Craig's MovieBlog

Dum De Dum Dummmmmm, Dum De Dummmmmm...

Dum De Dum Dummmmmm,
Dum De Dum Dum Dum

I just can't get that music out of my head for some reason.  Can't quite figure it out...

Craig's Quick Hits

Sorry I haven't been posting recently... just haven't been inspired.  Here are a few links I've been holding onto for when the moment strikes:

• Here's the new trailer for Hitman, starring a personal fave, Timothy Olyphant.  (If you haven't seen the movie Go, get off your damn computer and check it out.)  Looks semi-interesting, except for the fact that 99% of all movies based on video games stink.
• In the least surprising news ever, Brett Ratner will direct a film about Hugh Hefner.
• The trailer for No Country For Old Men by the Coen brothers is so freaking intense, I have no idea how I'll be able to sit through the whole movie... although it received rave reviews at Cannes.
• 3:10 to Yuma just became the second Russell Crowe movie that I want to see this fall.
• Dubious Quality wrote a great post about a controversial video game where he feels the company manufactured PR by making the so violent and offensive, that it could never be sold legally.  That doesn't sound like the Captivity campaign at all... nope.  Nothing to see here...
• David Poland specifically does NOT review The Kingdom, but he really liked it anyway.

Sopranos Parodies

Today everyone is talking about Hillary Clinton's Sopranos spoof, but if you ask me, it's a good idea, horribly executed.  Of all people who would turn out to be bad actors, isn't it ironic that it's Bill and Hillary?  I'm just sayin... if I were David Chase today, I'd want to kill myself.

On the other hand, step into Bizarro World with me for a moment, and watch something brilliantly carried out.  Look at what the Pittsburgh Pirates did with their mascots, shooting an almost shot-for-shot remake.  As Best Week Ever says,

"the end result is so surreal and inexplicable, it almost gets the franchise off the hook for 14 straight losing seasons and raising ticket prices in 2002 after a 100-loss season"

Don't Stop Believin'

This fascinates me.  Only 11 million people or so watched The Sopranos finale.  Yet Marc Caro reports...

"Late Thursday night, four nights after it played over the tense conclusion of the “Sopranos” finale, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” is No. 18 on iTunes’ Top Songs list.

Although it’s too early to get actual sales data, Nielsen BDS reports that the 26-year-old song was played on radio 178 percent more this Monday through Wednesday than over the same days last week.

“Journey’s Greatest Hits” is currently ranked No. 54 in Music on Amazon.com. (It was higher Thursday.)"

Is it me?  Or does it seem like it doesn't take that much to make a blip on the music radar these days?  I'm not saying it's easy, but it does feel like making a minor ripple in the cultural zeitgeist has a far bigger impact on today's various music charts than I would have anticipated.

More Sopranos Analysis

This article from Larry Gross on Movie City News Voices is probably the most interesting in-depth look at The Sopranos finale, as well as the phenomenon as a whole.

What clearly must have begun to obsess Chase (and who knows how many of his creative collaborators) as the show evolved, was how the phenomenon of the show's very success itself, mirrored back the contradictions in these thematic arcs.  Vast widespread love and popularity for Tony Soprano must have often felt, for an already-conflicted sensibility like Chase's, an almost insupportably agonizing irony. 

And as always, I can't let a good David Poland article go by unlinked.  [SPOILER ALERT]

So in the end, we are back where we began.  Tony and Carmella's kids are older.  We, as an audience, are still waiting for some shady character to pull out a gun or some innocent to be killed.  Tony is under threat of indictment.  Tony and Carmella are in a therapist's office talking about his mom.  The family is together.

Cut to black.

Already, many think that the end is literally the end of Tony Soprano... that the show is Tony's point-of-view and that by going to black and silence, Chase signaled that Tony took one to the head and that was that.

Oops... Tim Goodman just posted his final column (actually his second one on this episode alone).  [SPOILER ALERT]

If you watch again, and put all Big Ideas and Murky Mythology aside, you'll see an episode that has Carlo flip to the Feds, Tony's lawyer concede that the process is in motion and Tony, at the end in the diner, tell Carmela that Carlo is going to testify. If you believe Tony is alive and life goes on for the Sopranos - the window shuts on their world - then the biggest of the myriad unanswered questions is, "Does Tony get indicted and found guilty and go to jail?" We'll never know. And we don't need to know. Closure is for broadcast television and tiny minds.

"Who's Sam Raimi?"

Knocked Up was fantastic (although I perhaps associated too closely with the Paul Rudd/Leslie Bibb characters), but these outtakes are blisteringly hilarious.

First Michael Cera goes off on Judd Apatow, and now we get to see what really happened during James Franco's cameo.  I can't get over how much I'm falling in love with Kristen Wiig, both on SNL and now her acerbic studio executive in Knocked Up.

Okay, But Tell Me Your Heart Wasn't Pounding

Regardless of whether you think last night's episode of The Sopranos was genius or a cheap cop out (I find myself in the camp of the former), you cannot tell me that the final five minutes were not some of the most intense television you've ever seen.

It took everything I had to stay on the couch and not get up and pace frenetically during what may (or may not) have been a completely mundane family dinner, and that is just part of the genius of David Chase.

Ambiguous ending or not, that program moved you.  You know it did.

"Oh the movie never ends.  It goes on and on and on and on..."

The Ten Trailer

This is the funniest trailer you will see all year.  I promise.  If you're halfway through, and you don't agree, hold on until they read the credits.  I have no idea if the film, The Ten, will be any good at all, but this trailer kills me.

American Gangster Trailer

Russell Crowe

Denzel Washington

Ridley Scott

Done and Done.  I am there.  Check it out.

Yes, Anyone Really Can Make a Movie

This is not just the best fight scene ever, but also the best dialog ever.

"We'll keep an eye out for you, Stingray. "

"Yeah, see ya. "

As Bill Simmons would say, this is off the charts on the Unintentional Comedy Scale.

Only You Can Prevent Boratitis

Please, help stop Boratitus, before it affects someone you love.

UPDATE: Apparently this clip has been removed from YouTube.  And a commenter on Best Week Ever calls out the irony with a certain degree of panache.

The funniest thing I have ever seen on this site. No, not the video. That is down. The reason?
“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Viacom International Inc.”
You know, the Viacom that owns VH1. The VH1 that has that show Best Week Ever.

The Heartbreak Kid Trailer

I think if I had to sit in Hollywood pitch meetings, I'd keep a lot of cyanide tablets around for me to bite into.

"See... it's like There's Something About Mary, but a sequel, AND... wait for it: it's a remake of a 1970's classic!  Has anyone ever done a sequel and a remake at the same time?!?  It's groundbreaking!"

At least the gorgeous blonde from Entourage, The Comeback, and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is in it.  Really strong decision to make her a complete psycho monster though.

But hey, enjoy the trailer for The Heartbreak Kid.

Choosing Your Words Carefully

Perhaps movie critics wouldn't constantly be accused of becoming irrelevant if they started writing like the author of uncov.com.  This group reviews applications built on the web, and uses, um, descriptive words to describe something they don't like. 

If you don't understand the beginning of the paragraph, that's okay.  Just hang around for the punch line:

"Customized start pages for corporations? Maybe, but I don't see why any paying customer would want this kind of content hosted externally, beyond their control. Then there's the whole problem of authentication and authorization, and you don't want to get yourself into that mess. You'll be giving head to a 12-gauge within a week."

I love this writer.

Breaking the Box Office Reality Distortion Field

Here's the piece from the New York Times for more info... 

Fun With George, Brad and Matt

It's interviews like this that make me want to go see Oceans 13.

TIME: When you have so many stars in a movie, and it's the third in a trilogy, how do you keep it from going off the rails and becoming Cannonball Run 3?
CLOONEY: Well, we like to think it's more like Lord of the Rings, in the trilogy sense.
PITT: Wait, what's wrong with Cannonball Run 3?
DAMON: I don't even think there was a Cannonball 3. Look, you have us confused with deep thinkers. You've already put more thought into why we did the movie than we did.
CLOONEY: You're thinking that we're not just whores for money. There's your mistake.