Category: TV & Movies

On Friday morning, Samsung and Lionsgate invited a chosen few into the world of Panem realized at Hard Rock Hotel as part of San Diego Comic-Con 2014, joined by stars of the film in “The Hunger Games” franchise, Natalie Dormer, Elden Hensen, Wes Chatham, and more. The theme of The Capitol Gallery is white, the kind of creepy white of something stripped of dirtiness of reality and so antiseptically clean that nature is oppressed. The Samsung Galaxy experience at SDCC 2014 is set up as a game where visitors must go to stations and have a card punched.

We ordered elixirs and pastries from a Samsung tablet, and met garishly dressed models with over-the-top up ‘dos. We also had our photos taken with holograms of Panem high society who are deadly white. It’s not quite king for a day, more like evil president for a minute while sitting in a white throne. We learned about Samsung products, got a battery switch out, received a personalized etched Samsung Galaxy case, listened to music and heard a message from our president of Panem, Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland), but the message delivery signaled that all is not well in Panem. We …read more

San Diego Comic-Con is under way, and it inspired me to go
back and read some of Roger’s reviews of superhero movies (ten of which are
linked below). Roger confessed to having
a particular fondness for the superhero comic book (graphic novel) movie genre.
As I read some of the reviews, I realized that to me Roger was my Superhero,
the bespectacled, mild-mannered film critic who becomes Super Roger when yielding his Golden Thumb in favor of quality
or fun films, whether indies or blockbusters, or when advocating for the rights
of those without power. The ordinary man
who becomes extraordinary when he unleashes his ability to empathize with others,
racing to the defense of people of another race or age or ability or economic
status. The hero who can rouse the consciousness of others to come together
around issues of social justice and fair play. And the man who had an inner core of steel,
and a physical constitution so strong he eluded Death until he was ready to
submit on his own terms.

What I love about Steve James’ documentary “Life Itself” is
that you see all of the various incarnations of Roger as he goes from ordinary
human to superhero: his boyhood; his passion for journalism; his sense of fair play;
his …read more

In Greek
mythology, Heracles was the product of Zeus getting his Mt. Olympus freak on with a mortal woman. Heracles was
named to honor his philandering daddy’s angry wife, Hera, but her vengeance had
dire consequences for the future hero. Hera drove him insane, at which point
Heracles murdered his wife and children. After regaining his sanity and
realizing the horrible nature of his crime, Heracles accepts as penance the
famous labors most of us know about from high school English class. These
included defeating the Nemean Lion, the hydra and the Erymanthian boar.

This was the
legend I expected from Brett Ratner’s “Hercules.” Instead, I and the 12 other
people who showed up for last night’s screening were treated to yet another
comic book adaptation by studios desperate to hang on to its stereotypical core
market of men in states of arrested development. I know nothing about the Radical
Comics series upon which this is based, but I sincerely hope it is not the half-assed,
warmed over “300” rip-off its cinematic counterpart is. Watching “Hercules,”
you can feel your intelligence being insulted in almost every frame.

Shorn of the
graphic violence and blatant homoeroticism that made “300” gore-soaked camp,
the PG-13 rated “Hercules” is left with poorly rendered CGI battles and a fear
of …read more

Editor’s note: To give you a chance to get to know our writers
better, we’ve asked them to respond to some questions. In coming weeks,
we’ll be posting their responses, which will always be available as a
link from their contributor biography page. Here’s Nell Minow.

The Movie Love Questionnaire

Where did you grow up, and what was it like?

I
grew up in a semi-rural small town called Chula Vista (San Diego
County), a place where the sidewalk did end and dirt gave way to fields
and houses without lawns. Just two blocks away from my house was a
tomato field that belonged to a friend, another Japanese American family.

We
used to sit in front of their house during the annual Founders’ Day
parade, Fiesta de la Luna. We loved the horses and my sister would later
be marching in the high school band for that parade.

A
man with a goat and a pet raccoon watched over a commercial flower
field just beside the tomato fields. Sometimes we could get nearly spent
cut blooms to take home to our mothers.

From
time to time, we would get in the car to go off the paved roads and
onto the bumpy roller coaster-like …read more

Imagine a stranger-in-a-strange-land revenge thriller about a wide-eyed Anglo bombshell (Scarlett Johansson) who gets kidnapped and abused by nasty, sweaty, shouting Taiwanese men and then escapes to seek justice. Then imagine this same movie starring, say, a lightning fast kick boxer who can knock a dozen opponents’ teeth out before they can raise a single fist. Now imagine this same movie injected with a dose of apocalyptic science fiction, with the woman gaining strange powers as the story unfolds. Then envision midnight-movie touches mixed into the filmmaking: flash cuts of predators and prey enhancing otherwise typical scenes of plans being hatched; monologues about brain capacity and the true meaning of time coupled with psychedelic visions and wormholes and explanatory objects materializing from thin air.

That’s Luc Besson’s “Lucy,” about an American woman who gets kidnapped into service as a drug mule bearing an experimental synthetic hormone, accidentally absorbs some of it, then sheds her physical, intellectual and even perceptual limitations. I could describe five or six other kinds of movies that in some way also echo “Lucy.” Sections of it may remind you of the original “The Matrix” and the last hour of “Akira,” and the final ten …read more

Compulsive filmmaker Woody Allen has pretty much admitted
that his cinematic practice is such that each of his pictures is a swing at
something. And that he’s the last to know, in a sense, the extent to which he
“connects.” Which is not to say he has no opinions about his pictures—he does,
and they’re usually ones related to disappointment—but rather that he keeps up
the pace that he does—making one film a year, like clockwork, since 1983—out of
a genuinely aspirational impulse.

Critical opinion on the extent to which he connects varies
pretty wildly. I remember seeing Allen’s 2005 drama “Match Point” at the Cannes
Film Festival and thinking it a lot of silly rot. So did another critic friend,
and imagine our surprise as we filed out into the lobby of the screening area
to mix with dozens, if not hundreds, of critics who found the picture a
thrilling return to form, or an Allen renaissance even. But the follow-up to
that, 2006’s “Scoop,” was hardly anyone’s idea of primo Woody, and reception
was wobbly from that point on, although the past four years have been, most
would agree, pretty good artistic ones (although not so good with respect to
certain aspects of Allen’s personal life, one is obliged to …read more