So the Lorax is currently available on demand in your home theater now. I know that I just watched it on netflix, but I’m sure it’s available on itunes or through whatever means you normally use. I think that this film is worth a look see. Yes, I know it’s for children, and Yes, I know that Dr. Suess is a little played out, but this film has some merits going for it, and it really is a fair watch.

Let’s start with the positives. This movie has a pretty good cast of characters. Danny DeVito voices the Lorax. While it might be type casting (the Lorax is about 4 feet tall) DeVito doesn’t scrimp on the emotionality. If you know the story, the Lorax speaks for the trees. He is the reminder that those who do not stand up for nature will wake up to find it missing one day. He has to be stern and shmaltzy and all manner of grim. DeVito does a good job with the role.

Zac Efron and Taylor Swift were there. Also, Betty White. Who doesn’t love Betty White? She plays the granny, and the granny is secretly the best part of the film.

One thing I didn’t particularly like were the musical numbers. They were composed well and they weren’t too distracting but it seemed like the direction for the “filming” was lackluster. At best, a few of them were simply time fillers.

Okay, so why why why watch this film on demand as opposed to any other way? My reasons are two fold and contradictory. 1) you can piecemeal the movie. I find myself doing this all the time. I watch movies now like I watch tv shows. It’s all start and stop. This movie would be boring and uninteresting in one big go, but if you watch it in pieces it’s much more digestible. 2) You can immediately compare this movie to it’s earlier counterpart. When I was in college my good friend Stephanie (a lovely contributor to my blog) introduced me to the hand drawn version of the Lorax. You can find it in multiparts on Youtube I’m sure. It’s amazing. It’s also very very very sad. Much sadder than this cleanly polished digital success.

It’s definitely worth your viewing. Give them both a try.

I watched this movie with a friend. It wasn’t really my idea. When I watched the trailer for the film it felt like the writer found a scifi blog and went through the Tag Cloud and just cherry picked a whole bunch of space-y themes.

Joseph Kosinski is the writer and director of the film. Apparently he also wrote the graphic novel. I’m sure that all of the graphic novel fans who read my blog (of which there are fewer than 1) will get their panties in a twist. This film was horrid. It was a mysogynisitic visual jerk off. Kosinski is known for this, if he is known for anything. His only other real credit is director of TRON Legacy (post here). Kosinski knows two things, how to get a great soundtrack and how to make something visually stunning.

I have to take one moment to talk about the visuals. The movie takes a lot of hints from pop-scifi elements. Broadly, it’s quite beautiful, but all of this seems to fall in on itself near the end when (and this is a direct quote from my friend) Tom Cruise goes up against the Giant Floating Red-Eyed Vagina in Space.

So lets get to the mysogyny of this film. There was not a single female character that was either strong or useful or good. There are three female characters: one of them ends up being evil, one of them is good but just gets herself hurt over and over and over, and the other one is just so weak that she ends up getting herself killed. It’s just sad.

If you want to watch a visual spectacle this film is for you. If you want to have a film with a little bit of depth and character and creativity go see Place Beyond the Pines.

P. S. Place beyond the pines tends to ignore the female characters or show them as tragic figures also. Films don’t tend to treat ladies well but Oblivion was really obvious about it.

This movie is an enigma to me. The trailer for this film promised one thing and emphatically did not deliver. I was promised Ryan Gosling with his shirt off on a motorbike, it is not that film. That being said, it’s really damned good! It makes me think psycho and twin peaks met and had a kid.

I going to try and not spoil it for you. This film tells a lot of story in the time given. It actually runs a little long at two and a half hours. It is an intricate cyclical story that breaks your heart and balances that heart break with suspense and drama.

The shooting of the film is excellent. A good amount of the film follows Ryan Gosling and his motorbike. It was superbly shot, filling the frame with the energy of the man and his machine.

Gosling does a fantastic job. He is powerful, forceful, and quiet. I come from a rural area of the south and while this takes place in NY it felt like home to me; it felt real. Bradley Cooper also plays a subtle calculating character. Someone searching for good in a corrupt world. The two of them really hold your attention throughout the film. Eva Mendes broke my heart several times. I can’t say as it brought me to tears but her story arch is just so full of pain and love that it’s hard to not feel strongly for her.

I can’t really say much more about the film without giving away story. It’s a beautiful movie, but be prepared for much more story than you might have expected.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone:

As a child I loved magic. Let’s be honest, I still love magic. Penn and Teller are probably my favorite magicians, and while I don’t follow popular magic. I do enjoy a great illusion. It’s partly why I love filmmaking. Filmmaking is the new magic. It’s just a trick of the eye 32 frame per second.

So I was primed to like this film. I was willing to give it a lot of rope, and it chose to hang itself. This movie wasn’t really terrible but it was so boring. The story could not have been more tired and expected. Lets go through the numbers:

1. The opening starts with Burt as a kid getting bullied. Oh my god, bullying is a serious problem and all but for all that is holy in the world this is the oldest trope I can think of.

2. The film is partially about the falling out of friendship. This has-been tag-team of magicians fall apart, only to come back together in the end, bigger and better than ever. Ugh.

3. The Chris Angel mindfreak parody that Jim Carrey does is just pointless. Like really truly unnecessary.

The actors do a fine job with the material they are given, with the exception of Steve Carrel who has the most annoying accent (I get it, it’s a joke but it isn’t funny and it’s grating the whole movie) and plays this unbelievably stupid character. Yes, the uber famous/rich can be out of touch with society but he is just a doofus.

Here is my suggestion: Stop making films like this. The formula is obvious and the payoff is really low. Instead of making this film, why don’t you make a magic film that respects the craft and ingenuity of the illusion and maybe allows for real emotional humor, instead of relying almost entirely on prop/physical humor. Just a thought.

Okay, final note: I was probably a bit extra harsh on this film. I really do love magic and there is so much potential for a good film to be made with this topic. I gave this film a 2 out of 10 rabbits as a little bit of a screw you to the people who green lit this script. Get out of the business now.

Mike Birbiglia is not a man with a whole lot of imposing presence. I have enjoyed his standup in the past, mostly in a sideways way. I have watched his specials and heard him on NPR, and I always thought “heh, that was funny,” but I never it never really caught me. I’m glad the man gets work but I he just didn’t really appeal to me.

That is until Sleepwalk with Me. This film is very personal. It is funny in the way Birbiglia is funny. It has a sideways slant on the world in which he lives. It is occasionally over the top, but only in contrast to his muted existence. This is not the feel-good comedy of the year. In fact its barely funny at all. It is depressing with a tinge of sarcastic laziness, but in the end its very good.

I have not left a film questioning my own life so much as leaving this film. Small spoiler: the film fails to answer any questions that it presents. It seems to stop in a sad sack way that makes you angrily search for resolution. It’s a tragedy, made by a comedian.

This film is a perfect On-Demand movie, mostly because it was never widely released. It is available on Netflix. It was made in conjunction with This American Life, which is a strange pairing as it is a work of “fiction.” There is a fantastic cameo appearance by Ira Glass. It’s interesting to note that one of the oldest broadcasting media is helping to support this wave of New Media.

There is one thing I can say didn’t entirely work for me, the Narration. The film is intercut with narration by Birbiglia. His strange deadpan tone didn’t really add to the story that much, and a few of the scenes were simply reworked bits from his standup. It didn’t make the film worse, but it didn’t really add that much for me, well, until the last one which was actually quite effective.

Please make a point to see this. I think it will challenge you, or entertain you, or both. It’s good stuff.

P.S.: How did I forget to mention that Lauren Ambrose is in this film. She is like half the reason that I like it. If you watched Six Feet Under, then you know that Lauren Ambrose is an excellent actor (and really does a stunning job in this film).

You might have heard of Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects but chances are good you don’t know anything about it. I had a passing knowledge of the movie and was only tangentially interested in it because occasionally Soderbergh makes a good film (lets never discuss the abominations that were Ocean’s 12 and 13). I’m not a big fan of Jude Law or Catherine Zeta Jones. They aren’t bad actors on their own, but their names alone do not draw me out to the theater. Add the fact that Chaning Tatum’s name appears on the poster and you really haven’t sold me on this movie.

I’m going to hedge this next statement with the fact that there are some problems with this film; however, it was one of the best thrillers I have seen in a long long long time. It was so very good. Its intricate and interesting. It plays itself as one type of story, but, like an intricate cypher, keeps unlocking and turning on you. It really does a hell of a job keeping the pace and keeping you interested.

I have to give all of the credit to the director. Jude Law and Rooney Mara (the two lead characters) give very believable performances, but they aren’t the wow factor of the film. The characters, while interesting in their own rights, don’t particularly jump off the screen. It really comes down to the way that story is told, the beats of the plot are dropped in perfect timing. The shooting is simple and not overly directed. Everything seems to fall away to the storyline, and the storyline is compelling.

It’s definitely an indie film, but its more entertaining than a lot of the blockbuster’s available out there. If you still have a chance you should go to the theater and watch it, but if you don’t, make a point to rent this movies. It has not been much of a commercial success and that is a sad fact, because this film is a great example of what good filmmaking looks like.

Guys, I know. I know, I know, I know. You are thinking to yourself, “this is some weird japanese film that Greg loves for some strange reason.” No, this film is actually an excellent example of independent foreign cinema. Listen, if you like The Hunger Games (books or the first film) then you owe a lot to this film. a lot. This is the film that birthed the idea that was stolen, blendered, and spat back out in to the trilogy that is The Hunger Games.

I should start by saying that I didn’t know anything about Battle Royale before Kristina seduced me in to loving The Hunger Games books. There is a lot of legitimately good stuff going on in those books. I really appreciate the perspective, the action, and the tone of the stories (p.s. I watched the movie once and thought it was eh).

Battle Royal reminds me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on steroids and with a lot more blood. It’s kids killing kids. It’s high school drama with gats and explosives. It’s all of the nineties style with a post post modernist 00′s vibe. It’s really got a lot of passion. I really enjoyed the heck out of the film.

It’s a perfect indie film. It does a lot with it’s budget. It restricts it’s space but packs it with punch after punch. For the uninitiated, it’s a film where 40ish students get sent to an island where they must battle each other to the last person. The winner gets to “graduate” and gets passage off of the island. It’s pretty crazy. The passion of the direction is really what caught my eye. I love the fact that Kinji Fukasaku really trusted these young kids with such deep and complex material. The film is heavily actor driven.

Okay, I won’t gloss over the issues with the film. Its not perfect at all. It’s a bit convoluted. Maybe some of that can be attributed to poor subtitling, but I would still say that I didn’t really understand some of the twists and turns. There are a few lulls in the film, a lot of missed shots and some overly acted scenes, but on the whole the film really does stand up. I really recommend it to anyone who has even a passing interest in the Hunger Games or Japanese cinema. Totally enjoyable.

Stephanie also rocks here biggirlbiggercity.wordpress.com

Ooh, girl. First let me RuPaulogize for my hiatus from the interwebs. But this is the Main Event, are you ready? (It’s a song by the mahogany goddess herself, look it up.)

Episode Five brought back an annual fan favorite: The Snatch Game! For those (poor unfortunate) souls who are unfamiliar with the concept, each season the queens are put to the impersonation test for a faux star-studded extravaganza. Jinkx murdered the competition with her portrayal of Little Edie Bouvier Beale. Many of the competing queens were un-intimidated as they were uneducated as to the identity of Little Edie. (Google Grey Gardens. You can actually find the whole documentary on YouTube.) As someone who has seen the film, I can tell you that Ms. Monsoon was FLAWLESS. Sick’ning even. Alyssa could have been in the bottom with her awful Katy Perry impression, but was saved with immunity from her win the previous week. Detox and Lineysha found themselves in the bottom with the latter having to sashay away.

Episode Six brought on a new and fantastic challenge. The girls had to write and record their own “We Are the World” style anthem called “Can I Get An Amen?” When Coco was paired up with Alyssa and the duo went first, she made a big stink about it. Talk about a drama queen (pun intended). Girl, we get it. You and Alyssa have a history. And while they both claim to be over it, Coco is the one always having her gaff panties in a twist and taking everything personally. It was this kind of attitude that landed her in the bottom two for the week. Ivy Winters, a queen I’ve unfairly left unmentioned in most of my posts, rocked the song with great vocals and wore the house down in an incredible dress made of pictures of her face for the runway’s “Show of Your Best Feature” theme. Ms. Winters deservingly won the challenge. Jade Jolie bored the judges and fell to the bottom with Coco. The song to lipsync was the Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited,” which Coco, naturally, outperformed Jade for and was able to shantay, you stay one more week. I did, however, for the first time notice that the song itself can make or break the lipsyncing queens. How could Jade be expected to out-perform Coco on such a tune? If it was some shitty Taylor Swift song, I’m sure she would have been the one to remain in the competition. However, I’m not complaining, as Coco is more than twice the queen Jade was.

This week’s episode was another first that I hope they continue in future seasons: A RuPaul Roast! The queens were asked to write jokes roasting the Queen (Ru) P herself and the other queens in attendance. While Jinkx was a natural with her incredible timing (“Michelle Visage is so full of semen… period.”), and she was even told by Michelle that she looked glamorous! Finally! But the surprise winner of the challenge was Ms. Coco Montrese with a character she created to be Ru’s long lost cousin from the Brewster Projects. Perfection. The bottom two performers were unarguably Alyssa Edwards and Roxxxy Andrews. The two had to lipsync to Willow Smith’s “Whip My Hair,” and ooh, girl, did they fucking whip their hair back and forth. Roxxxy even took off her wig (normally a kiss of death) to reveal ANOTHER WIG! Through all the headbangning, neither girl lost her piece and I was colored fucking impressed. Before Ru announced the results, Roxxxy began to cry and we finally saw a more vulnerable side of the queen we had yet to see this season. It’s rare a lipsync is so tight from both competitors and in her ultimate wisdom, RuPaul sent neither queen to sashay away.

It’s getting tight; babies, and the competition will only get tighter. So gentlemen start your engines and may the best woman win!

Aaaaaaaaaaaand it finally happened. I watched the friggin movie. I watched Django Unchained. And what can I say about it? I am coming to a conclusive feeling about the film even as I write this post. I wish I could simply say that this film was awesome beyond all measure, that Quentin Tarantino is a god of a filmmaker and that he has done it again. I don’t think I can say that.

There are a few things that I know.

1. This movie was entertaining and fuck. The two hours and forty-five minutes of a film went by very quickly. I was lost in the story almost immediately and didn’t really notice the time passing.
2. The music, like in all of Tarantino’s films, was interesting and beautiful and perfectly chosen for the film. It’s also classic 70s pop music in theme. Tarantino has a fetish for that type of music and I can’t blame him.
3. The cinematography in it epic. The shots are beautiful. Some of the sweeping vistas really catch your eye in a way that makes you wonder how much time it took to get some of those shots. The camera movements are excellent and well done as well. There are more than a few quick zooms that add humor and are executed flawlessly.
4. Jamie Foxx was in this film. I wish I had more to say about it. He wasn’t particularly interesting. I found myself caring far more about Christoph Waltz’s character than our hero.
5. The story for the film is pretty classically a revenge story. In many ways the themes being explored seemed a bit old hat coming from the Kill Bill days.
6. The whole race thing. Yeah the film uses the N word like a billion times, and yeah Samuel Jackson plays a terrible character of the head slave in DiCaprio’s house, but it really did seem like there were some good conclusions to the film. It ended up being about justice for the few black people left at the end.
7. There is a moment in the film (I’ll be delicate not to spoil) where it takes a small turn towards a different theme. The majority of the film discusses openly the issue of race relations in pre-civil war south; however, there is a monologue that discusses a mining corporation and it’s terrible practices. It really touched a very salient note about how corporations act towards people. How they strip people of their humanity, and how they eat you up and move on when you are dead. It really spoke to me, and was probably the best monologue of the movie.
All things being equal. I would have to recommend the film. I can see how many people would not enjoy the film. It definitely isn’t Tarantino’s best work (please see Reservoir Dogs) but it is pretty damn good and definitely entertaining.

Stephanie also rocks here biggirlbiggercity.wordpress.com

Sorry I am a week behind so this post will be a double whammy. Last week’s episode finally let us in on some of the drama with Coco Montrese and Alyssa Summers, and not an episode too soon. I’d like to understand a little more about why Alyssa was dethroned Ms. Gay America, but we know her ex-BFF Coco took home the crown. Ouch. Alyssa is mad with Coco for accepting the crown in her place. But for real, what did she expect Coco to do? Say “thanks, but no thanks?” And Alyssa went on and on about how many times she apologized to Coco. Did any of you see her apologize even once? Because if that happened, this bitch (me) missed it.

Either way, Coco let the drama drag her down into the bottom two with Monica Beverly Hills. For a moment, I thought that it might be Alaska for her supposed “boy drag” for the kid’s show challenge. If they had pulled that, hunty, I would have called horse shit. Not only was her Lil Poundcake killer in the mini challenge, I thought her Pee Wee parody character was flawless and way funnier than many of the other girls. It was barely boy drag, anyway. Ooh, girl, I’m just glad it didn’t put Alaska in the bottom. But when it was down to Coco and Monica, you better believe Coco fucking turned it out. I’ve never seen a forty-year-old man dressed as a four-year-old girl serve up so much life-saving lip-syncing realness.

Then there was this week’s episode. Holy shit, I was all about it. First of all, it was good to see Coco pick Alyssa first for her team. I know their drama isn’t all sorted out, but it was a smart move and she knew it. She was fully willing to admit that Alyssa was the best dancer and a complete asset to the team. And the bitches were definitely not trusting of each other which showed in their dance moves, but I was so proud to see Alyssa hug Coco after winning the challenge. I know those queens haven’t made up, but they do make a great pair.

And the elimination? Oh my fucking god, SO GOOD! I really haven’t been able to decide who bores me more: Vivienne Pinay or Honey Mahoganey. Lucky for me, I never had to decide because they bored Ru just as much as me; and in an unprecedented move, she sent both those useless bitches home! All hail queen Ru, the wise and powerful. There was a reason I wanted to be her as a child: I am a drag queen trapped in a woman’s body. Now that both the boring bitches are gone, the REAL competition can begin.

Gentlemen, start your engines and may the best woman win!