I don’t need to crack open that mighty tome (or see the glam new adaptation) to know that Anna Karenina is screwed. She’s a wealthy, well-married aristocrat who’s about to step out on her spouse. More importantly: she’s a she. Infidelity, an issue that plagues rich & poor, real & fictional, rarely turns out well for any involved parties, but particularly for the gals.
Blog Archives
Video World #7: That’s Enter-trainment
While employees hate training videos, watching them for sport can be a treat. “Glad that’s not my job!” you can say, procrastinating from your actual job. Over the weekend, I fell in a YouTube hole and came out with some of the best specimens of this genre on the whole Internet. Forget Buñuel and Dalí; the real masterpieces of 20th century surrealism are the training videos of Showbiz Pizza Place.
Films vs. Movies #42: Shaken, Not Stirred
Bond. Jimmy Bond? The boys debate the merits of Connery, Moore and Craig.
Bombast #66
Taking the measure of these various early enthusiasms—certainly they are not the only ones, but they are important ones—a clear pattern emerges: a distinct preference for the funhouse mirror reflection to the original object, even at the price of an ignorance of the genuine item.
On the Couch: A Late Quartet
It’s true, people. You are, in fact, going die. Sorry. I mean, don’t feel too bad. I’m going to die too. And so is Christopher Walken, and every other cast member of A Late Quartet, a new mortality-reminder released just in time for the holidays. To get you into the spirit of things, I’ve rounded up a few more movies about death to help get you psyched for your own big sleep. Memento Mori, gentle reader.
Viva Mabuse! #12: The Horror
My shrugging attitude toward Sinister was, however, soon transformed into eager anticipation once it became clear that something about it was, well, off-putting. Seems critics were bothered in some real and fundamental way, and I’ve got news for them—that’s the genre’s job. If a horror film doesn’t scrape or bruise your comfortable middle-class worldview a little, even if by way of subtexts you’re not conscious of, then it’s a dud. If it sends you out galled and/or freaked, then it’s … Read More
Monkey Biz: Sandy Topples The Charts
Weather is not as kind to or as fond of the trial-and-error method of the movie business. We have only a “pretty good” idea of what’s about to hit. And prediction, after all, aides in preparation, not in prevention. When John Carter flops, Disney takes a loss, but also knows not to take a further loss by making a sequel. Greenlighting Sandy’s successor, on the other hand, isn’t up to us.
