I’m having a love-hate relationship with Grey’s Anatomy right now. And I need to talk about it. But after the jump, because it’s going to be spoilery for tonight’s premiere. Ooh, but first, I just want to point out that the Ugly Betty premiere was very close to perfection, and if you’re not watching it, you should be. Because it’s awesome, and I’m so glad that it’s awesome, because I need a show to love unconditionally while I’m ranting about Grey’s. (Actually, I also love The Office unconditionally, but I haven’t watched its premiere yet, because I was watching Grey’s.)
For those of you in St. Louis, Webster University is running a Buster Keaton Retrospective starting September 28th and running through October 14th. If Charlie Chaplin is the king of silent comedy with a streak of pathos, then Keaton is the kind of silent deadpanning. Both are incredible filmmakers, but laugh for laugh, I might actually have to give Keaton the edge. The General still stands as one of the greatest comedies ever made, silent or not. If you get the chance, you should try to get down to Webster and see some of these classics.
Here’s the schedule. All the features start at 8:00pm, and are accompanied by a shorter Keaton film; as a further treat, each is screened with live musical accompaniment, just like they would have been when they were first released.
Our Hospitality – September 29th – I’ve seen this one and enjoyed it a lot, but it’s been a while; Northerner Keaton inherits a Southern manor home, only to be embroiled in a long-standing feud
The Saphead – September 30th (screens with Sherlock Jr., which would actually be the draw for me – Keaton is a projectionist drawn into the movies he shows)
College – October 11th – the view of college in silent films is always fascinating to me, whoever’s doing it; I don’t think I’ve seen Keaton’s version, but if you ever get the chance to see Harold Lloyd‘s The Freshman, it’s a lot of fun (Lloyd is the now-much-lesser-known third great comic of the silent era)
Steamboat Bill, Jr. – October 12th – Lots of great sight gags in this one, largely based around escalating natural disasters that Keaton narrowly manages to escape.
The Cameraman – October 13th – This one is a lot of fun, too, but then I’m always a fan of films set in the movie industry.
The General – October 14th – This is it, folks. If you ever only see one silent film in your life, ever, make it this one. Yes, even over Chaplin. Of course, you should also see Chaplin’s Modern Times, but it’s not showing at Webster right now, is it? So yeah. See The General. I only wish I were in St. Louis to see it myself.
So my plan for buying an Xbox360 largely involves not eating out ever. Which is saving me about $10 a week. At that rate, I can get a 360 in like three years. I might modify my plan, however, because there are a lot of really great games coming out for it, and nothing coming out for the Xbox anymore (although that does mean I’ve been able to pick up a bunch of solid Xbox games for like $5 over the past several months, which is awesome). Here are the five I’m salivating over the most, in no particular order. (Also there are trailers, which may not show in feedreaders.)
By the way, the pixelization on the trailers is introduced by my having to resize them to fit in my layout; click through to see them fullsize at GameTrailers.com if you think the graphics don’t match up to my praise of them.
Mass Effect November 20
It’s a sci-fi RPG by BioWare, the same company that made Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire, but with a combat system that I’ve heard compared to that of Gears of War. So, RPG with real-time, action-style combat? Sign me up!
Assassin’s Creed November 13
If they can make the hand-to-hand combat and freerunning work as well as it looks in the trailer, then this is going to be awesome. You get options between stealth and head-on approaches, too. I always like options.
Guitar Hero III October 28
I haven’t played much of anything that was as much pure fun as the Guitar Hero games. I almost bought a PS2 last year just to get the first one, but I talked myself out of it in anticipation of getting a 360 at some point. Although, Rock Band sounds really sweet, too…I’m just concerned about peripheral cost with that. Oh, and finding three other friends who like video games.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare November 5
I’m not actually tired of WW2-set FPS games, like a lot of people are, but the Call of Duty series has been so great, that I’m more than willing to follow them into modern warfare. Plus, this looks gorgeous! And Game Informer named it the number one game of E3 this year.
Grand Theft Auto IV March 3, 2008
GTA IV would’ve been my number one reason for getting a 360 this fall, but it got moved back to spring. :( So I guess this is really Top Five Reasons To Get an Xbox 360 in the Near Future. Just look at this, though. And the teaser trailer, too. The lighting effects are incredible. If it keeps the same level of gameplay as San Andreas and adds this level of graphic quality (I’m pretty sure this is in-engine, not cutscenes, but I don’t know for sure), wow.
And I’ll also probably want to pick up Rainbow Six Vegas, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Crackdown, Call of Duty 2, Lost Planet, and maybe BioShock. And Prototype looks amazing. So yeah. Oh, I didn’t mention Halo 3. That wasn’t a mistake; I’m not as huge a fan of the Halo series as everyone else is (in fact, I’ve never really bothered to play it except in co-op, because when it came out it was one of the few games that even had co-op). I might get it eventually, but certainly not at full price.
The fall TV season is nearly upon us again, and I can’t wait! On the other hand, there are so many things I want to watch that I’m going to be overwhelmed within a few weeks. Thank goodness for DVRs, but there are still some timeslots that have three or four things I want to check out, and my DVR can only record two a time. (We’re not dealing with actually finding the time to watch all the shows…we’ll figure that out later.) Anyway, here’s what I’m looking at this fall. What’s everybody else watching? Anyone want to join me and Becky in chatting about the shows on YahooMessenger while we watch?
BTW, spoilers after the jump for all the returning shows I’m watching, especially: How I Met Your Mother, Heroes, House, Bones, Ugly Betty, Grey’s Anatomy, The Office, and Desperate Housewives.
Okay, now, both sources I’m using for movie release information (IMDb and FirstShowing.net) say that David Cronenberg‘s Eastern Promises is opening in wide release this week. I don’t know how wide “wide” is, though, since it isn’t playing in Austin or St. Louis, and is only in one theatre in Dallas. Still. The other openings this week don’t appeal to me, so I’m going to highlight it anyway. Eastern Promises concerns a midwife (Naomi Watts), who is drawn into the underbelly of the Russian mafia when she tries to discover the background of a teenage mother who died in labor. It’s also got Viggo Mortensen as one of the Russians she encounters. The last Cronenberg-Mortensen outing was A History of Violence, which I didn’t really understand when I watched it because I kept being distracted, but is pretty close to the top of my rewatch list. Based on the buzz I’ve read out of the Toronto Film Festival, Eastern Promises more than delivers. Speaking of TIFF, is now a good time to point out how much I want to be a professional film critic and hang out at film festivals? I thought it was. I’ve been salivating over the TIFF dispatches. Anyway, here’s the trailer for Eastern Promises, for whenever it ends up coming out near you. (And here’s a good review from the New York Times–I’m so glad A.O. Scott is back; I missed him when he was on vacation a month or so ago).
Dragon Wars (aka D-War) – A Korean-made film with American actors about giant monster-dragons. If you’re a fan of Godzilla-type movies, this might please. (trailer)
And in limited release:
Across the Universe – I’ve mentioned Julie Taymor‘s 1960s Beatles-inflected musical drama before, and the mixed reviews coming out of TIFF are pretty much what I expected. I’m still hoping to like the film, though.
In the Valley of Elah – I severely disliked director Paul Haggis‘ last film Crash (yes, the one that won the Oscar; don’t care, I hated it), but his new one, about a man (Tommy Lee Jones) investigating the disappearance of his just-back-from-Iraq son, looks rather good (trailer)
King of California – I’m not always a huge Michael Douglas fan, but this trailer cracked me up. Hadn’t heard of the movie until I watched it, so I have no idea what the buzz is like. (trailer)
Silk – This Keira Knightley picture snuck up on me! Also has Michael Pitt, in a 19th century story about a young man going to Japan for the silk trade. (trailer)
Fierce People – Rather than join his anthropologist father in his work with indigenous peoples, a young man ends up going to live among a group of super-rich people and decides to study them instead. Looks amusing enough. (trailer)
Moving McAllister – Straight-laced company man gets tasked with taking care of the boss’s niece and ends up with more than he bargained for, like a whacked out Jon Heder along for the ride. I’m torn between quirky indie and dumb roadtrip film, but leaning toward the latter at the moment. (trailer)
Ira and Abby – Indie romcom about two strangers who decide to get married; I really liked Jennifer Westfeldt in Kissing Jessica Stein–might be fun to see her play not a lesbian (she also wrote both films). But the reviews have been mediocre at best. (trailer)
Whew, that’s a lot of stuff coming out. If I really were a professional movie critic, I’d be busy, wouldn’t I?
In an effort to get caught up on these recap posts, I did shorter write-ups on some of the films I didn’t care about as much (and I’m going to do the same thing for August, hoping to get it out by, you know, the end of September so I can, you know, do September’s). I intended there to be more shorter ones, but it turned out, I cared about a lot of the films this month. Ah well. If I give a quickie reaction to something you’d like to hear more about, let me know and I’ll do a more detailed writeup on it later. I doubt most people read all these anyway. Not that that’s why I write them; I write them so in ten years I can look back and see how stupid my reactions to thing were when I first saw them. ;)
After the jump, reactions to Happy Feet, Orlando (book and film), Vivre sa vie, The Fountain, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the Three Colours Trilogy, Winter Light, Renaissance, Little Children, Sophie’s World, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and more.
I was seriously all ready to get this out last night and actually have Music Monday on Monday for a nice change, but then as I was about to start gathering the necessary links, my internet quit. I swear. So I went to bed.
Anyway. Here are a couple of mp3blog finds, not necessarily from the past week. (both via fluxblog.org, here and here)
I found The Sterns on Amie Street. Even if y’all don’t get into Amie Street’s business model (though I find that hard to understand, since “songs start out free and then increase in price up to 99 cents as they get more popular” makes more sense than anything else I can think of), you should get on their new release e-mail list, because I find a lot of stuff I like that way. Including these guys. I’m sorry I didn’t share them sooner; I think I got them when the songs were about eight cents each, and now they’re up to thirty. Still cheaper than iTunes, and no DRM! ;)
Club 8 are a Swedish indie pop band. Their albums are handled by Labrador Records, and some of their songs are included on the Labrador Summer 2007 Mix I posted about a few months ago. Anyway, they’ve got a new single that just came out called “Heaven”, which Labrador has for download on their site. Here’s that single, plus one of the tracks off the Summer Sampler (which was originally on the album “The Friend I Once Had” from 2005). Hat tip to The Yellow Stereo (which I’m loving lately, BTW) for the news on the single.
Let’s just abandon any idea that my picks of the week are recommendations from personal experience. I only see about two or three films a month in theatres, so most of the time I’m going to be picking the films that I most want to see or that I’ve heard good buzz about. And I’ve heard great buzz about Sarah Polley’s directorial debut, Away from Her. I find it really interesting that Polley, who’s 28 and best known for her acting in indie films, chose to make her first film as a director about an aging couple dealing with Alzheimer’s. And apparently she does a really great job, too, as does veteran actress Julie Christie as the struggling woman. I’m always glad to hear about good films from women directors, because dang it, we need more good women directors. So I’m hoping to catch Away from Her soon.
Other notable releases this week:
Bones: Season Two – I quite enjoy Bones, though there were several story decision in the latter half of Season Two that didn’t make a whole lotta sense
Grey’s Anatomy: Season Three – And I’m addicted to Grey’s, even though last year’s finale made me pretty mad, not to mention scared about how this season will go
Supernatural: Season Two – Lots of my friends watch this, but I never have. Someday. That’s what DVDs are for.
Charmed: The Final Season – I’m amused that apparently the Charmed producers can’t even remember how many seasons there are; or they’re just happy to be done with it
Snow Cake – Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver, and Carrie-Anne Moss deal with a tragic accident and autism, which just seems like too much depressing stuff for one movie.
Cinephile, music lover, internet junkie, gamer, and recovering academic (English Lit).
Currently I live in Los Angeles. I moved here for the low cost of living. Somehow that is not working out so well. Actually, I moved here to be in a big city with plenty of stuff to do. I needed lots of film stuff, lots of music stuff, and lots of warm, preferably dry, weather. LA met all the criteria, and so far I still completely love being here.
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Okay, now, both sources I’m using for movie release information (
