and they brought prosperity down at the armoury

The Dispossessed: One of those novels I wish I’d found sooner. Le Guin has a beautiful economy of language not often found in fantasy writers: making the terse but poetic choice, rather than bombarding a scene. The Dispossessed feels like an epic, though it comes out fairly slim.
And like all good science-fiction, the [...]

walk like a pimp, think like a macintosh

You’re A Very Nosy Fellow, Kitty Cat
These three things are true:
(1) Roman Polanski deserves to go to jail for raping a thirteen-year-old girl – not merely statutory rape, but coerced, drug-induced sex with a thirteen-year-old. The years he spent outside of the United States do not count as “time served” for his crime, since [...]

sommes nous les jouets du destin, souviens toi des moments divins

Le Samourai: Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai (1967) isn’t quite a samurai film, and it isn’t quite a gangster film. It tells a story that touches on both – three days in the life of Jef Costello (Alain Delon), a syndicate hit man who has no life outside of the job he’s hired to do. [...]

I know you want me; you know I want you

The Lion in Winter: yes, yes; a classic for generations; brilliant performances, pristine dialogue, etc. It’s a phenomenal movie. We know that. Rather than give it a review, which would be silly, I’ll attempt some critical analysis in the style of Todd Alcott (albeit not as well).
Here we go:
The Lion in Winter [...]

will.i.am, drop the beat now

Don’t I owe you some media blow? I feel I do.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Not bad, just aggressively mediocre. You ever have a friend who tells an unimpressive one-liner, giggling as he does, that you pretend not to have heard? So he repeats it, forcing you to either smile politely or say, “I [...]

and I owe it all to you

Patrick Swayze died Monday evening, succumbing to a long battle with cancer at the age of 57. This gives me an opportunity to go into detail about one of my favorite Swayze movies: Road House.
Road House is a great movie.
I enjoy Road House without irony or shame. While the fashions depicted [...]

in every lovely summer’s day

LiveJournal blogger The Ferrett has had a couple posts of late on the Oscars “In Memoriam” Montage featured at every Academy Awards ceremony. Actors who died in the previous year get a few seconds on screen, depicted in iconic roles, while grandiose strings swell in the background.

Ferrett asks an interesting [...]

and I’ve been putting out the fire with gasoline

Inglourious Basterds: I’m posting this on Labor Day in the hopes that no one sees it.
Quentin Tarantino has always approached films with the geeky enthusiasm of a comic book collector, rather than the affected aloofness of a film student. The movies he makes reflect that: a smorgasbord of styles, an epic assault on the [...]

he’s got a road map of jupiter, a radar fix on the stars all along the highway

District 9: I have nothing to add to the chorus of critical acclaim already showered on this movie. An amazingly inventive flick. See it in the theaters.
That out of the way, I have a broader question: will the recent string of smart, successful action movies finally put that trope of the “dumb popcorn [...]

he’s in the place, but I get no joy

Mad Men S3 Premiere (SPOILER-FREE): A gentle easing back in to America’s favorite ad agency. Aside from certain exciting developments in the lives of Messrs. Cosgrove and Campbell, no real plot developments here. But I’m okay with that (which is perhaps an inconvenient bit of hypocrisy, considering how much distaste I directed at [...]