NOW SHOWING AT A BLOG NEAR YOU

With so much of the world gleefully falling apart right now, I doubt very many people have noticed my general lack of blogging over the past few weeks. Just in case you have, though, it’s because two broken down cars, a HVAC on the fritz, and a furnace pouring smoke into the house caused me to temporarily set aside blogging so as to earn a few extra bucks. Apparently, nobody trades repairs for cartoons or movie reviews. Fortunately, everything is almost fixed now (my broken stuff, that is, not the world), so I can get back to blogging soon.

Of course, while I’ve been preoccupied, others have more than taken up my slack when it comes to discussing faith and movies. For instance, while it’s still close to a year away, folks are beginning to wax philosophic on the upcoming Batman v. Superman movie. Over at Crisis magazine, Sean Fitzpatrick views the clash of titans as a “contemporary mythical sign of a contemporary educational disparity.” Meanwhile, Catholic Skywalker links to a priest’s perspective on the inherent heroism he hopes will emerge during the story.

Catholic Skywalker also has some words to say on the differences between the atheism of Woody Allen and that of Joss Whedon and how one of them manages to leave open the window to hope. Along those same lines, Joe Wetterling from The Baptized Imagination continues his examination of Whedon’s first big television hit and the things Buffy got right.

As long as I’m on the topic of TV, I may as well give a nod to one of the more fun new shows from last season, The Flash. Writing at Speculative Faith, Adam Graham ponders the two father figures who helped shape the titular hero, while the Aspie Catholic serves up his wish list for season 2.

All that is good fun, but I would be remiss if I didn’t bring things down a little and acknowledge the passing of Sir Christopher Lee. It’s hard to imagine this blog existing without the steady stream of Lee’s Hammer Films output I partook in as a kid. And I’m hardly the only one, as evidenced by Jason Dietz’s ode to Horror of Dracula over at the Non-Modern blog. As for Thomas L. McDonald from God and the Machine, he’s appears to be partial to The Devil Rides Out, considering it to be Lees best work (I discussed it here). As for my own fave, that’s like choosing between my children, but for today, I’ll go with The Wicker Man, which Lee himself apparently considered one of his finest performances.

And finally, just because it’s been such a rough month, I think we could all use a little cheering up, so here’s Godzilla and some pals doing a jig.

The Weekly Movie Watch Volume 49

This week I watched Lucy, Paris, Texas.

I watch movies every week and then write down my thoughts. Read my previous reviews!
My rating is simple, Watch It, It Depends, Skip it.

Lucy - How did they find enough people that thought this would be good to even make it?

Lucy (2014)
Watch Lucy
Written by: Luc Besson
Directed by: Luc Besson
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman
Rated: R

Plot: 
When a bag of drugs ruptures inside Scarlett Johannson's stomach it unlocks her brain's full capacity.

Review:
The smarter she got in the movie, the dumber I felt. It seems like a neat concept, but the potential is squandered. Anything fun or intriguing is abandoned for contrivance and nonsense. An action movie needs good fight scenes, a person or world to save, and a solid conclusion. These items were absent from Lucy.
The movie begins with images of animals and a voice over about evolution by Scarlett Johannson. Why would you not use Morgan Freeman to do the voice over when he is in the movie and a scientist. Animal images are intercut throughout the movie and it is incredibly overbearing. We even get a sequence of a mouse near a trap because the filmmakers don't think we're smart enough to realize the main character is walking into a trap. Then again, maybe these images of nature are trying to pad the run time to a full one and a half hours.
There is no scenario in the movie that makes this believable. Everything is ridiculous, a radio active spider bite would have made more sense and allowed the movie to avoid getting mired into frivolous details.
A good concept is ruined. Too many loose thread added to the fact there is no real point and the movie doesn't show me anything fun, relying too heavily on CGI. Based on this movie alone Johannson can't act. I'm left wondering how this many people banded together thinking this movie was good and needed to be created. Don't make the mistake I made, don't watch this movie.
Skip it. 

Paris Texas - Almost enough charm to justify the length.

Paris, Texas (1984)
Watch Paris, Texas 
Written by: L.M. Kit Carson (adaptation), Sam Shepard
Directed by: Wim Wenders
Starring: Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell
Rated: R

Plot: 
A deadbeat dad ostensibly having wandered the desert is reunited with his son and they team up to find the boy's mother.

Review:
It's a little slow moving, and by that I mean incredibly slow. The shell shocked father and son are endearing as they slowly trust each other and then set out on a journey. It's an intriguing plot that seems like it should be shorter, but the length and pacing feed into the story. It looks really good with  so many great images and a really good ending. It's a movie I wouldn't recommend overall, but I would heartily recommend for fans of cinema that watch movies to learn about film making.
Skip it.

Both EVEREST and THE WALK Will Open Early In IMAX 3D

**UPDATE: 28 June - Just heard from 3ality that they in fact did NOT do native 3D on this production - so it's a conversion too. A battle between conversion houses it is then. Too bad.


Yes! Love when IMAX does this: They've announced that both EVEREST and THE WALK will open on September 18th and the 30th respectfully - ahead of their wide release dates.

EVEREST is a true story about a team's ascent to the highest peak in the world while THE WALK is the true story of Philippe Petit's attempt to cross the distance between the top of the World Trade Centers in NYC.

Correction: Both of these two IMAX 3D releases are 3D conversions. I can't wait to compare them because of their close release dates and both showing in the large format. I will also include comment on how the RealD projection is for comparison - I do have a RealD PLF (premium large format) screen here in town. I will definitely give these two a competitive review, head to head.

Here's the storyline for EVEREST:
This is the story of the 1996 Everest Film Expedition, a MacGillivray Freeman production in association with Arcturus Motion Pictures. Filmed in IMAX photography, EVEREST is the dramatic true story of a team of climbers who found hope, strength and triumph in the wake of tragedy. Their successful ascent of Mount Everest, just days after fellow mountaineers and friends died there, is a compelling story about the human spirit and a mountain they love, respect and sometimes fear.

Here's the storyline for THE WALK:
Twelve people have walked on the moon, but only one man Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has ever, or will ever, walk in the immense void between the World Trade Center towers. Guided by his real-life mentor, Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley), and aided by an unlikely band of international recruits, Petit and his gang overcome long odds, betrayals, dissension and countless close calls to conceive and execute their mad plan. Robert Zemeckis, the director of such marvels as Forrest Gump, Cast Away, Back to the Future, Polar Express and Flight, again uses cutting edge technology in the service of an emotional, character-driven story. With innovative photorealistic techniques and IMAX 3D wizardry, The Walk is true big-screen cinema, a chance for moviegoers to viscerally experience the feeling of reaching the clouds. The film, a PG-rated, all-audience entertainment for moviegoers 8 to 80, unlike anything audiences have seen before, is a love letter to Paris and New York City in the 1970s, but most of all, to the Towers of the World Trade Center.

EVEREST opens on September 18 and THE WALK opens on September 30 - BOTH in IMAX 3D!

Zachary Quinto Starts Channeling Nimoy As STAR TREK 3 Materializes

Zachary Quinto paid respect to Leonard Nimoy with a recent Instagram photo of Quinto starting to prepare for the role of Spock in STAR TREK 3 which has already started shooting.

Quinto said: "in honor of my first day back and the memory of my dear friend leonard go to:
http://bit.ly/LoveOfSpock and support his son adam's documentary: FOR THE LOVE OF SPOCK!!"

The production is up and running in Squamish, BC - a town I dearly love as we often spent family time in the gorgeous park areas while living in Vancouver. Obviously there are stunning views of the Cascade mountains there, but according to a sign posted locally they will be focusing on the Kacodemon and Cave Boulders. Plenty of granite to scale around there!

It looks fairly certain that Paramount will be entitling the movie STAR TREK BEYOND as they have registered the name with the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and our friend Simon Pegg also mentioned the moniker on his blog.

Zoe Saldana also posted a photo of her getting prepped in her trailer. She plays Uhura in the franchise so one would think that they share some scenes there together as a couple - probably doing some climbing. Nothing too exciting to get amped up about, other than the fact that the production is definitely underway and more is to come soon.

Enjoy the photos! STAR TREK 3 is slated to arrive in theaters July 8, 2016.

 

Sources: Squamish Climbing Magazine | CS.net | Escalade-Alsace

June Expiration Watch: Too Many to Tally

Impossible mission, indeed

Well, Netflix has gone and done it: there are officially more titles expiring this month than I have the capacity to process. A good number of these arrived within the last six months, many as recently as April, which makes them even more disheartening to tabulate. Plus, with a large batch of very familiar titles scheduled to return next month, I'm feeling beyond burnt-out in trying to track every coming and going (and coming...and going...). Add to that Netflix's steady stream of original content, mid-month announcements, and the ubiquity of news stories on the company's every move, and this blog has now outgrown one (unpaid) person's ability to manage it.

On a personal level, I'm also finding it increasingly difficult to balance the needs of this site with my own creative work, especially given the number of hours now required to simply update these lists and moderate the comments from all the many helpful contributors out there. Since I don't like the idea of shutting the blog down completely�something I'd been considering�I'm going to instead attempt some streamlining.

A change in approach

My plan, as of now, is to continue to post updates on what's new and what's expiring, but with a few key changes:

1. Updates such as this will consist mainly of lists, with a minimum of editorial comment.
2. Lists will narrow their focus to titles I can personally recommend, in keeping with the blog's original intent.
3. These semi-monthly posts will replace the standalone Expiring and What's New pages.
4. The current Expiring page will be converted into a discussion area, since the increasingly general nature of the comments there seems to dictate such a space is necessary (plus I'm not quite ready to start an actual forum).

Read more �

PULP CATHOLICISM #126

Camp X-Ray (2014)

Genre

Drama

Director

Peter Sattler 

Country

USA

Cast

Kristen Stewart, Peyman Moaadi, Julia Duffy, John Carroll Lynch, Lane Garrison, Joseph Julian Soria, Tara Holt, Ser'Darius Blain, Cory Michael Smith, Mark Naji, Anoop Simon, Robert Tarpinian, Yousuf Azami, Marco Khan, Kyle Bornheimer, Nawal Bengholam, LaDell Preston, Daniel Leavitt

Storyline

Army private first class Amy Cole (Kristen Stewart) is placed as a guard at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Her convictions become less certain after she strikes up a tenuous friendship with one of the detainees (Peyman Moaadi).

Opinion

Surprisingly good, intense, and solid, Camp X-Ray is one of those films that doesn't even leave you after the end credits.

The film should serve as an eye-opening to those who believe in the legitimacy of the Americans wars against the eponymous enemy. Also, it is an ode, a praise to humanness. It shows that living all together in peace, as John Lennon hoped, may be just a utopia, but from an individual perspective, it is possible to make a difference, to knock down those walls that separate different, yet similar people.

In his directorial debut, with a million dollar budget, Peter Sattler achieves a fantastic result, result to which Michael Bay has failed to get even close with multiple stratospheric budgets.

The storytelling is slow, and repetitive, and it would be natural to wonder why some scenes haven't been cut in the editing room. But as you go on with the film, you realise that's how it was supposed to be, because that's the only way to fully immerge the audience in the claustrophobic prison's cells blocks.

The acting surprised me the most. Kristen Stewart has finally found the kind of thing that suits her. Being done with that teen garbage, she finally shows that she can act, playing the lead very well, and delivering the message. However, the real star is Peyman Moaadi. He delivers a brilliant performance and reaches the heart. 

Quotes

Ali Amir: You're asking me why do I want to die, but you don't see that I'm not even living. You gus control everything. You tell us what to eat, when to sleep. Even when we don't want to eat, you tell me we must. It is your life... it is not ours.