Author Archive

  • 28 Dec

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    Musical Top Ten for 2012

    14

    It’s not strictly the silver cinema for the RowThree staff. We do have some other interests as well. And since it’s that time of year, nothing easier than throwing together a quick top ten of quite possibly our second favorite art form around here: tunage. Adele might be artist of the year, but apparently the third row doesn’t see this. It seems Jack White might hold that prestigious honor with five mentions out of seven in the lists below; including two number one slots.

    Outside of Mr. White, there are a couple of duplicate mentions below but for the most part it’s clear music distribution continues to outwit even some of the most die hard of music buffs as it’s virtually impossible to follow every single artist and new release out there. From local bar bands to stadium mega-rockers, it’s easy to find anything in any of the cracks the internet has to offer.

    Here are the lists from some of the staff at RowThree. How about you? What have you got for us to listen to in 2013?

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 06 Dec

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    The Best Holiday Movies You Can Watch Instantly On Netflix

    3

    With winter in season, the entertainment world starts buzzing about the upcoming holidays. TV channels play holiday shows and movies, and radio stations air Christmas songs. Families start getting into the holiday spirit, and with the cold weather outside, people huddle around the TV more.

    If you’re not an avid TV watcher, then Netflix is the next best option. Netflix streaming through an Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, Google TV, Android or an iPhone/iPod can let you get instant access to thousands of movies anytime, as long as you have a reliable internet connection.

    Top Holiday Movies Found On Netflix

    According to Matt Barone at Complex.com, Netflix has over 100 top rated movies from every genre, streaming at any given time. Viewers can take their pick of some of the greatest action, adventure, horror, comedy, sci-fi, or family movies ever made, but for the upcoming holidays, here are some great movies you can find to celebrate the season:

    Miracle on 34th Street

    This television classic has been around since 1955. Thomas Mitchell plays Kris Kringle, a department store Santa who claims to be the real Santa Claus. A feel-good movie for families.

    Home Alone 2

    Kevin, played by Macaulay Culkin, was left home the previous year and had to defeat a pair of burglars. This time he finds himself in New York City and the same criminals are not far behind. Definitely a great comedy to watch with friends or family.

    White Christmas

    Two military war friends, Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, fall for two sisters and follow the girls to a resort owned by their former commanding officer, who is in danger of losing the place. A great romantic movie for couples.

    Jingle All the Way

    In this family comedy, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a father who decides to get the hottest toy for his son just before Christmas Day. Competing with another father (played by comedian Sinbad) for one of the last toys, he encounters a number of problems along the way.

    National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

    The Griswold family plans a big family Christmas, only to be turned into a huge disaster, featuring Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo. Classic Chevy Chase movie.

    The Nightmare Before Christmas

    In this Tim Burton classic, Jack Skellington, King of Halloweentown, discovers Christmas Town and tries to understand the concept. This movie revolutionized the genre for its unique animation, characters, and creativity. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should add it to your list to watch.

    Elf

    Will Ferrell plays a man raised as an elf in the North Pole, who discovers he’s not an elf and goes to the U.S. to find out who he really is and where he came from. The success of the film has turned it into one of the top rated Christmas movies of all time.

  • 03 Dec

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    Why Passing your EMC Certification Exam will Boost Your Value

    0

    If you are truly serious about enhancing your career and moving forward in the information storage and management industry, you owe it to yourself to invest in one of the many certification offerings from the EMC Proven Professional program. This certification program offers courses and certification exams that reflect the complete range of software, hardware, and solutions from EMC. Other offerings include courses in virtualization, cloud computing, data science, data analytics, and information storage and management. Mastering one or more of these categories will increase your value in a competitive marketplace.

    In order to increase your chances of certification success, it is recommended that you take one of the many courses offered by EMC that will help to prepare you for your certification exam. In addition, self-study, with exam tutorials from Testslive.com, will allow you to check your progress frequently and help you to strengthen your knowledge and skills in your particular focus area. A multi-faceted study approach, with your work experience as a foundation, will provide the quickest route to success.

    Earning the EMC Proven Professional credential shows employers that you are serious about your career. Because EMC is such a highly respected name in the industry, carrying their certification seal indicates that your skills will be a valuable addition to any workplace environment within the information storage and management industry.

  • 20 Aug

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    RowThree Reader Survey

    0

    We need your help.

    We’ve had a few ideas floating around the Third Row about ways in which we might improve or expand the site. But before we take Row Three towards any particular direction, we want to make sure it’s the right one! Or maybe we should simply maintain the status quo.

    And then of course there are some other things that we’re just generally curious about our readers/listeners. We want this to be the best movie community it can be and to do that we need to know as much as possible (that’s relevant) about the people who interact with the third row. So the best way to do that is to get your input directly. So that’s where you come in.

    We want/need your help in determining what’s right and what’s wrong with Row Three! If you’ve got a few extra minutes, we’d really appreciate your help with a little feedback by taking a short survey. Thank YOU for your time on this and continuing to be part of what has, so far, been one of the best movie discussion communities on the interwebs.

    If you haven’t got the time right now, please stop back soon to help us out with this. We really do value your opinion. At the very least, please feel free to drop any thoughts you might have about the site into the comment section below. THANKS!


    TAKE THE SURVEY

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 19 Aug

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    Talk TV and MUSIC in the Third Row

    4

    TALK MUSIC

    		                

    TALK TV

    We’ve tried every way we can think of for a place in which people can talk about TV shows, music and even books or sports within the confines of RowThree. We had a separate blog with guest writers for a time. It died a slow and horrible death. Then we tried a little chat bar at the bottom of the page and everyone seemed confused and no one was ever on at the same time. Within about a week we realized that wasn’t working at all and had to remove it. So then we just went with something as simple as an occasional post on a random topic that we felt was warranted. This is fine but we still found that random post comment sections were still getting “hijacked” with comments on the Olympics or comic books or concert venues. Hey, we love the enthusiasm, but we want someplace for you guys to be able to do this that doesn’t require you to guess where to post your thoughts or just pick a random spot to do so.

    Why don’t you just implement a forum?, you might ask. Well long story short, we just don’t want to.

    But we think (and hope) that we have finally found the solution to our MorePop struggle. We’re introducing “Outside the Realm.” These are posts having to do with Music and Television that are fairly specific. You can browse a list of posts until you find the topic you want to talk about and leave your thoughts in the comment section and hopefully get a conversation started. Outside of the realm can be found by clicking either of the two links at the very top of your screen marked “Music” and “Television.” Once there, this will make a lot more sense.

    Here’s why we like this idea and hope it will succeed:
    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 18 Jul

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    Countdown to The Dark Knight Rises: Rank ‘em [Christopher Nolan]

    22

     
    Everyone involved with the third row got together this week and looked back at Christopher Nolan’s career to coincide with the release of likely the biggest movie of 2012, The Dark Knight Rises. Throughout the week, we’ve had (and will have) some pretty in-depth and thoughtful pieces surrounding Nolan’s films and Batman in particular. Of course the most facile of these tasks was left to me: gather everyone’s ranking of Nolan’s seven films from favorite to least favorite and then aggregate/score them into one “definitive” list.

    Christopher Nolan

    It wasn’t even close. Pretty much all of us agree that Insomnia and Following are Nolan’s weakest two films whilst memento. and Inception are his two best films; though some extreme love can be found for The Prestige sprinkled throughout. Meanwhile his Batman movies come smack dab in the middle. I’ve never seen so many people come together on a director as exciting as Christopher Nolan and we all come down almost exactly the same way.

    So here is the mathematical certainty that are Nolan’s films ranked from weakest to strongest (check the bottom of the post for our individual ranked lists):

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 16 Jul

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    Countdown to The Dark Knight Rises: The Many Faces of Batman

    11

    When Bob Kane and Bill Finger created the character of “The Batman” in 1939 to capitalize on the success of DC’s foray into superheroes with Superman, they probably had no idea they were creating one of the most enduring characters of the 20th century, not just in comic books, but in popular culture at large. At first a character modeled on hard-boiled pulp detective fiction, remorseless and ruthless when dealing with criminals, over time Batman came to be one of the most justice-oriented and ethical of all superheroes, refusing to kill even his worst enemies. Led by a need to avenge his parents’ death, Bruce Wayne, devoid of superpowers, leveraged his intellect, his wealth, and his indomitable will to protect the citizens of Gotham City against the kind of senseless crimes, both petty and grandiose, that had taken his parents from him.

    In the post-war years, Batman’s image shifted from a noirish denizen of the night to a brighter figure; a respected individual rather than a vigilante in the shadows, and by the 1950s he was dabbling in the science fiction plots that had taken over pulps and comics in general. Though the comic series was pulling back into more serious detective stories by the 1960s, the colorful, campy Batman burst onto TV screens in 1966 with Adam West as the caped hero. In response to the success of the show, the comics turned back to campy, and predictably, when the show’s success waned, so did the popularity of the comics. The bright and colorful take on Batman was over (and DC worked for decades to shake the campy image), and it was time for Batman to return to the shadows. Under Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams, he did so, becoming once again a grim avenger, but it would take Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (1986) to fully bring to life the Batman that most of us are familiar with today.

    Miller’s dark and complicated take on Batman popularized the character once again, and along with books by Alan Moore (The Killing Joke) and others led to the noirish Batman films of Tim Burton. Joel Schumacher’s return to the campy style of the ’60s TV show didn’t fare as well with ’90s audiences already acclimated to a more sinister Bat-style, but Christopher Nolan’s Miller-inspired Batman series was exactly what the modern generation wanted. Nolan’s Batman is complicated, dark, morally ambiguous, and a far cry from either the pulpy crime-fighter of the 1940s or the campy do-gooder of the 1960s. Yet they are all Batman, and the fact that the character has managed to sustain such a wide variety of approaches over the past 80 years without his backstory undergoing many significant changes is pretty amazing. Superman may be the hero who stands up for truth, justice, and the American way, but Batman reminds us of the seedier side of American life, the darkness that is inherent in our grandest cities, and in our most upstanding citizens. He is also that most American of things, the self-made hero – he is heroic because he chooses to be, because he chooses to fight for a better world, even though he knows such a world may not, and may never exist.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 25 Jun

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    R3view: Brave

    52

    Directors:
    Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, Steve Purcell
    Screenplay:
    Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell, Brenda Chapman, Irene Mecchi
    Story:
    Brenda Chapman
    Producers:
    Katherine Sarafian
    Starring [voices]:
    Kelly Macdonald, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane, Kevin McKidd, Craig Ferguson
    MPAA Rating:
    PG
    Running time:
    100 min

    Synopsis:
    Merida is a skilled archer and impetuous daughter of King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson). Determined to carve her own path in life, Merida defies an age-old custom sacred to the uproarious lords of the land: massive Lord MacGuffin (Kevin McKidd), surly Lord Macintosh (Craig Ferguson) and cantankerous Lord Dingwall (Robbie Coltrane). Merida’s actions inadvertently unleash chaos and fury in the kingdom, and when she turns to an eccentric old Witch (Julie Walters) for help, she is granted an ill-fated wish. The ensuing peril forces Merida to discover the meaning of true bravery in order to undo a beastly curse before it is too late.

    Read all of our reviews below…

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 07 Jun

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    Countdown to Prometheus: The Legacy of Alien

    45

    The Alien franchise is unusual for several reasons. It started with a highly successful, even visionary, film from an almost unknown director (Ridley Scott’s The Duellists had been a modest success in England, but it was Alien that boosted him to international fame). Seven years later came a sequel from a different director, set in the same universe but with a decidedly different tone and approach. Both Alien and Aliens are excellent films in their own right, and James Cameron (in only his third feature film) managed to build his own unique niche which expanded the original mythology, rather than simply trying to clone the first film.

    It would be six more years before the third film in the series followed, and Alien3 was again the work of a newcomer director. David Fincher had only directed music videos up to the time he was hired to carry on the Alien franchise, and thanks to script issues and studio interference, it was not a great experience. Thankfully, Fincher has gone on to ever-greater things, but as you’ll see in our write-up, perhaps the third entry is undeservedly maligned. Still, despite lukewarm reception from fans and critics, Alien3 was successful enough for a fourth film to be made five years later, the also-coolly-received Alien: Resurrection, helmed by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet in his only American film to date. Four films, made over a span of almost twenty years, all directed by different people, each of whom happened to be relative newcomers to Hollywood. We repeat: this franchise is unusual.

    Despite the popular lack of enthusiasm for the last two films in the franchise (and we’re not even getting into the crossover Alien vs. Predator films), Alien has left its mark on the cinematic landscape for all time, combining a fantastically original visual design with a genre-mashing sci-fi/horror (and in Aliens, sci-fi/horror/action) story that set a lasting tone for science fiction which has persisted to the present day. In visual terms, the pristine and sterile spaceships of 2001: A Space Odyssey are gone. In their place is a rough-and-tumble spacecraft and a species of sentient (?) aliens bent on destruction and their own procreation, dripping with sexualized imagery. The themes in Alien run deep, hitting us with our most primal fears. And it’s not unremarkable that the hero of all this is a woman – the quintessential Final Girl who didn’t ask to be brought into all this, but has the smarts, the willpower, and (eventually) the skills to withstand all that gets thrown at her – not just by the aliens, but by the patriarchal society that continually tries to refuse her voice. Ellen Ripley remains an iconic figure, but an icon who is deeply and viscerally human, one of the greatest gifts that the many legacies of Alien have left us.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 04 Jun

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    Countdown to Prometheus: A Ridley Scott Retrospective

    14

    With this week’s release of Prometheus, Ridley Scott returns to his roots, revisiting the world of his second feature film for the first time in over thirty years. It seemed like a good time for us in the third row to look back over Sir Ridley’s career as a whole; with brief essays about selected films from throughout his filmography as well as a week-long tribute to Scott’s films and the Alien universe.

    Scott’s background is in art and design, having studied at the West Hartlepool College of Art and London’s Royal College of Art in the 1960s. He directed one short film during his time at the RCA in 1965, but wouldn’t direct another film until 1977′s The Duellists. In between, he worked as a designer for the BBC and formed a company with his brother Tony to produce commercials. It’s unsurprising that with this background, his films are well-known for their visual style, with Alien and Blade Runner especially outstanding in the field of visual design (thanks not only to Scott but to concept artists like H.R. Giger, Jean “Moebius” Giraud and Syd Mead) and becoming extremely influential in the look and feel of later sci-fi films.

    Later Scott films have not necessarily captured the long-term imagination of moviegoers to quite the same extent as those two, but his sense of visual style and narrative storytelling has never faltered, even when the stories he’s telling don’t quite live up to the flair with which he tells them. After trying on a number of different genres (romance, fantasy, crime drama, etc.), he settled into a string of highly acclaimed war films, from the pageantry of Ancient Rome in Gladiator to the modern grit of Black Hawk Down and the medieval scope of Kingdom of Heaven and Robin Hood. Yet the anticipation of Scott’s return to the world of Alien shows perhaps just how much his early work continues to enrapture viewers.

    If there are two legacies that stand out in Scott’s career besides his fantastic visual sense, the first is likely his recurring strong female characters, most notably Ripley from the Alien series (who is among the first modern female action stars in cinema, and has become a cultural icon even apart from her role in the film), and the dual heroines in Thelma & Louise, who have become feminist cinema icons of the highest order. And Scott’s other legacy is his pioneering use of the Director’s Cut, which he has employed on most of his major releases, whether it was his idea to release a secondary version or the studio’s. Scott has declared himself happy with the original release of Alien, with the Director’s Cut being merely an alternate version. Blade Runner, on the other hand, marks one of the most significant Director’s Cuts in the history of cinema, and helped develop the film’s rabid fan-base after its initially poor response upon theatrical release in 1982. The Director’s Cut of Kingdom of Heaven represents a return to Scott’s original vision after the theatrical release was overly influenced by preview screening reactions. Whatever the reason, Scott and his studios have seen fit to revisit these films and others, some more than once, but notably without ever destroying the theatrical cut in the process (yes, we’re looking at you, George Lucas).

    Without further ado, let’s look at some selections from Scott’s filmography in greater detail.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 31 May

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    Movies We Watched

    9

    Sometimes we watch stuff that we want to talk just a little bit about, not a full review worth. These are those films. If any of the films reviewed are available on Netflix Instant Watch (US or Canada) or HuluPlus (US only), we’ll note that by putting a direct link below the capsule.


    Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

    (3/5)

    2011 USA. Director: Rob Marshall. Starring: Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Ian McShane, Geoffrey Rush.

    The best since the original, the two in between were well-directed in need of scripts, here is a film that has a script in need of a director. Rob Marshall is serviceable, and visually there are some great moments (the mermaid attack for example), but you can instantly tell despite the same visual palette and same general actors and characters, something is off, something is not quite right in how they are playing out. It is not the script, it is just as funny and adventure-heavy as the original, but Marshall is no Verbinski, say what you will about the quality of the franchise under his direction, he did give some life to the proceedings, made all the more apparent from his absence here. Despite this deficit, because there is an actual story capable of being followed and because it feels at times like a Allan Quatermain romp in search of the Fountain of Youth, I will gladly take On Stranger Tides over the previous sequels, flaws and all. [Originally published on Letterboxd]
    -ROT


    The Women

    (5/5)

    1939 USA. Director: George Cukor. Starring: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Mary Boland, Joan Fontaine, Virginia Weidler, Marjorie Main, Lucile Watson.

    Don’t ask me to count how many times I’ve seen this movie. I couldn’t do it, and yet every time I’m just as delighted (probably more) than if I were seeing it for the first time. It’s gimmick film to a degree, with its no-men-on-screen conceit, but it hardly depends on that gimmick, relying rather on an incredibly sharp script by Anita Loos (from the play by Clare Booth Luce) and some of the cattiest, most entertaining performances by some of the biggest stars of the era. The dialogue and delivery is enough to praise on its own, but I also love the way it brings so many different perspectives on relationships and marriage into the spotlight. I wouldn’t call it a particularly deep look at marriage, but pretty much everything is represented here, from the woman who loves her husband almost unconditionally, to the young wife who’s still figuring out how to make decisions jointly to the hopeless romantic who’s been married six times to the one who’s just after what she can get to the mother of eight to the matron with decades of experience to the young child who can’t understand why her parents don’t just “do something” to save their marriage. It’s got everything, and everyone has surprises up their sleeves without ever breaking character. Can’t get enough of it. [Originally published on The Frame]
    -JANDY

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 14 May

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    The Future is Female – 2012 is the Year of the Empowered Girl

    23

    In 2006 Joss Whedon (certainly the mainstream man of the hour in light of Avengers‘ rip-roaring success) expressed his exasperation with the question “Why do you write all these strong female characters?” His pithy, Whedonesque answer of course was “Because you’re still asking me that question.”

    Five years later in 2011, his words and frustration still rang true. The list of top ten box office hits includes only one film with a female lead – The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1, and Bella’s status as a “strong female character” is questionable (more on Twilight in a minute…) and the audience for the film adaptations of Stephanie Meyer’s novels is female-dominant. Last year’s box office champ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows does have a strong female character in Hermione Granger, but the lead of that film is obviously the Potter himself, everyone else more or less orbits his journey. Meanwhile, Transformers 3, The Hangover Part II, Fast Five, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and on down the list are male-centric to say the least.

    But 2012 may be the year of the empowered girl.

    The ongoing box office (and to a degree, critical) success of The Hunger Games seems to support that idea. But it is not just Katniss leading the charge: smart and strong women are leading many films this year. Films that seem utterly poised to be blockbuster hits and critical darlings feature women in the lead.

    In the past 30 years of western pop culture (we’ll get to Studio Ghibli in a moment too…) we have Wonder Woman, Lt. Ellen Ripley, Buffy Summers and Foxy Brown.

    Perhaps in 2012 we will have new names to add to that list. Mallory Kane. Katniss Everdeen. Lisbeth Salander (admittedly Fincher’s polished update of The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo was at 2011′s in extremis, but we’re counting her in the vanguard). Snow White. Princess Merida. The fact is, this shouldn’t be notable. But it is, because we are still asking writers, the majority of which are men, why they write strong women characters. But there are now many more writers to ask (admittedly still predominantly male!). Allow the Row Three staff to offer a survey of this years fem-powered offerings, starting with the resurrection of the Alien franchise.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

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