Menu

Movies

Stoker

, ,

stokerheader
“Did you ever stop to think that a family should be the most wonderful thing in the world?” Stoker, Park Chan-wook’s superlatively beautiful film, is billed as a thriller, but isn’t quite. It’s more a style-heavy meditation on things not actually present in the narrative (it’s a vampire movie with no vampires), and a ruthless dissection of the thing that is (family, family, family). Case in point: in the movie’s first moments, we meet India. She tells us she’s wearing her mother’s blouse, and her father’s belt, and a pair of stiletto heels her uncle gave her. We know nothing else about her. By movie’s end, everything in the shot has been given context, until the outfit is both a symbol of the family influences that take such a permanent toll on a child, but examples of a heightened, surreal specificity that characterize India throughout. It’s difficult to go into some of the specifics, both because laying out plot points makes the storyline sound a little soapy (and hearkens perhaps too closely to Shadow of… Read more »

Red Carpet Rundown: the Oscars 2013

, , ,

fanbingbingaa2013_zps951bb885
Well, the Oscars HAPPENED this year, didn’t they? (They happened to be dreadful.) There is, of course, a world of nonsense involved when the richest and most elevated echelons of a subculture come together to congratulate themselves; that’s par for the course with most celeb culture. However, even for an event which shut a woman director out of nominations even while nominating the movie for Best Picture (for a picture with some seriously problematic elements – Hollywood, you’re a delight), last night’s show was pretty dismal. I ended up seeing the Hustler-cover-set-to-music intro song; it should be no surprise that I therefore missed the Anti-Semitic teddy bear, and apparently also missed the extremely questionable red carpet tactics of every interviewer who decided not to even pretend to want to begin to learn how to pronounce the name of one of the Best Actress nominees. Banner night, everyone! However, even when the rest of the night is a quagmire, the show goes on, and from the impassable sea of stylists, makeup artists, hair experts, and extremely… Read more »

Red Carpet Rundown: The BAFTAs

, , , ,

baftaheader_zpsd3818d62
Last night, amidst weather that looked like a total slushstorm but that the Brits probably classified as “a bit of rain” and the makeup artists probably classified as a series of expletives requiring industrial anti-frizz pomade, the stars gathered to celebrate the BAFTAs. I enjoy the BAFTAs because of the red-carpet opportunity it provides for talented UK actors (except this year, when many of those who are So Hot Right Now are sitting in tents in Lincoln Center for Fashion Week instead). And though actually walking the red carpet is probably not super fun as a rule if you do it regularly, at least this one is full of talented people, many of them at least pretending to enjoy themselves, even if some of them have made some unfortunate fashion choices. As an opener, I love this shot of the press pit, both for the sense of how it must feel to be there, and because it starts the surprise trend of the night: amazing versions of silhouettes that tend to look odd!   Alicia Vikander,… Read more »

Questionable Taste Theatre: “Starcrossed”

, ,

starcrossedmontage2
[Channel Flip resumes shortly; in the meantime, this was too good to miss.] Thanks to late nights and decisions that seem poor but are in fact awesome, I’ve seen some truly amazing movies. The most recent is Starcrossed, otherwise known as The Movie Nicholas Winding Refn Probably Secretly Saw Before He Made Drive. The movie isn’t just that, but at intervals it’s pretty markedly that, what with its car-mechanic hero willing to give up everything to protect a particularly winsome young lady whose love he can never keep, illustrated by montages of driving at night, the best car chase ever committed to film, and everyone’s favorite Pink Neon font. You give me a time and a place, I give you a five minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes and I’m James Spader. No matter what. What this movie also is: the ’80s-est movie you’ve never heard of that features a beautiful alien who comes to earth seeking freedom, but finds James Spader instead. She knows nothing of love; he just knows nothing. Never… Read more »

Ten Things You Should Know about “Solomon Kane”

, ,

solomon8
Sometimes, in a sea of movies trying their best, you appreciate a movie that is ambitiously bad. (For example, I appreciated the preview for a horror movie about what happens if you don’t hold your breath as you pass a cemetery, actual thing.) You want the sort of movie where three times as much money was spent on Fancy Scar Makeup as on script. The sort of movie where it feels like every major decision was presented to someone whose response was, “…Okay, sure!”, and most of those people were British character actors whose numbers had come up in Rent Roulette. In related news, let’s talk about Solomon Kane. Extremely short version: “Verily, Those Monsters Stole My Hot Chick – to Battle!”: The Motion Picture. Short version: Solomon Kane used to be a ruthless mercenary, but after realizing his soul is bound for Hell, he tries to mend his ways and redeem himself as a man of peace. He even falls in with Puritan family the Crowthorns and contemplates following them to America to start… Read more »

Red Carpet Rundown: 2012 SAG Awards

, , ,

sagreginaking
The most awkward awards name of all (close second to the Golden Globes) happened last night! This is the one where stylists don’t have to worry about dressing anyone except the actors, which sounds like a gimme, but when an actor is wading through a sea of people trying to Make These Borrowed Clothes Look Awesome, the stakes are high. It’s not the same danger as the Met Costume Institute Gala, when they’re competing against models whose ONLY job is Make These Borrowed Clothes Look Awesome, but there is an occasional pose that is trying waaaay too hard, some of which didn’t even come from Lea Michele. I am pleased (?) to report that the Bafflement Trend of 2012 is still going strong. As usual, some people got the memo about it and some people just chose to look amazing, but that means there’s something for everyone to make faces at one way or the other, which is what a red carpet is all about. Let’s open on a Full Baffle: Kristen Wiig deftly avoided… Read more »
«‹ 4 5 6 7 ›