Awesome

Turns out there is going to be a 300-style David and Goliath movie coming out. That out to be fantastic--combining the absurd masculinity of 300 with Christian ideology. Fantfreakingtastic!

The Badness of Field of Dreams

Via Lemieux, Charles Pierce reminds us why Field of Dreams sucks:

This is supposed to be a film about fathers and son, and the connective generational tissue that is baseball. As such, it can't even get Shoeless Joe Jackson hitting from the correct side of the plate? Nobody thought to check? And, even if you buy the conversion of the novel's J.D. Salinger character into the reclusive black-activist played by James Earl Jones, having done so, do you think that character wouldn't have noticed that there didn't seem to be any room for Josh Gibson, or Cool Papa Bell, or Buck Leonard out there beyond the cornfield? Heaven, apparently, is as segregated as the 1939 St. Louis Browns. Do you further think that a guy who seems at one point to be halfway between James Baldwin and LeRoi Jones would deliver that ghastly paean to the days of segregated baseball to an all-white audience? This movie is as false as blue money to its most fundamental premise. And it's a weepy fake, besides. Anyone who promises to turn the place back into good, productive farmland again gets my vote.

Yep.

Greatest Living Actor? Actress?

While trying to pass time at work yesterday, I came across a blog that said Robert DeNiro is the greatest living actor. (I unfortunately don't remember where I saw it - some down-home blog like this one. Nonetheless, here's a poll from 2004 that also said it was DeNiro, followed by Pacino). I didn't think much about it at the time, but it's an interesting question.

Is DeNiro really the best living actor? Certainly, his work at its peak (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Heat) is among the greatest ever, and he salvaged a lot of movies that had no business being anywhere near as decent as they were (Awakenings). But he's done a lot of crap, especially in the last 10 years (Righteous Kill, Godsend, The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle). I realize some of this is terrible script-writing and/or directing, but it's also terrible choices on his part and not exactly amazing acting. Ditto Pacino. Does that recent history take away from his status? Are there others out there who perhaps have a relatively smaller body of work, but of a higher overall quality, like Daniel Day Lewis or Philip Seymour Hoffman?

So - who is the greatest living actor?

And is Meryl Streep the greatest living actress? (I have a harder time coming up with a good alternative here, though I could just be tired).

Stiller

Remember back when Ben Stiller was a respectable comedian?

Yeah, those days are long, long past.

Not to mention Robin Williams.

Film Review: Australia (2008)

I feel really terrible for the Aborigines. First, they had their children stolen from them by racist Australians. Now they have to endure having such an atrocious, laughable, interminable, and borderline offensive movie as Australia dedicated to their plight. Will their horrors ever end?

I Am Done With Catherine Breillat

I have long argued that Catherine Breillat was one of cinema's most overrated directors. But my critics always said that I hadn't seen "Fat Girl" so I couldn't say that.

That changed last night.

Before this, I had seen 3 Breillat films. "A Real Young Girl," which was semi-interesting for a first film; "Sex is Comedy," which is pointless and boring; and the execrable, horrid "Anatomy of Hell."

"Fat Girl" actually had me interested for most of the film. It was a pretty realistic portrayal of emergent sexuality among young girls. For once, Breillat coaxed decent acting performances out of her leads. I wasn't blown away by any of this, but I was prepared for this post to be less negative.

Then came the end. Oh my God, the end. This was the worst ending to a film I have ever seen. And I've seen some bad ones. I'll give it away since it came out in 2001. So if you don't want to know it, stop reading. OK--in the end some random killer comes out of nowhere to murder the lead's sister and mother and rape the fat girl. That's it. WTF? What kind of an ending is that. There were myriad ways to end a film like this. Even have her get raped if that's what you want. How many ways can you think of to resolve a young overweight girl's budding sexuality? A lot, I imagine. But not this. This made no sense. It took a decent movie and turned it into a vehicle for Breillat's cheap shock value, this time through violence rather than sex.

Breillat has a shtick: realistic sex. That's all. If it wasn't for the shock value, no one would care at all. And they shouldn't care. It's like saying an action director is an auteur because he directs good car blowups. In itself, that's fine. But a good movie that does not make.

Catherine Breillat is like the anti-Eric Rohmer. Both directors delve into issues of love, sex, and passion. Both have a lot of conversation in their films. Rohmer doesn't usually show any sort of sex happening, but there is lots of talking about it. The difference is that you actually care about Rohmer's characters. You want the plot to work out for them. You couldn't care less for Breillat's characters. They are shallow ciphers who exist only for Breillat to have them in realistic sex scenes. Great.

May I never watch another Catherine Breillat film again.

Joe Lieberman Goes to the Movies

By far the best part of Jeffrey Goldberg's article on Joe Lieberman in the February 12 issue of the The New Yorker was him reminiscing on sitting in a Washington theatre to watch "Behind Enemy Lines" and seeing Joe and Hadassah Lieberman come. He recounts it this way:

"Whenever the American military scored an onscreen hit, Lieberman pumped his fist and said, "Yeah!" and "All right!"

Huh?

First, I would want to punch Joe Lieberman if I saw a movie with him. That would really piss me off.

Also, he is that stupid? Does Lieberman really have personal fantasies about killing America's bad guys, something that he could never personally do? I think this makes a lot of sense. For Lieberman, American foreign policy is a dreamscape where he can act out what he could never do himself. The bad guys are bad and kicking their ass is awesome! Lieberman comes across as a lot stupider than I expected. He reminds me of some redneck guy who thinks his life is better if America is kicking someone's ass.

Dude, American foreign policy is not a movie. It's not Owen Wilson out there getting captured and rescued, it's real live Americans. Iraqis too, not that he cares about them.

What a buffoon.