Fresh off a resounding box-office win in which his critically savaged G.I. Joe trounced all better-reviewed comers and further established his place in the upper echelon of directors of lowbrow, but cash-generating, late-summer fare, Stephen Sommers sat down with Variety to bask in the kind of vindication only a big opening weekend can provide. But rather than flip a defiant bird to each and every critic who cravenly lobbed a rotten tomato at his latest film, Sommers instead invited the world to watch as he sullenly applied a poultice of mashed-up hundred-dollar bills to the still-fresh scars his tormentors inflicted upon him over the past few weeks. Movieline has selected the ten choicest, most self-pitying examples from Sommers' limping victory lap, so that we can all share in the lesson that money does not, in fact, heal all wounds.
more »
A life-or-death choice awaits us at the multiplex this weekend: to see G.I. Joe, and in so doing, temporarily narcotize the ADHD-addled 10-year-old living inside all of us, or resist the ear-punishing siren call of the sound of shit blowing up and take a stand for Truth, Justice, and the American Way of Occasionally Patronizing Quality Films.
This decision might be a tough one for readers, especially those who aren't intimately familiar with the G.I. Joe story. As a service to these people, Movieline offers this primer on the key characters in the Joe-niverse to assist in their ticket-buying decision, carefully reconstructed from our best recollections of what was once hammered into our memories each day after school and whatever we think will actually wind up on-screen. Remember, knowing is half the...something. Fight? Fight! Knowing is half the fight, terrific. We knew it'd come back to us. (The '80s were such a blur after we discovered cocaine in sixth grade.)
more »
Dylan Dakota Banana Murphy lives in Mankato, MN, where he is enrolled in Mrs. Kozolowski's 4th grade class at St. Sebastian's Elementary. In addition to film criticism, he is on the soccer team and the founding member of the YouTube club. His favorite movie is a toss-up between "Max Payne" and "Step Brothers", and his favorite band is Metallica. Because we completely lost our inner 10-year-olds somewhere in the Mall of America in late '80s, we asked Dylan to review "G.I. Joe" for us.
GI Joe: The Rise of Puke in my Mouth!
By Dylan Dakota Banana Murphy
Ok, like, I know my dad and all you hipster peeps totes got into GI Joe way back in the 60's or whatever and that's cool. I mean, I guess all you did was sit around and play with these dolls and watch your 3 TV channels NOT in color. Lame. I prob woulda killed myself. Anyway, Paramount went balls to the wall trying to get the "youth" into this stuff. Thanks to my monthly movie review in the St. Sebastians's Elementary Observer (shout out: Dylan's Hot Flix! woot woot!), they flew me and my staff to Paris for a junket, or whatever that is, and a special private screening.
more »
The signs of the Apocalypse were all around us this morning: Rainbows turning black as ash, songbirds suddenly suffocating and falling dead from their perches mid-warble, and, most chillingly, Paula Abdul no longer sitting behind a conspicuously placed Coca-Cola cup and mumbling incomprehensible, affirming feedback to pitch-impaired contestants reinterpreting Fall Out Boy covers of Police standards. Even though it's hard to see any reasons to go on living in the face of these end times, we all must spit out the sweet teat of self-annihilation long enough to realize one crucial fact: Paula will be just fine without American Idol. No, really, she will! Soon, the networks will be lining up to shower her in millions of dollars while gently cooing in her ear, "You were the real star of that two-bit karaoke competition, and together we're going to make the world forget about that mean Limey what's-his-name and the other what's-his-name who stands on stage and won't touch the girls."
And what will these suitors offer TV's biggest free agent? Movieline takes a network-by-network look at some of the projects Paula will have to choose from.
more »
Please help me in welcoming Dan Kois, who'll be Movieline's critic-in-residence this week. Dan is a contributing writer at New York magazine and a film critic for the Washington Post. He was a founding editor of New York's culture blog, Vulture, and previously worked as a film development executive and a literary agent. His book for Continuum's 33 1/3 series, Facing Future, about the Hawaiian musician Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, will be published in November.
Exhausted the classic canon? Fed up with the current cinema of remakes, reboots and reimaginings? This week The Cold Case talks to Vera Farmiga, exhuming a recent, underappreciated gem by one of America's most overlooked acting talents.
Having Orphan in multiplexes is a treat for fans of the brilliant Vera Farmiga, who usually have to track her work down on the festival circuit or await its DVD release. The most notable exception, of course, was 2006's The Departed, in which she seemingly appeared out of nowhere to hold the screen with Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio. But even after that Best Picture Oscar winner, Farmiga's films, from her 2004 breakthrough Down To The Bone onwards, remain remarkably underseen.
more »
Exhausted by endless replays of Thriller? Fed up with CNN treating Michael Jacksons's "ghost" as actual news ? This week, a special edition of The Cold Case talks to Mick Garris about 1997's Ghosts, the all-but-forgotten 38-minute film he created with Michael Jackson, the late Stan Winston and horror legend Stephen King.
In the 24/7 media meltdown that surrounded Michael Jackson's untimely death, it appeared that every clip of the superstar was unearthed, dusted off and replayed over and over. Even so, somehow, every story or tribute package led to 1983's Thriller, that game-changing 14-minute horror short that remains the highest-selling music video of all time. We should probably be grateful that the networks didn't have a working VCR and a copy of 1997's Ghosts, lest we be subject to an immediate overload of TV talking heads' endless analysis of what it meant and, God forbid, what it predicted.
more »
Exhausted the classic canon? Fed up with the current cinema of remakes, reboots and reimaginings? This week The Cold Case exhumes an early, underappreciated work by one of Australia's best-known acting exports.
Long before he voiced the rumbling Megatron in two Transformers outings, put male hair braidists back in business as Elrond in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and tortured poor Keanu Reeves on behalf of the machines across three Matrix films, Hugo Weaving electrified discerning audiences with his breakout role in 1991's Proof, a little Australian film that was also an early calling card for a slender young chap named Russell Crowe.
more »
