Archive for the ‘Other’ Category

  • 30 Jan

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    Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

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    An oddly compelling reason to never buy a Honda, but also an interesting commentary on how our ‘hero’ has gone from a stolen 1961 Ferrari to a leased 2012 CRV. Superbowl, I hate you even more than usual. I’m off to palette cleanse on the real Ferris Too, Alexander Payne’s Election (The last time Matthew Broderick didn’t phone it in.)

  • 19 Nov

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    Blast from the Past – Rounders Movie Review

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    Since 2004, numerous movies have come out regarding the world of poker, but none have seemed to live up to the realism of the cult classic Rounders. Matt Damon as Mike McDermott and Ed Norton as “Worm” take you into the world of underground poker and gave you a inside look at a world not seen by many. The movie is also one of the factors in the rise of popularity of Texas Holdem poker among younger players in the last decade.

    Mike McDermott is an up and coming rounder that thinks that he is good enough to take on the big boys of the underground poker world. He sits in a high roller game with KGB, played by John Malkovich, and winds up losing his entire bankroll on one hand of poker. Mike then jumps to the last resort on how to handle losing streaks in poker and decides to walk away from the game forever and focus on his law degree.

    Forever did not last long as he soon reconnects with childhood friend Worm who was recently released from prison. Worm convinces Mike to go back to playing poker and
    Mike is immediately successful. His success cuts into his law studies and even costs him
    his girlfriend.

    However, his friendship with Worm wins up costing him as Worm puts Mike several
    thousand dollars in debt. Mike then finds out that Worm is in for $15,000 and mistakenly
    vouches for Worm. The two then have to come up with the money in 5 days or it may
    cost them their lives.

    Mike almost makes the money in time, but Worm gets caught cheating at cards in a poker
    game with a bunch of cops and they get beaten and robbed of their money. Mike then
    discovers that Worm owes the $15,000 to KGB. Realizing that Worm has all but signed
    his death warrant, Mike cuts his ties with Worm and seeks financial help.

    Mike receives that help from his college professor who loans him $10,000. Mike then
    takes that game and gambled in a heads-up match with KGB and wins. He could have
    walked away with his debt paid and $5,000 richer, but KGB goads him into risking that
    money to win back his bankroll.

    At the climax of the movie, Mike picks up on KGB’s tell and stops himself from blowing
    his stack to him. KGB goes “on tilt”, a term for getting mad at the tables, and winds up
    blowing his stack to Mike.

    Mike pays off his debt, his professor, his debt run up by Worm, and still has $30,000. He
    then takes off for Vegas to play in the Texas Holdem poker championship at the World
    Series of Poker.

    Rounders is a almost a case study in the ups and downs of life in the poker world. For
    true poker fans, the movie will ring true and may even remind them of their own lifestyle.
    For other, this movie will give you a look into the world of poker that you will not see on ESPN or other poker shows.

  • 04 Oct

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    Villain!

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    It shall be Tom Cruise vs. Werner Herzog in Christopher McQuarrie’s (The Usual Suspects, Way of the Gun) new film, One Shot.

    The book series by Lee Child follows Jack Reacher, a former military policeman turned drifter. In “One Shot,” Reacher investigates the case of a sniper accused of murdering five people before being captured. Herzog will play The Zec, an ex-prisoner of war who arranges and stages the killing and is the head of the conspiracy.

  • 29 Sep

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    So That’s Your Friend in the Wood Chipper?

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    The oddest of marketing hooks for a brewery, but a pretty awesome pet-name for a hang-over. I hope it is not a red style ale (actually, it is an India Pale Ale), but I wouldn’t put it past this North Dakota micro-brew who are launching a product that references the famous conclusion to the Coen Brother’s absurdo-noir classic, Fargo. The first beer launched by the craft brewer, The Fargo Beer Company, is called, The Wood Chipper. If you order nicely, Peter Stormare will come over to your table and pop the top for you (you may have to take him to the iHOP later though…)

    Pass me a Wood Chipper? You Betcha!

    Via Twincities.

  • 27 Sep

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    Survey: Bobcat Goldthwait

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    Although I should have brought this up on the Netflix segment for recent episode of the Cinecast, alas, I did not notice it until late last night: Bobcat Goldthwait‘s 1991 directorial debut, Shakes the Clown, popped up on the Canadian version of the streaming site this week. Goldthwait, as an onscreen performer peaked somewhere in the mid 1980s – most people probably know him as the weird, dirty (literally, not figuratively) Cop from the Police Academy sequels, but the cool kids probably fondly remember One Crazy Summer. he more or less disappeared after Shakes failed to take off beyond a weird cult curio. For about a decade he was MIA before returning as a director in the early 2000s for cable TV programs (Crank Yankers, Chapelle’s Show, The Man Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live) and eventually moving into smart, subversive indie features. With the quite fun, and rather timely, debut of the writer/director/comedian’s latest film, God Bless America (Kurt’s Review) and the fondness for his rather auteur-ish three-word-title laden C.V. (Windy City Heat, Sleeping Dogs Lie, World’s Greatest Dad, God Bless America.) Regular listeners of the Cinecast, know that Matt Gamble raves about World’s Greatest Dad often, and at length.

    Want an overview? Lots video clippings are tucked under the seat.
    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 22 Aug

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    The Good Dr. Bordwell on the Nature of the SPOILER and our historic quasi-acceptance of it.

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    Everyone seems to have a different idea of what constitutes a *SPOILER* in terms of a book or o movie. There is a lot of nuance in what is enticing to watch a film, and what spoils the fun. Many people say, “I enjoyed that movie so much because I walked in totally blind to what it was!” On the flip side of things, the films of Wes Anderson, The Coen Brothers, Federico Fellini, Michael Haneke, and many more become more enjoyable after multiple viewings.

    Impasse!

    David Bordwell (with Kristen Thompson) discusses Spoilers in Film and the old form of distribution makes this an even more complicated argument in light of cinema history. Well worth a read!

    Who doesn’t come to Casablanca knowing about “Here’s looking at you, kid,” or “Play it, Sam,” or “Round up the usual suspects”? You likely saw the ending of King Kong in compilation films before you saw the whole movie, yet you probably still watch it with enjoyment. I saw Potemkin’s Odessa Steps sequence many times, on an 8mm reel I bought as a kid, before I saw the whole movie. I still enjoy Potemkin, possibly more than many who see it for the first time. Yet people complain about trailers that tell too much, and critics who give plot twists away. Accordingly, it’s been a convention of fan and Net writing that if you’re going to give away major story information, you alert readers with the word “spoiler.”

    Surely people want to know something about a film’s story. Viewers clamored for the most basic information about Super 8. And evidently many moviegoers would feel less disgruntled about The Tree of Life if they had known in advance a little bit more about what they would encounter. It seems we want to know about the story’s basic situation, but not too much about how things develop. Say: bits from the first half-hour or so, up to the beginning of the Second Act (or what Kristin calls the Complicating Action). Beyond that, we want things kept quiet. Above all: Don’t tell the how things turn out in the end.

    Also, see Jim Emerson on the subject (linked within the above article and here as well)

  • 16 Aug

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    Read exerpts from Roger Ebert’s Memoir: Life Itself

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    Any time Roger Ebert puts up his own person reveries on the past, it is the best reading over at his Sun-Times Journal. Even tough I more or less agree with his politics, I find his personal processing and musing of his past to be 1000x more compelling. Today he put up the opening pages of his Memoir there, and it is well worth your time.

    “When I returned to 410 East Washington with my wife, Chaz, in 1990, I saw that the hallway was only a few yards long. I got the feeling I sometimes have when reality realigns itself. It’s a tingling sensation moving like a wave through my body. I know the feeling precisely. I doubt I’ve experienced it ten times in my life. I felt it at Smith Drugs when I was seven or eight and opened a nudist magazine and discovered that all women had breasts. I felt it when my father told me he had cancer. I felt it when I proposed marriage. Yes, and I felt it in the old Palais des Festivals at Cannes, when the Ride of the Valkyries played during the helicopter attack in Apocalypse Now.

    I was an only child. I heard that over and over again. “Roger is an only boy.” My best friends, Hal and Gary, were only children, too. We were born at the beginning of World War II, four or five years earlier than the baby boomers, which would be an advantage all of our lives. The war was the great mystery of those years. I knew we were at war against Germany and Japan. I knew Uncle Bill had gone away to fight. I was told, your father is too old so they won’t take him. He put bicycle clips on his work pants and cycled to work every morning. There was rationing. If Harry Rusk the grocer had a chicken, we had chicken on Sunday. Many nights we had oatmeal. There was no butter. Oleo came in a plastic bag, and you squeezed the orange dye and kneaded it to make it look like butter. “It’s against the law to sell it already looking like butter,” my parents explained. Daddy and Uncle Johnny ordered cartons of cigarettes through the mail from Kentucky. Everybody smoked. My mother, my father, my uncles and aunts, the neighbors, everybody. When we gathered at my grandmother’s for a big dinner, that meant nine or ten people sitting around the table smoking. They did it over and over, hour after hour, as if it were an assignment.”

    Read the rest here.

  • 24 Feb

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    Cheeky Plug: The Hippo and the Leper

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    As my ‘day-job’, away from blogging about movies, I’m an editor/camera op/in-house-techie for a small independent production company who produce short films and other slightly more profitable videos/workshops. We’ve recently ventured into the shiny, hi-tech realm of the ‘mobile application’ and come out with our very first iPad/iPhone app and seeing as it’s (very) vaguely film related I thought I’d share it with the readers at Row Three to get some feedback (and hopefully sell a few apps of course). Find out more below:

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 28 Jan

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    Zooey x 4

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    Many people are growing tired of everyone’s favourite ‘manic-pixie-dream-girl’ Zooey Deschanel. I am not one of those. Since the usual place for this, our old MorePOP! subsite has given up the ghost, enjoy her retro-design-fetish music video with her band She & Him on the mainsite.

     

  • 11 Oct

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    Happy Thanksgiving Folks

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    Yea we are a bit ahead of the American’s due to our advanced season. But plenty of things to be thankful about on our holiday. Cheers Folks.

  • 25 Aug

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    115 Years of Color and the First Color Films

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    Well not really, but this is a wonderfully preserved look at some of Kodak’s first experiments into the newly colorized medium. Kodak began working to improve on existing color photography that already existed at the time and from what I can see here truly succeeded. The hues and contrasts in this short experimental footage look absolutely fantastic compared to what came before it and was a major step-up in color film technology that paved the way for classic and epic films like The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind.

    “In these newly preserved tests, made in 1922 at the Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, actress Mae Murray appears almost translucent, her flesh a pale white that is reminiscent of perfectly sculpted marble, enhanced with touches of color to her lips, eyes, and hair. She is joined by actress Hope Hampton modeling costumes from The Light in the Dark (1922), which contained the first commercial use of Two-Color Kodachrome in a feature film.” – Kodak Blog

     

     

    So after seeing this glorious footage, I started doing a little more research on color and found some conflicting reports. Wikipedia claims that something called “Kinemacolor” was the first successful color motion picture process, used commercially from 1908 to 1914. They also say that A Visit to the Seaside was the first successful film produced in natural color (which I couldn’t find a video of). I think “successful” and “commercially” might be the important words in that sentence because I then tracked down this clip on YouTube which claims it is from 1906.

    would you like to know more?
    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 29 Jun

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    Directory of World Cinema: Australia & New Zealand Available via Free Download

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    The latest volume of Intellect’s Directory of World Cinema series is currently available to download in a PDF file. This book is edited by Ben Goldsmith and Geoff Lealand and provides several essays and reviews focusing on Australian and New Zealand cinema. Like the previous volumes in the series (which so far consist of Japan and American Independent), it serves as an accessible and convenient guide for those wanting to expand their knowledge of this particular area of world cinema. It appears to be quite wide-ranged in its scope, covering well-known directors like Peter Weir and Baz Luhrmann, the legendary Ozploitation genre (and the 2008 documentary Not Quite Hollywood that celebrates it) and many less well-known films (for me, at least) that will no doubt inspire people to build up their Netflix and Zip lists.

    You can download the book in its entirety here. It will be officially released in stores on October 15th, 2010.

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