Although he may not be familiar to U.S. audiences, Astro Boy is no newcomer to the animated universe. Engineered for young Japanese audiences in the 1950’s by manga artist Osamu Tezuka, the mechanical moppet has long been a cultural icon in his native country; think Mickey Mouse with electronic innards. Drawn like a hybrid of Bob’s Big [...]
It’s a difficult tightrope to walk, making a film adaptation of a book, especially if the book is well-loved. On one hand, if you change the book’s content too much, you run the risk of angering the fans who will turn on you for all the differences between the story in their heads and the [...]
Oh, the Coen brothers. Where do I start?
If you’ve heard anything about their new film, A Serious Man, you may have heard the comparisons to the story of Job. (The guy in the bible.) That’s certainly a good starting place, but I think it’s best to use that story as an influence, and consider the [...]
In 2003’s The Yes Men, Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum set up a website mimicking and lampooning the World Trade Organization, a corporation they oppose. Their website, however, was mistaken for the real thing and they were invited to speak at important meetings and functions as representatives for the WTO. They decided to use the [...]
What is art? Can a thumbtack on an otherwise blank wall be a picture? Can someone kicking a bucket filled with chains be music? Most of us, with good reason, would say no. It takes more inherent talent to make art; more then just sticking a tack up on a wall or just making seemingly [...]
I tend to think of good stories as ones that take you somewhere, with someone to root for along the way. You may not like where it goes, but there is always a purpose in mind for the hero or heroine. Underdogs, rags to riches, triumph over evil, the prevailing of the human spirit, conquering [...]
Something killed Paranormal Activity. It wasn’t a demon or ghost but something much worse: The blogosphere. I write to you as a fledgling member of the blogging community and as one who is subject to the changing tides of opinion and analysis. I heard about Paranormal Activity the same way I suspect nearly everyone did. [...]
PHILIP BARRETT: What’s ironic about Where the Wild Things Are happens to involve a conversation I had with fellow critic Anders Wright of San Diego’s City Beat before the film. I kindly asked him what his expectations for the film where. “You know, Philip,” he said, “I’ve learned not to set the bar too high [...]
In 2006, I read about a film that was slightly different from anything I’d heard of before. Top directors such as the Coen Brothers, Gus Van Sant and Alfonso Cuaron were all making a series of shorts that would be threaded together into a feature. The short films all center around love in Paris. The [...]
Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, a 90-minute adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s 43-year-old children’s book which barely spans a handful of pages, is a thing of absolute beauty. It is beautiful in cinematography, beautiful in performance and dialogue, and beautiful in silent moments between every wild thing that occurs onscreen. It’s a family film [...]
Every so often, good word of mouth can save a film from oblivion — which was undoubtedly the direction Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘R Treat was headed, pushed into distribution limbo for two entire years. The downside of this tactic is that a hype machine can be built that quickly grows out of control.
People have called [...]
There are many films that all of us see throughout our lives, but only a few leave an imprint. “Free Style” leaves that imprint on me, but a bad one that could be used as an example of what not to do when making a movie. The film tries to cloak itself on the surface [...]
