“Cheers, to your dead mother” Ah, the plan. You know the one, get good grades in high school, earn that college scholarship, continue the straight-A regimen, and land that dream job you’ve wanted since grade school. If the first three occurred without a hitch, of course that interview is a mere formality standing as a thin wall in front of the bright future ahead. Well, life is never that easy, and Post Grad’s Alexis Bledel finds that fact out very quickly. Her Ryden Malby somehow managed to not only keep…
Read MoreMonth: March 2010
REVIEW: Clash of the Titans [1981]
“Light has conquered darkness” Would a film like being called charming? How about a fantasy action/adventure? Unfortunately, while watching the 1981 edition of Clash of the Titans, that word is what kept popping into my head. I can’t say the movie was great, it was way too laborious and the ‘please explain to me because I never knew Greek mythology existed’ exposition turned me off. However, I also can’t call it bad because there are multiple instances of enjoyment and craftsmanship, serving only to make me more excited for 2010’s…
Read MoreREVIEW: Our Family Wedding [2010]
“You know you just said that out loud” And then the bottom drops out. All paint-by-number comedies of this ilk eventually hit the point where everything appears to be destroyed. Relationships are ended, love gone in a flash, and those who were thick-as-thieves are now unable to look at each other let alone speak. A film like Our Family Wedding can’t come to a resolution unless the story hits so far down on the depression scale that the inevitable across-the-board reconciliations can culminate into nothing but a climatic moment of…
Read MoreREVIEW: Hot Tub Time Machine [2010]
“Look at the douchebag from Karate Kid 3” Hooray for the reunion of Steve Pink and John Cusack, screenwriter and star respectively of contemporary classics Grosse Pointe Blank and High Fidelity. They are back and it’s with … Hot Tub Time Machine? Well, it isn’t quite the highbrow humor I was expecting from the duo, but then Pink didn’t write this one. Instead he helms the shenanigans as three old, yet currently distant, friends decide to journey back to the place that brought them their happiest memories. With Adam, (Cusack),…
Read MoreREVIEW: Green Zone [2010]
“Don’t be naïve” Yep, that line above pretty much sums up the film Green Zone to perfection. It is not only used once, sober and matter-of-fact, but a second time as a retort with dry sarcasm. America invaded Iraq with the sole purpose of giving Saddam Hussein the boot and entrenching themselves into the very infrastructure of the country, causing it to not only have a puppet leader, but pretty much put their hand up the backside of the entire nation. At least this is what screenwriter Brian Helgeland would…
Read MoreThe 82nd Oscars recap through tweets …
@jaredmobarak • NPH in sequins … i guess that’s something … The 82nd Annual Oscars ceremony begins, yet the hosts are nowhere to be found. Have we gotten to the point now where we need a lead-in for the most assuredly lame/very PC stand-up routine? We need to get the ball rolling for the ball that gets the show rolling? And they wonder why it always goes over its allotted timeslot. So, not only do we have to be introduced to all the lead acting nominees—because anyone watching doesn’t know…
Read MoreREVIEW: Alice in Wonderland [2010]
“Off with your head!” With a knack for creating imaginative worlds that can be both dark and colorful simultaneously, director Tim Burton seems like a natural fit to adapt the Wonderland of Lewis Carroll’s novels. However, for every inventive Big Fish or Edward Scissorhands come the atrocious re-envisionings of Planet of the Apes and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So, let’s just say I was scared going into Alice in Wonderland because, while the setting and art direction seemed perfect, I couldn’t help remember how bad his work from pre-existing…
Read MoreREVIEW: The Cell [2000]
“Where do you come from?” After being enraptured by its trailer and what looked to be some nightmarishly stunning visuals, it has taken me ten years to finally see Tarsem Singh’s The Cell. Every time I had the desire to rent it, the words of so many around me saying not to waste the effort always killed the idea. But I am the kind of person who can love a movie strictly from its aesthetics, whether the story is coherent or just barely interesting. Having the same feelings after watching…
Read MoreFinally, I’m in Buffalo! … Babel’s Azar Nafisi
Those four words were definitely not what I expected to escape Azar Nafisi’s lips upon reaching the podium at Kleinhans for 2010’s first installment of Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel Series. After Mike Kelleher finished his three pages of introductory notes—including naming three of the four authors to be stopping by this great city next season, listed below—the Iranian-born novelist took that stage and spoke enthusiastically about the children she visited earlier at City Honors. They gave her great insight and enthralled her enough to stay thirty minutes past her…
Read MoreREVIEW: Mr. Wonderful [1993]
“Find her another husband” Have I seriously been wired to assume I know how romantic comedies will end because so many of them are carbon copies of each other these days? It is like every entry to the genre now has the boy and girl with the wild card ex serving as the plot point for which to break them up and eventually get them back together. It’s been so formulaic for the past decade and a half that I went into 1993’s Mr. Wonderful with the end already played…
Read MoreREVIEW: She’s Out of My League [2010]
“Early Bird Special” Ever since The 40-Year Old Virgin made Judd Apatow a success, rather than the niche wunderkind those ten lonely souls watching “Freaks and Geeks” before it got canceled viewed him as, copycats around Hollywood have been running rampant. Some attempts have been better than others, especially when his frequent collaborators are involved. But the new film, She’s Out of My League, kind of crept up on me. I had been hearing rumblings about the movie, yet never got that bug to actively check out a trailer or…
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