Blogger’s lament

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Aug 302011
 

It’s been a bit boring and impersonal here, lately.

The blog’s quietly deteriorated into an unholy mixture of a tumbleblog and a collection of photo challenge entries.

Can’t promise that things get any better – but at least now, having surveyed the damage, I will aim for a more contentful approach.

The impending NFL season (and the weekly reports how the ‘niners did), quite a few reviews and a couple of interesting longer articles doubtless will spice up the autumn.

Movie Monday #14: I eat green berets for breakfast

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Aug 292011
 

Wild Bunch posterThis week’s movie monday challenge poses the issue of the most testosterone-laden movie.

I pondered on several, and came close with Predator – after all that Schwarzenegger-vehicle just oozes the necessary elements: attitude, large caliber weapons and merciless violence just behind the corner.

But it’s not the ultimate one. For me Sam Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch is unbeatable. The tale of the last outlaws who agree to do one more gig end up with a lot more on their hands than they bargained for. In typical Peckinpah fashion the plans do not survive any contact with reality, and the violence slowly escalates to biblical proportions towards the end.

The attached clip is not of the final shootout, but the robbery-going-wrong that sets the scene for the rest of the film.

Movie Monday #14: I eat green berets for breakfast.

6K

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Aug 262011
 

This blog is now six thousand entries old.

As previously, there’s no cake (it’s a lie, anyway), no candles, and absolutely no singing.

The 1000 extra entries took about a year to materialize, as the previous milestone was achieved almost a year ago on september 1st last year.

Tropic Thunder, 4 stars

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Aug 222011
 

Tropic Thunder poster

I missed Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder on its theatre round, and took my sweet time watching it off a dvd. Hence I was semi-familiar with some of the key oneliners already, and knew what the movie was all about.

The action movie satire works for almost all its duration, though encounters a couple of pacing issues towards the end. The plot, the characters, the action scenes are all delightfully over the top, and as such the film never ceases to amuse.

Robert Downey Jr. is once again magnificent as the greatest method actor in the world – one who takes a pigmentation transplant to correctly play a black man. Jack Black and Ben Stiller never reach the same heights, and the others are either gone in a minute, or entirely colorless. Apart from Tom Cruise, who puts in a magnificent display of acting as Les Grossman, a balding motormouth of a producer. Indeed, for a long while I was sure that this was double jeopardy, that someone was actually moonlighting as Cruise.

Movie Monday #12: Cream of the Crop

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Aug 212011
 

For a favorite movie star there’s plenty of candidates. On account of over-using Harrison Ford terribly already, I’m not picking him.

The pointing finger instead falls on George Clooney, a man whose arrival on scene was unexpected, the output of steadily high quality across genres and likeability-index in general way way higher than the norm.

Clooney shed his role as the doctor-of-the-year role Doug Ross in ER in his very first major film role. He turned to a pyscothic badass Seth Gecko in Roberto Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn without batting an eye. The film is heavily recommended to all who do not know anything about it, that’s the best way to enjoy it.

Since then he’s been at least bearable across his filmography, with multiple highlights along the way: O Brother, Where Art Thou; Ocean’s Eleven; Syriana; Out of Sight; Solaris; Good Night, and Good Luck; Up in the Air. With only Batman and Robin to show in the turkey-category, that’s a healthily respectable two decades in Hollywood.

Movie Monday #12: Cream of the Crop.

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