Brutally vicious hard rock mixed with funk and fervor." Legend has it that the Clash themselves (who had made a ploy for metal credibility by having Blue Oyster Cult producer Sandy Pearlman produce their second album,) stepped down from their multiplatinum thrones, took one listen to Fair Warning, and scrapped the work that had been done to date on their next album. Mick Jones himself confessed: "We knew we had to turn it up a couple of notches." Really fun epilogue, too. Finally! posted by QV | 7:54 PM The Brown Bunny. #016: From Ebert's 9/21/03 "Movie Answer Man" column: Q. I read a review that said that you sang "Singing in the Rain" and made "body sounds" whilst attending the screening of "The Brown Bunny." I pride myself on not being a dumbed-down American moviegoer (I'm actually English, so I wouldn't qualify for that, anyway.) Now I'm somewhat concerned that I have been following the reviews of a man who doesn't know how to behave in a movie theater! OK, I know, the movie was appalling apparently, but still, is this the behavior of a respected film critic? Harvey Kertland, San Diego, Calif. A. Actually, I sang "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head," just those six words, during a flashback scene showing Gallo on a bicycle with Chloe Sevigny. Consider it a tribute to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." I sang it very softly to my wife, but for my sins I was seated close to a writer for the Hollywood Reporter, who included it in an article about the movie's negative reception at Cannes, where the entire audience was engaging in hoots and catcalls. The story has now grown to the point where you would think I performed it on a kazoo. After the screening of "The Brown Bunny" at Toronto, director Vincent Gallo cited the wrong song, and further elaborated that I "burped and farted" during the screening. Not true. Gallo's strategy is to draw attention to my dislike of the film in order to distract from the fact that the movie was almost universally disdained at Cannes, receiving a record low rating from the Screen International panel of critics (none of them me). He paints me as a lone dissenter instead of merely one voice in the chorus. Nevertheless, having praised most of Gallo's work (including his directorial debut "Buffalo 66"), I look forward to seeing his shortened and re-edited version of the film, and take heart from Michael Harnest of Toronto, who saw it and writes me: "I was disappointed; not because it was a bad film, but because it wasn't bad enough. It wasn't good, by any means, but I'd watch it again before, say, 'Pearl Harbor.'" posted by QV | 7:26 AM Sunday, September 21, 2003 I did the broken English and people loved it. .jpg) [Scroll down to Week Fifteen on the link.] posted by QV | 11:32 AM |
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