He's omniscient and sometimes brutal but always just. He knows how to articulate exactly how moronic 95% of Hollywood movies are with rapier precision. He knows to point me to gems, like Pan's Labyrinth, that I might have otherwise missed. He knows the finer points of films that I, in my gauchery, may not appreciate.
And, yes, as you may have guessed, Mark Kermode knows how to rock. my. sh*t.
I've probably watched the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs more than 50 times, both sober and under the influence of more than one combination of intoxicants. The dialogue, the pacing, the ambient sounds of the diner--they all speak to the genius that could have made Quentin Tarantino a brilliant director before he regressed into a semi-pretentious string of juvenilia.
All that to say: when a friend hipped me to this spot on reenactment/labor of love that that annoying guy from the Geico commercial did in his parents' basement, I was doubtful I'd make it all the way through it. I was wrong.
I think I love him.
Five days with nephew + his entire DVD collection = OH MY GOD I AM SO F*CKING HYPED!!
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest represents, quite possibly, the death of narrative cinema as we know it."
"Little Man is--in all seriousness--pure evil. I want to be absolutely clear about this."
If either of these statements rouses strong feelings of sympathy within you, you should be listening to Mark Kermode every Friday via BBC's Five Live (latest podcast as mp3 here).
Kermode is insightful and highly critical, but he loves a good genre movie as well as anyone. He also hipped me to the spectacular Pan's Labyrinth, which I probably would have missed otherwise. I also refer you to "The Ten Commandments of Movie Making...according to our listeners."
5. Thou shalt as hero show no pain during a terrific beating but always wince when a woman tries to clean your wounds.
That, not her age, I imagine, is why "The Today Show," "Good Morning America," and "The View" told the Weinstein Co., distributor for Mrs. Henderson Presents, that Ms. Dench "didn't fit their demographics." As if those thinly-veiled commercials deserve her in their green rooms. She's a legend, for crying out loud. Imagine trying to serve a fresh meal to people who eat only processed foods. That's why Big Momma's House is on 14 Birmingham-area screens while Capote is on 4.
Speaking of, Mrs. Henderson Presents finally opens in local theaters today (as with most films like this, it took an Oscar nomination for local theater owners to risk the money).
Actor Chris Penn dead, no sign of foul play, say police
Character actor Chris Penn, younger brother of Oscar-winner Sean Penn, was found dead on Tuesday at an apartment near the Pacific Ocean in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica, police sources said.
Penn, 43, was a character actor who appeared in dozens of films including "Reservoir Dogs," "Mullholland Falls" and the 2004 film "Starsky & Hutch."
Like Frank Vincent, the guy who played Billy Batts, I'll always remember Penn for one role: Nice Guy Eddie in Reservoir Dogs. Gesturing with a brick-size cellular phone: "If you f*cking beat this prick long enough, he'll tell you he started the g*ddamn Chicago fire; that don't necessarily make it f*cking so!"
He was also in the criminally under-appreciated "The Brotherhood of Poland New Hampshire" which lasted about 8 weeks on CBS in 2003.
You may have heard about the closing of the beloved Galleria 10 theater last month. Ah, the memories. A black Friday indeed. Based on today's opening of Capote, it looks like Regal has decided the Brook Highland cinema will inherit the G 10's 'indpendent film' mantle. Makes sense. It's about 10 years old, after all--absolutely vintage in local cinema years.
Its line up also includes Walk the Line, Jarhead, Rent, Pride and Prejudice, and, more importantly, Good Night and Good Luck just started there also (mainstream films, yes, but solid at least--this is as close to 'independent film' as you'll find in the Birmingham area right now). Why this change bites for me: I have a pathological aversion to Hwy 280 and the G 10 was only about 5 minutes away in good traffic.
A sad aside: I fear this closing might be contagious. I went to the nearby CompUSA earlier this week and was nearly thrown into clinical depression by its decline. I spotted only three other customers around 6:30 pm. And the staff, once as fine a collection of knowledgable, charming computer geeks as a girl would want to find, were insolent and unable to answer the most basic questions ("Where are your DVD-ROM drives?" for example).
I had the displeasure of wasting two hours of my life watching Birth a few nights ago. The film flirts with the idea of reincarnation when a well-heeled Upper West Side widow (who supposedly works in some office but comes across as too weak and indecisive to handle a paper route) and her lifeless, soulless family are confronted with a 10-year-old boy who shows up at a family party insisting he is her husband, who's been dead--get it?--for 10 years. Also present is her new fiance, who, we're supposed to believe, has courted and wooed the cold fish played by Nicole Kidman for years.
What follows is an unrealistically under-written and under-acted reaction by Kidman's character, Anna, and her family that made me long the for mindless action of a Samuel Beckett play. The film's chief offense, by far, is that it is pretentious nonsense dressed up as stylized minimalist cinema. With Bergman, a 60-second shot on a character's face to register an epiphany or resignation of some kind is worth it; with this funeral procession of a cast and ending that doesn't deliver, it's simply not.
Whether the little boy is actually Anna's reincarnated husband is still debatable after the plot's one or two decent twists are followed. But with her stony, petulant characterization and the equally unrelatable supporting characters (the only possible exception being Anne Heche), I simply didn't give a rat's ass. In the final scene, Anna walks away from her wedding celebration to stumble around indecisively in the surf in a $5,000 wedding gown. Would she had taken a cue from Kidman's character in the far superior The Hours.
On the up side, I had the pleasure of catching up on my viewing of HBO's 12-part series "Rome" the same evening. It's part history, part soap, and entirely engrossing (also, this Vorenus guy's a hottie).
I mean really bite? I'm not merely talking about the turn for the commercial they took a few years ago when they stopped showing "classics" in the "serving as a standard of excellence" sense and started devoting their time to "classics" in the familar, comfort-movie sense (at which time they also started cutting movies with commercials).
Since that programming change, I'm not a regular viewer anymore. But occasionally I'll stop by if something entertaining is on. More often than not, though:
Witness the complete implosion of a once-decent movie channel. No, it's not the most serious thing I could mention this morning, but its pretty f*cking annoying. I think the whe worst part is their pretension to be a channel "for movie people."
P.S. Even taking AMC's liberality with the term into consideration, I feel obliged to point out Two Week's Notice is not a "classic" in any sense.
