Excellence, or the perception thereof, is the kind of knife that can cut both ways. On the one hand, it drives forward, inspires the same in others, and garners accolades from the layman and master alike. It also elicits a higher degree of scrutiny and larger scale of criticism because the statues of heroes lining our Hallowed Halls must not be commissioned without due cause lest the bar be lowered and standards be plundered. Either way, blood will be drawn. To be held up as a paragon in any field requires a significant blood sacrifice: first willingly on the part of the potential candidate and second painfully at the hands of the gauntlet.
In the world of film, Christopher Nolan is no stranger to these grotesquely beguiling cultural rituals and is perhaps one of the best examples of the costs required for entry into the fellowship. It is, perhaps, small comfort that these sadomasochistic cultural tendencies mirror elements of life for which there is no safety word. Nolan's films have been subjected to increasingly rigorous critical analysis, and his latest opus, INTERSTELLAR, is no exception. While it's sometimes frustrating--even infuriating--listening to never-ending criticisms of the most minute details of Nolan's work, a level of scrutiny usually reserved for lawyers, smarmy British food critics, and war crimes tribunals, it's also a sort of validation. Movies made by Michael Bay, par example, don't receive the same amount or quality of criticism because it's generally accepted through historical precedent that there's nothing really substantial there to critique.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
There Is No Fate But What We Remake
Mangled. That was the only word that seemed close to defining the upcoming TERMINATOR GENISYS. The trailer for the next addition to the TERMINATOR franchise hit last week, though in the wake of the public's first peak at both JURASSIC WORLD and STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, it seemed to lose some of potential impact. Not that there were any early indicators that there was much potential to begin with, but sometimes with movies as with ejaculation, the timings the thing. I wouldn't necessarily argue for the supremacy of the artist when it comes to his or her own art; however, in this case, I think it's clear that trying to make a TERMINATOR film without James Cameron is like trying to make an ALIEN film without Ridley Scott (unless you make one with James Cameron, in which case it somehow turns out awesome, a rare phenomenon otherwise known as the Cameron Anomaly). At least, that is the most reasonable conclusion to draw based on the available evidence so far.
Thursday, December 04, 2014
Super Secret Sequel Teaser Trailer Roundup... Jurassic Wars Episode XI: We Can Sell Your Childhood Back to You Wholesale
This past week there was a great disturbance on the Internet, as if a million souls watching movie trailers cried out and then all reason and productivity were silenced. In Hollywood* (*Now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Disney corporation), there is no such thing as luck because the inhabitants of that strange land have tapped into a power even greater than the Force: cold hard cash. And it seems like they are intent on using this diabolical power to serve us up another heaping helping of franchise frozen dinners. If revenge is a dish best served cold, then Hollywood is a dish served boiling hot around the edges but still frozen in the middle no matter how long the instructions on the box say to leave it in the microwave.
Two cinematic juggernauts are being brought back from the dead, though whether they turn out to be abominations akin to Frankenstein's monster or thoroughly awesome like Neo in the last five minutes of THE MATRIX (who totally would have beat the shit out of that impostor Neo in that weird alternate universe of the two sequels (That's the only way the world still makes sense!)) remains to be seen. Both the JURASSIC PARK sequel, JURASSIC WORLD, and the seventh feature length STAR WARS film (not counting BATTLE FOR ENDOR and CARAVAN OF COURAGE), STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, both started peaking down their respective birth canals. For now they are still floating blissfully in those delicious placental juices, but far sooner than we realize, they will arrive in the world, kicking and screaming and soaked in various, life-giving, vaginal fluids, and be set on the path towards becoming president of Earth or an overweight stripper strung out on amphetamines.
Two cinematic juggernauts are being brought back from the dead, though whether they turn out to be abominations akin to Frankenstein's monster or thoroughly awesome like Neo in the last five minutes of THE MATRIX (who totally would have beat the shit out of that impostor Neo in that weird alternate universe of the two sequels (That's the only way the world still makes sense!)) remains to be seen. Both the JURASSIC PARK sequel, JURASSIC WORLD, and the seventh feature length STAR WARS film (not counting BATTLE FOR ENDOR and CARAVAN OF COURAGE), STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, both started peaking down their respective birth canals. For now they are still floating blissfully in those delicious placental juices, but far sooner than we realize, they will arrive in the world, kicking and screaming and soaked in various, life-giving, vaginal fluids, and be set on the path towards becoming president of Earth or an overweight stripper strung out on amphetamines.
Jurassic World
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