Posts Tagged ‘changeling’

In Theaters Friday (Anti-Efron Edition)

synecodche

We* here at Spectacle have a strict rule on High School Musical content—thou shall not exist. So while millions of pre-tweens (and your roommate that you have lost all respect for) shell out $12 to watch terribly campy songs and dance, here are five films you can see to really talk about around the water cooler on the steps:

1. Synechdoche, New York: Charlie Kaufman, writer of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malcovich, and Adaptation, takes on the director chair in the strange meta-comedy. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as a theater director who needs to create meaning in his life, and begins work on an epic play. But it grows exponentially larger and larger, covering every single person he has ever met, staged in a giant warehouse, and soon the years of production soon add up. The film boasts a great supporting cast, including Catherine Keener, Hope Davis, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Expect the usual insanity of Kaufman that is highly illogical but so pleasurable. (AMC Empire)

2. Let the Right One In: This is the answer to the Saw films you’ve been waiting for. This highly claimed Swedish film tells the story about a twelve year old boy falls in love with a peculiar girl. The catch? She’s a vampire. The gore, thrills, and ingenious script ensue. (Angelika Film Center)
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Posted by

Peter Labuza

October 24, 2008

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NYFF Diaries: In Retrospect—Final Thoughts

classchewaltz with bashir

I found it very ironic that the New York Film Festival coincided perfectly with the collapse of the American Stock Market. As the nation’s economy, and thus the global economy, continued to plummet, New Yorkers were submitted to a group of 28 eclectic films (I saw nine) that truly represented the same sort of ideas. Often dark films about reality, shot in documentary-like style, made up much the main slate. It seems that many of the directors are all holding to the same principles.
The best of the films was one that did not deal with the problems of today. Steven Soderbergh’s Che was truly an epic film; 4 and a half hours long, with a half hour intermission, Soderbergh created a film that looked at the instability of revolutionary fever, through two diversely different films about Che Guevara’s revolutions in Cuba and then Bolivia. What Che speaks to today is about the pure luck that most things are balanced on. Were we simply lucky in Afghanistan and unlucky in Iraq (or both?), or is anything is this world really stable.

More after the jump
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Peter Labuza

October 14, 2008

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NYFF Diaries: Whale out of Water

Changeling

Changeling kind of seems out of place at NYFF 46. It’s a big budget Hollywood drama with a big star and a big director. But you know what? I don’t care, because Clint Eastwood is one of the best men working in cinema today and accusing him of working in the system is like calling out Steven Spielberg for always doing adventure films. Look at the last four films he did—Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, and then the companion pieces Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. All are simply powerful films, run by Eastwood’s beautiful shot composition, and the amazing performances and scripts (well, Flags was a bit disappointing).
So his new film Changeling, which was chosen as the centerpiece of the festival, might not fit in the same sort of small independent thinkers that populate the rest of the festival, but the thematic material of a machine that attempts to control reigns over.

Read on after the jump…
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Posted by

Peter Labuza

October 5, 2008

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Trailer Tuesdays: Solos Edition

About Trailer Tuesdays: Presented by yours truly, “Trailer Tuesdays” runs through the movie trailers that have been released in the last week, and tells you whether the flicks will be worth your time. Always for the matter of entertainment, I will try and arbitrarily link them in an uninspired and often failed fashion…but you will have to grieve through it anyways. There of course, will be links to each trailer, so you may judge yourself and tell me how wrong I am in the comments section.

This week’s trailers are all about solos, in their many forms:

James Bond Goes Solo—Quantum of Solace: In the new trailer for the 22nd Bond film, still with the worst title in the history of film, we see that James Bond (Daniel Craig) is out for revenge after the death of Vesper. This is the first time a Bond film has decided to be a direct sequel, and it might look like it will work. Matheiu Amaric, who gave a powerful performance in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly last year, looks to be having a lot of fun as the villain, and Ukranian hottie Olga Kurylenko proudly reps her body. Director Marc Forster hasn’t had the greatest track lately (The Kite Runner anyone?), but hopefully the action scenes will deliver, and Craig will again create the kind of Bond we should expect for the 21st century. (November 14th)

Watch the “Quantum of Solace” trailer here.

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Posted by

Peter Labuza

September 16, 2008

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