If you watched the recent Academy Awards, you probably saw Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart of the "Twilight" series introduce a tribute to the horror genre, a genre repeatedly ignored by the Oscars for whatever reason. It could be that the genre is ignored because in many ways these horror stories branch off from the fantasy genre, and everyone is quite aware of the handicaps of fantasy films...
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Encounters at the End of the World
In 2005, "March of the Penguins" had outgrossed all of the Best Picture nominees for the Oscars--"Brokeback Mountain," "Crash," "Capote," "Good Night, and Good Luck," and "Munich." The next year, "Happy Feat" won the Best Animated Film award. There is a man--not a penguin--interviewed in the beginning of Werner Herzog's "Encounters at the End of the World." Several moments later, the audience is...
Friday, March 26, 2010
The Balcony is Closed...Sort Of
"At the Movies," the show where Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel formally and passionately argued about movies, has recently been canceled. Siskel and Ebert were American treasures. While there is some merit to accusing the two of lowering the standard of film criticism by simplifying things with "thumbs up" or "thumbs down," the two often admitted that they were not there to offer serious, academic film...
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Alice in Wonderland
Todd Gilchrist recently wrote an interesting piece about the filmmakers who have influenced Tim Burton. It is not difficult to see the obvious similarities between Burton's work and that of Robert Wiene, Fritz Lang, Roger Corman, Ray Harryhausen, Terrence Fischer and Walt Disney, all mentioned in Gilchrist's...
Posts
