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August 30, 2001

Because I enjoy totally ripping things off, here's a look at the Overrated and Underrated world of movies.

August 29, 2001

You say it's your birthday? Well, it's my birthday too, yeah. Also, read the review for The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.

August 27, 2001

   For anyone who didn't believe me that this wasn't a great weekend in movies, you need only take a look at the box office receipts. American Pie 2 held on to the top spot (just the third film all year to lead the country three weeks in a row; Hannibal and Spy Kids were the other two, telling you just how great this year has been) - and not only that, but Rush Hour 2 held on to second. Two of the films that opened (my MTS pick, Curse of the Jade Scorpion, and Bubble Boy) didn't even land in the top ten.
    The really frightening thing is that with only O and Jeepers Creepers opening next week, AP2 might actually manage to lead the box office in four straight weeks, and it would be the only film all year to have done that. The other impressive thing is that even though American Pie did $101 million worth of domestic box office, the sequel has surpassed that total in just three weeks. (With $109 million through Sunday.)
    Anyway, thought I should announce a little protocol change. The current Rest of '01 page, also known as the remainder of 2001's Movies to See and Movies to Avoid the Shit Out Of, will be adding "Critics' Take" to each film as they are released and reviewed by the mainstream media. I will also be encapsulating my own reviews and attaching those to the movies I see. So you can find out what critics think about all the rest of the movies being released this year and compare their observations to my previews.
    Also expect an early look at the first few months of 2002 coming to the site soon.

A little something to add: because of size concerns, I moved the Movies to Avoid to their own page. You can get to it from the bottom of the Movies to See page. Or, if you're lazy, here.

August 26, 2001

   I hate release date changes. Apparently thinking that there were too many movies of its ilk out at the same time for it to make a big splash, Disney has moved The Count of Monte Cristo from October 19 all the way into February of next year, a decidedly weaker month to be sure. From Hell and Heist are due out 10/19, both of which could take away audiences that might see Cristo, as could The Last Castle and Windtalkers, due out a week before and three weeks after the 19th respectively. Next February, though, the only movie that seems in the same genre that could be as big a draw is Rollerball, tentatively scheduled to come out on the 8th. This may mean that Disney will shoot for a release date later in the month, assuming they choose not to move it again.
    That said, it's time for some more trailer reviews.
    Bandits - This is pretty much a cut-and-dry, "classic" trailer. I mean classic as in old-fashioned. It doesn't give away the entire plot and it points up its jokes by sending the musical cues in at exact times. And then at the end it's pretty weak, with a noiseless montage set to U2's "Beautiful Day." I love that song, but it doesn't seem like it quite works here. I don't think the movie looks particularly promising, but I can't necessarily blame the trailer for that, and besides, some of my favorite trailers are for movies I didn't really like. It's all a matter of selling it - but I'm not convinced that this one does. B
    Black Hawk Down (teaser) - Is Tom Sizemore in every war movie, or is it just me? Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor, and now this, which is about an incident in Somalia in 1993. And that's pretty much all they tell you. This is a great teaser trailer (expect a full-length one in another couple of months, I'd say), as it sets the scene but shows you very little, working mostly with titles and putting "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" to good use. I'm reminded very much of the Ryan teaser, which again showed you little (and in fact incorporated very little movie video though quite a bit of audio) but managed to be effective nonetheless (it too had a good musical backbone). A
    Gangs of New York - Despite the appearance of Leonardo DiCaprio, this looks like it's going to be a pretty good movie. I don't know that I like DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz playing Irish (yeah, exactly), but I'll settle for right now. The trailer's great. A good use of music (James Horner's "Charging Fort Wagner" from Glory puts in an appearance) and most importantly good editing - it gives you the key setup ingredients but stops well short of showing the entire movie. I'm also impressed that Daniel Day-Lewis got billing above Diaz, even though he hasn't been really heard from in eight years (since Last of the Mohicans was out). A
    Hearts in Atlantis - I must admit that this trailer has pretty much sold me on the movie, which I was not convinced about when reading the synopsis. That said, there are still problems. It starts off good, with clever but understated use of music and a good divulging of the early plot. Then it veers off at the end, showing you what looks like it will be pretty much everything and wimping out with the music when it had a chance to push it up a bit. Still, it does a better job of selling its film than most trailers, and that is, of course, always a good thing. A-
    Heist - This trailer crackles with the Mametian dialogue that the film will no doubt be full of. Well, at least in the first two-thirds or so. The last third, aside from Danny DeVito's line at the end, is a little weaker. I particularly love Gene Hackman and Delroy Lindo's exchange at the outset: Hackman: "Makes the world go round." Lindo: "What's that?" Hackman: "Gold." Lindo: "Some people say love." Hackman: "Well, they're right too. It is love. Love of gold." With top-notch talent like Hackman, DeVito, and Lindo (along with Mamet's usual suspects, Ricky Jay and Rebecca Pidgeon), this film appears from the trailer to be much less contrived than The Spanish Prisoner, or at least more able to avoid the appearance of contrivance. However, as soon as the shack explodes, the trailer is suddenly full of Mamet's dialogue at its most contrived - annoying metaphors that are supposed to be cool but play as much more irritating. As long as there aren't too many of these in the movie, he should be okay, since the rest of the trailer looks great. A-
    K-Pax - I think Jeff Bridges has a clause in his contract requiring trailers for movies that star him to feature a shot of him running in slow motion. Think about it: of his last three major roles, two (Arlington Road and The Big Lebowski) have at least one shot of Bridges running in slo-mo in the trailer. The Contender didn't, but now comes K-Pax, and Bridges is again running in slow motion at one point. Despite this, the trailer is good. It has a great use of music, and puts the film's stars to good use. My one complaint would be that it essentially shows you the entire movie, but so many trailers do this nowadays that it's difficult to complain about it anymore. A
    The Last Castle - Like Hearts in Atlantis, this trailer had a chance to pump it up at the end and ruined it by using a weak musical cue. I have no qualms with the first half of the trailer aside from its rather blatant Shawshank Redemption homage, but this is more a qualm with the movie. (As good as it is, I'm not sure Shawshank is yet the kind of classic movie that should be immortalized in the cinematography of other films.) Unfortunately, this is one of the trailers that shows you everything in the movie but the last scene - the only time this should ever really be done is if you're only making the trailer, and the movie doesn't really exist. But it's done here, and while it isn't terrible or the most egregious example of the offense, it's bad enough. The first half is the best, presenting you with the situation and showing you the key players. It also utilizes its music much better than the second half, which rather than kicking it up for the climactic battle (which it shows you, great) leaves it at pretty much a constant, lower-key level, which just doesn't do it for me. B
    Spy Game - The slogan's too prominent and the music's a little campy. Other than that, this trailer pretty much works. It doesn't explicitly tell you anything, but reveals details to you throughout the trailer. It doesn't give away too much, though, which is always good. There are plenty of jokes on display, which may or may not be a theme in the movie - if it is, let's hope they haven't given up the best ones; if it isn't, then they have, and that's a mistake because it misrepresents the genre. Regardless, it's fun to see Redford and Pitt bounce off each other in a variety of situations. I found it odd that the movie looked kind of old - not so much in quality but in style - but I think that may be in keeping with the plot. We'll see. A-
    The Time Machine (teaser) - All the teaser tells you, really, is how far into the future Guy Pearce goes. And you should have already known that. This is all but the classic teaser, incorporating next to zero footage from the movie (the little bit at the end may or may not be taken from the actual film) and telling you practically nothing. But that's what a "teaser" is; it basically just gets the name and a few small details out there, which should have you champing at the bit for the full trailer in a month or two. The premise is basically that of a car ad, except it's for the time machine. Not unbelievably clever, but not bad. I'm more of a fan of full trailers than of teasers, particularly ones this bare, but it's good for what it is, although I do hope that the real movie is not so ardently Gen-X friendly as the teaser. A

August 24, 2001

   One tends to think of New York as a more aggressive city than Chicago. On the whole, this is true, I think: NYC has the "New York attitude" and people rushing to work every day. Not that people in Chicago are never rushed, but you know what I mean; the overall ambience is more laid-back, that Midwestern quality you'd expect from the country's largest non-coastal city (counting, quite obviously, only coasts of oceans).
    This dichotomy can be seen particularly well in sports teams. While New Yorkers demand perfection from their sports teams and call for players' or coaches' heads when presented with anything less, Chicagoans, regrettably, appear happy to dwell in mediocrity. The 1991-92 season was the last year a non-Bulls team made a final in one of the four major sports - the Blackhawks, who were embarrassed by the Penguins in that series and have become, at least since the Rangers won the Cup in '94, the Cubs of hockey.
    The last non-Jordan title was the '85 Bears winning the Super Bowl in January of 1986. That Bears team was an all-but-perfect blend of commanding offense and stifling defense - fifteen years later, the Bears have become a team that manages neither effectively. They have turned into a punchline, listed as a choice in a recent ESPN.com poll for this season's worst team. One of the most storied franchises in football history is now mentioned next to such perennial jokes as the Bengals, Cardinals, and Chargers. Meanwhile, the Rams were champions two years ago and some are picking Tampa Bay to win it all in '01.
    Baseball, of course, could hardly be worse. By the middle of 2000, the number of players remaining on the Cubs from the '98 wild card team could be counted on one hand. This season didn't look promising until the Cubs ripped off 12 straight wins between May 19 and June 2, vaulting them to a lead in the NL Central they managed to hold until very recently. But their hitting has never really gotten started and their pitching, which carried them here, has begun to fade. Three games out in the Central and two games in the wild card through Thursday's games, the Cubs seem destined to complete their swoon once again. This only adds to the miseries of a team that has not won a World Series - or, for that matter, a playoff series - since the days of the Taft administration.
    The White Sox, meanwhile, are second only to the Cubs in championship futility - the last time they won, World War I was still being fought - and they haven't won a playoff series since their last World Series win either. (Meanwhile, the Red Sox and their "curse" have only a 15-year WS appearance drought - next to 42 for the Sox and 56 for the Cubs - and won a playoff series as recently as 1999.) Even when the Sox look good they're bad - the AL's best record in 2000 couldn't stop them being summarily dismissed from the playoffs in three games by the wild-card Mariners.
    And then there are the Bulls, who despite winning six NBA titles between 1991 and 1998 are now one of the worst teams in basketball, a doormat joke averaging 15 wins a season in the three years since the dynasty broke up. Jerry Krause has made blunder after blunder, and his latest gambit - effectively trading the team's best player, Elton Brand, for unproven high schooler Tyson Chandler - will probably still fail to get him fired. He has remained GM despite his inability to put nearly $20 million under the cap to better free agent use than Ron Mercer, and he has now staked the team's future to two players - Chandler and local star Eddy Curry - who are younger than I am.
    All this is a very roundabout way of getting to the fact that Chicago is laid-back about its sports teams (though not to an LA extent, of course). The Cubs continue to draw, putting no pressure on the Tribune Company to field a winner. The Sox don't draw, but 2000 showed that they don't draw while winning either. The Bears and Bulls are still consistent draws, and nobody really cares about the Hawks anyway. (Joke.) This is not to say that Chicagoans are necessarily happy with the situation, but the bile spewed on sports talk radio is nothing compared to what New York's would be like in a similarly pan-futile situation. Chicagoans are put through ritualistic torture every season; New York fans watch championships come and go, are graced with more playoff appearances than you can shake a stick at, and then demand an explanation when the Giants don't go 16-0. Never mind that the Yankees are 20-some-odd games above .500 and leading their division yet again - lose one game and everyone's a headhunter, more proof that prosperity is wasted on the terminally unsatisfied.
    There is one way, though, in which Chicago - let's be even more specific here and say Evanston - is more aggressive than New York: panhandlers. In New York the homeless guys sit there in a state of apathy, holding a coffee cup from a Chinese restaurant. Often they don't even speak - they just have a sign exhorting you to contribute. Evanston panhandlers, on the other hand, will chase you down the street. NYC panhandlers will take whatever they can get; Evanston's, as Drew can attest to, will reject any change deemed unsuitable.
    The difference, I guess, is that NYC's homeless are actually homeless, whereas Evanston's are more often pros who are in it for the money, or so say the Evanston police. The homeless are glad to get money; the pros wonder why they aren't getting more. I was gratified to notice that by the end of the last school year, most of the panhandlers had disappeared, probably as the result of new ordinances that allow the cops much easier crackdowns. Good thing, as the "homeless" situation is one of the precious few things I don't like about Evanston - and there aren't many.

In related news, I go back to school in 21 days. And my birthday is in five.

August 23, 2001

There was a party at the NYT-TV office tonight after work, which, I'm sorry, I didn't stick around for. For one thing, I was already dead tired, and I was supposed to be home to keep an eye on Marian, and besides, I don't know if my idea of a party is standing idly by while all the producers get loaded.
Besides, the object of a "party" is to meet people, but I'm only going to be around for another couple weeks, so meeting people seems like a relatively pointless endeavor. You could argue that parties are set in place to allow men to meet women, but again, this wouldn't really have worked. Okay, I might look like I could be the same age as everyone else, but when you get right down to it I'm probably at least five years younger than everyone who's really on staff. Not that there aren't any attractive women in the office - in fact, I could think of six or seven just off the top of my head - but they're all in their mid to late 20s, I'm sure, not to mention probably have boyfriends slash are married. No one ever said the office was the place to meet women anyway - in fact, I'm pretty sure it's usually cautioned against.

    All this brings me to (okay, it really doesn't, but I had to get here somehow) a different rant, this time on street names. As I was alphabetizing the release forms for the Vegas show the other day, I couldn't help but notice the addresses people had put down.
    Maybe it's because Las Vegas' residential areas are a fairly recent development, and because modern developed areas seem to be organized into neighborhood units and divided off from everywhere else, and because said neighborhoods almost always have fruity street names, but a lot of these people lived on streets with really fruity names. Take a look at some of these winners:
    "Fighting Fish," "Crooked Shell," "Whispering Birch," "Sparkling Sky," "Heavenly Hills," "Sierra Sunrise," "Moonstone," "Dream Bridge," and the amusingly rhymed "Chardonnay Way."
    Then, of course, there were the geographically inept choices: "Caspian Springs" (could we be any further from the Caspian Sea?) and "Iroquois Lane," which it occurs to me is at least a couple thousand miles from the area the Iroquois inhabited.
    "Hercules" and "Pentagon" were just baffling, "Gunfighter Lane" an amusing mismatch, and "Mary Jane Drive" surprisingly suggestive. "Oak Apple Avenue" just makes no sense.
    But my favorite one has to be the person who lived at "5917 Red Saturn." This sounds like an announcement over the PA system at a store. "Will the owner of a Red Saturn please return to the parking lot? Red Saturn, license number 5917, your lights are on."

August 22, 2001

The full Movies to Avoid list is here, though you have to scroll past all the movies to see because I didn't feel like making a new page. Also check out the new and improved Reviews page, which is now more user-friendly.

August 20, 2001

Okay, we've seen the Movies to See etc. below, but now I've got a much better, more thorough, and most importantly more correct version. It's so big it had to get its own page! Right now I've just got the MTS up, but tomorrow I plan to add the Movies to Avoid, so look for that.

August 18, 2001

Read the review for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

August 18, 2001

Read the Retro Review for Being John Malkovich.

August 16, 2001

   A week ago it was just too damn hot. Now it feels more like September, which is fine with me because it means school is coming. Some people, I'm sure, are not looking forward to that, but this has been a pretty long summer and it's okay if it ends. Besides, fall in Evanston is unequivocally the best season. Despite all the hype it got, spring 2001 was weak, setting a record for most late-season days without hitting 70º, raining a lot, and then finally deciding to warm up and top 70º on June 7 - the day I left.
    Fall 2000, on the other hand, was great. While spring was expected to get warmer and didn't, fall was expected to get colder and yet held on longer than anyone might have hoped. Save for a brief cold snap at the end of October, the weather remained in the 60s, and even 70s - Indian summer to the max - into the first week of November.
    Whether fall 2001 can live up to its predecessor remains to be seen - as does the amount of time I'll be able to spend outdoors given the classes I'm taking. Regardless, there is one thing I know: spring 2002 has nowhere to go but up.
    That said, it's time to revisit Movies to Avoid the Shit out of, so that I may expand upon the brief thoughts of last night.

    Rat Race (August 17) - With the kind of ensemble cast that makes you wonder how they get all these talented actors to appear in a film that looks so bad, Rat Race's trailer provided a few guilty laughs. But you can tell just by looking at it - and realizing what the plot is - that it doesn't have a lot of chances to be good.
    Summer Catch (August 24) - Well, I'm not a huge Freddie Prinze fan. And although Jessica Biel looked ungodly hot in the trailer, you won't "catch" me near this one. (Get it? Huh?) It's another one where you have to look at it and say, if the trailer is at all indicative of the material in the film, the film is going to suck. And that's my bet.
    Ghosts of Mars (August 24) - I recently saw a commercial for this after spending a number of weeks seeing the name but having no idea what it was about. Now that I know, I'm even less likely to see it. Ice Cube is billed as "the world's most dangerous prisoner" or something like that. Let me tell you two good signs that a movie should be avoided: 1) it uses the phrase "world's most" anything in its promotional material, and 2) it stars Ice Cube.
   Bubble Boy (August 24) - Boy, this will be a good week for movies, won't it? This movie recently came under fire from the parents of a real-life bubble boy, who were trying to rally people against it, ostensibly on the charge that it was insensitive to children with IMD, immune deficiency. Allegedly, a spokesperson at Disney (the studio releasing the film) told the family that not only did the movie "not intend to mock IMD," but "that it was a terrible movie that wouldn't succeed." Now, if that's not a ringing endorsement, I don't know what is. Of course, the trailer shows little more than the bubble boy, in his mobile bubble, being hit by trucks and bouncing comically off pavement. Based on that, I'd say the movie's best hope for survival is a lack of other films aimed at its key demographic (twelve-year-olds, apparently) in theaters at the same time.
   Jeepers Creepers (August 31) - Obviously, this movie is aimed at a teen demographic, since, based on the trailer, it's one of those horror films that tries to be hip by referencing the "rules of horror films." So if you were the studio, would you be worried by the fact that the audience at my showing of American Pie 2 actually burst out laughing during the trailer? And no, no jokes were told. I mean, it was well-deserved. This is easily the worst trailer I've ever seen, at the very least since the "Golden Age of Trailers" - or when the trailer really began to come into its own as practically a separate art form - began a number of years ago.
   Rock Star (September 7) - It's not that this looks terrible, though it doesn't really look great (I must admit I'm not the world's biggest Mark Wahlberg fan). It's that its release has been delayed for a while now, and that always - and I mean always spells doom. Take a look at Town and Country and Original Sin if you don't believe me on that one.
   Deuces Wild (September 14) - I haven't seen much about this one besides the poster and the cast list. Neither particularly inspire me. This seems like just another one of those "hip Gen X cast" casts, with the necessary quirk that it's set in the 50s, and that the cast is sort of the "alternative Gen X cast," with guys like Stephen Dorff, Brad Renfro, and - huh? - Frankie Muniz. Bah.
   Glitter (September 21) - Another one that's undergone its share of delays. But I'll tell ya, that wasn't what tipped me off. Actually, it was the fact that this movie stars Mariah Carey. News flash: Mariah Carey is not an actress. As an example of what happens when non-actors get starring roles, I would like to present Exhibit A: Kazaam and Exhibit B: Steel, both starring the inimitable Shaquille O'Neal.
   Training Day (September 21) - This doesn't look like a great day either. Big Trouble, which I advocated seeing above the other two last night, is borderline promising at best. This one, despite starring Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke, didn't look too good. Perhaps it just had a lousy trailer, but I think Denzel is starting to lose his ability to choose good roles.
   Zoolander (September 28) - Another trailer where most of the laughs are guilty ones. The movie gets bonus points for not taking itself seriously (casting Ben Stiller as a male model? I ask you), but movies that have to do that are often hiding something. Still, I won't totally write this one off yet, although it didn't help to be able to see every single punchline coming in the trailer.
   Collateral Damage (October 5) - Yes, Arnold's back, and no, nobody cares. I'm lost as to what movie will win this weekend because I don't think K-Pax has enough mainstream appeal, and all the other major releases look terrible. Regardless, I wasn't, as we've seen, impressed with this trailer, and let's not forget Arnold hasn't made a good movie in years.
   Halloween: The Homecoming (October 5) - My joke last night notwithstanding, have you seen the plot for this thing? IMDb has it as: "A bunch of teens hold an Internet chat from the actual Michael Myers' house in Haddonfield in the hopes of getting publicity. Till they start getting offed one by one." Oh, sign me up. Are you joking? The cast list also has an inordinately large number of African-Americans in it, which I guess will help keep you in suspense as to who gets killed first.
    Joy Ride (October 5) - Another reallllly good-looking weekend. Leelee Sobieski has become to film bombs what German Shepherds are to real ones - in other words, if you see her, keep a pretty good distance.
   Corky Romano (October 12) - Movie execs, repeat after me: Chris Kattan is not funny. He does not deserve starring roles in films. There, that was easy. I'm also wary of any film that uses the premise that a bumbling idiot could go undercover in a law enforcement organization and somehow fail to be noticed.
   Riding in Cars with Boys (October 19) - I've already gone off on this one in a trailer review. Let's suffice it to say I don't think much of Drew Barrymore as an actress, nor do I think she can still play a 15-year-old. Or anything else.
   The New Guy (November 16) - The very existence of this movie implies that someone was watching Road Trip and said, "See the nerdy guy with the car who has sex with the huge black woman? He needs his own movie." Indeed, based on the trailer (which of course sucked) it's impossible to tell if DJ Qualls (yeah, that's his name) is actually playing a different character. Not that there'd be any more reason to care if he was.
    Not Another Teen Movie (December 14) - Danger! Bad parody alert! According to the IMDb, the two working titles for this were "Teen Movie" (which sounds an awful lot like Scary Movie) and "Ten Things I Hate About Clueless Road Trips When I Can't Hardly Wait to be Kissed" (which sounds an awful lot like Scary Movie's working title, "Last Summer I Screamed Because Halloween Fell on Friday the 13th"). And, of course, Scary Movie sucked. And I mean big time.
   Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (December 21) - Nothing I've seen on this one has inspired me in the least. But it's aimed at little kids, who are pretty much always less discriminating than I am, so I don't expect its stupidity to stop the six-year-olds from showing up.

Finally, one last thought. George Lucas said he named the second Star Wars prequel Episode Two - Attack of the Clones as a throwback to classic Hollywood B-movies like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and Attack of the Crab Monsters, not to mention 1978's Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! Upon hearing that, I can only think one thing: let's hope the film itself is a throwback to when Star Wars movies were actually good.

August 15, 2001

There are only two weeks until my birthday, at which point I will be 19, that magical age that brings you absolutely no more privileges than the age of 18. How monumentally exciting.
That said, it's time for another edition of Movies to See.

    Serendipity (August 17) - It's slated to come out this Friday, according to the IMDb, but the lack of any TV commercials (that I've seen) may not speak too well to this. But it's John Cusack, so you should see it when it comes out anyway.
    Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (August 22) - This appears to have been bumped up to Wednesday. Why, I don't know. But regardless, it's Kevin Smith's latest and should at least be seen.
    Curse of the Jade Scorpion (August 24) - Woody Allen's latest and possibly one of the last times you'll see Dan Aykroyd onscreen, if his retirement talk holds up.
    Big Trouble (September 21) - After several not-too-promising-looking weeks, this ensemble comedy could be worthwhile. At the very least it looks like the best big-ticket film of its week (next to Mariah Carey's Glitter and Denzel Washington's latest, Training Day).
    Hearts in Atlantis (September 28) - Stephen King's non-horror films usually turn out pretty good. With Anthony Hopkins on board for this, it may be good as well. But no promises yet.
    K-Pax (October 5) - Kevin Spacey. Nuff said. Well, Jeff Bridges is also in it.
    The Count of Monte Cristo (October 19) - The trailer, as I said in an earlier update, looks awesome. And Guy Pearce is the shit.
    Heist (October 26) - Mamet's latest. I need to see this to find out if he's as overrated as The Spanish Prisoner made him look or if that was a fluke.
    Monsters, Inc. (November 2) - Pixar's latest. The trailers looked pretty decent.
    The Man Who Wasn't There (November 9) - Tough call between this and Windtalkers (with Nic Cage), but the Coen brothers' latest gets the nod.
    Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (November 16) - Well, because.
    Spy Game (November 21) - Redford and Pitt. Intriguing, no? There's also a Martin Lawrence comedy (The Black Knight) set in the Middle Ages, if you're into that sort of thing.
    Ocean's Eleven (December 7) - There's also Ali with Will Smith, but the star power of this one - Clooney, Pitt, Roberts, Damon, and a few more minor ones - pulls it to the top. Did you know it's a Rat Pack remake?
    Vanilla Sky (December 14) - Will the Cruise/Cruz hype do to this what hype did to last year's December release Proof of Life? My guess is no. Cameron Crowe's latest.
    The Fellowship of the Ring (December 19) - Because.
    The Majestic (December 21) - Interesting idea (see IMDb for details), and it's Jim Carrey's latest starring role. Also scheduled: Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, which could be good, except it stars Leonardo DiCaprio, who, I don't care what you say, has never been good in anything ever.
    The Time Machine (December 25) - Guy Pearce again. There looks to be plenty opening that day, including the latest from master of pretension P.T. Anderson, Lasse Hallstrom's The Shipping News with Kevin Spacey, Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe and Ed Harris, Rod Lurie's The Last Castle with Robert Redford, and The Royal Tenenbaums, which appears to be some sort of ensemble comedy. All in all, the winter looks like it will bring the good movies that the summer, unsurprisingly, totally forgot. (Barring a few measured exceptions.)

    I would do Movies to Avoid the Shit out of, but it's getting kind of late. Suffice it to say that the following 2001 releases look sketchy at best and in some cases downright awful. You can check www.imdb.com for more info, but I've marked the worst-looking ones in bold:
    Rat Race, Summer Catch, Ghosts of Mars, Bubble Boy, Jeepers Creepers, Rock Star, Deuces Wild, Glitter, Training Day, Zoolander, Collateral Damage, Halloween: The Latest Crapfest (okay, it's really subtitled The Homecoming, but let's be realistic), Joy Ride, Corky Romano, Riding in Cars with Boys, The New Guy, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.
    Note: I make no claims about any of these movies. It's all just conjecture. However, these are my opinions based on the information I have available to me at the present time.
    There also will be puh-lenty coming out next year, including The Panic Room, Red Dragon, Kate and Leopold, Blade 2, The Scorpion King, Hart's War, Spider-Man, Star Wars Episode II - Attack of the Clones (which is an ungodly stupid title, but oh well), Minority Report, Terminator 3, Men in Black 2, and a second Spy Kids. There will also be many other movies, any one of which could very well be better than all of these, which have merely had a lot of hype.

August 11, 2001

Read the review for American Pie 2.

August 7, 2001

So check out the Most Overrated Movies of All-Time, currently a fifteen-movie list.

August 6, 2001

   I haven't updated in a while despite having a pretty decent amount of news, for reasons that can be charitably described as "extreme laziness." As those acquainted with me know, I am a longtime sufferer of ELS, or Extreme Laziness Syndrome (not to be confused with ALS, aka Lou Gehrig's Disease), a condition which has not been helped by ten-hour days in Greenwich Village.
    Those of you who have held a job at any point in your lives are laughing right now, since ten hours is probably not a big deal. Let me here stress two points.
    1) As an intern, I do only the mind-numbingly boring jobs that the people who are actually getting paid are too valuable to do. (This, I suspect, is the reason the term "internship" was invented - it sounds better than "slave labor," although Bill Clinton and Gary Condit have donated a generous lack of class to the word intern recently.) What's more, I do a task - digitizing video so it can be edited in the computer - that everyone takes pretty much for granted. In other words, it's great when I do it right, but no one really notices until something messes up. (And it did, to which more anon.)
    2) I have to get up at about 7:30 for this job. Again, this sounds pretty wimpy, but bear in mind here that I probably got up before eight more times last week than I had in the previous six months. Okay, maybe not quite that bad, but at the very least, I doubt I'd been up before eight four days in a row since last October.
    This is also costing huge amounts of money. The New York Times, whose television division I'm working for, insists that its interns receive college credit, ostensibly to make themselves feel better about not paying people. In addition to generating assloads of red tape, this will cost my parents $500 tuition at NU so I can get a big .25 credits, which will more than likely end up counting for nothing. Add to that the cost of riding NJ Transit (monthly pass, $94) and the PATH (20-fare card, $24) twice a day, not to mention lunch (about five bucks daily). All told, we're paying so that NYT-TV can have me do thankless jobs for nothing.
    The big saver here is what I call the résumé booster. Can you think of a name in media you'd rather have on your résumé than the New York Times? There aren't many.
    Meanwhile, all kinds of issues have been variously popping up, such as tapes that were digitized without video because of an error in the logs (read: not my fault). So today I had to go back and sit through two tapes I'd already done last Tuesday. Fortunately I caught the original problem on Tuesday before every tape with the error had been digitized, but the point is that it's pretty damn aggravating.
    The one upside to all that is that my ability to solve the problem brought me a large measure of recognition from my superiors. Joey, who is probably the first guy you'd call my boss (though pretty much everyone is), was trying to work through the problem by modifying the logs. But the logs couldn't be modified, because the master clips, sans video, were already digitized and in the computer and recorded as done by the logs. My suggestion was to import the original, pre-digitization log (which we still had) and copy it over the log that we couldn't edit. When this worked, Joey remarked:
    "It worked! We should be paying you."
    Grateful for this praise, I pointed out that I in fact was paying for the privilege. Regardless, I now seem to have about as much clout as is internly possible, which is fine by me.

Also coming soon, besides more boring rants, is my list of the Most Overrated Movies of All-Time. I haven't decided on how long the list will be yet. Currently there are twelve unordered movies on it, but I plan to (though possibly not will) see some "classic films" at some point before the summer ends. This may add to the list (although anyone but Mr. Cynical would hope not).

There's more! View last month's updates.

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This page last updated: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 01:55:51 PM