http://www.cinemalogue.com I went into this movie expecting to hate it and, for the most part, I did. Wed, 14 May 2008 23:51:52 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In college, I wrote a couple of research papers that separately, examined a future in which the average person would be a content creator in his or her own right. More than ten years later, society appears to be on the edge of a technological convergence that will truly make it a reality. I haven't written film criticism in a couple of years, and I don't intend...      ]]> http://www.cinemalogue.com/2008/01/20/the-global-village/ http://www.cinemalogue.com/2008/01/17/changes-arent-permanent-change-is/ What I find interesting about movies, other than the fact that 85 percent of them are crap, is that many directors seem to think they still need to sell the film with a flashy title sequence in the first 60 seconds after people have already hired a babysitter, bought tickets, spent $97 at the concession stand, and sat through twenty minutes of theatrical trailers. If Michael Mann ever...]]> http://www.cinemalogue.com/2006/07/28/miami-vice/ There is a fine line between love of cinema, and pseudointellectual masturbation. "Clerks II" is certainly not the first film to walk the tightrope between the two... but it may very well be one of the few in which doing so lends purpose to the narrative. I didn't think about it until after the movie was over, because one has to see where it goes to appreciate that, intentionally or not, it...]]> http://www.cinemalogue.com/2006/07/21/clerks-ii/ The glassy twinges of the soundtrack as the movie begins set a scatterbrain tone that gives one a frame of reference for Bob Arctor's (Keanu Reeves) frame(s) of mind. Like some of his friends, Bob is addicted to Substance D—a refined narcotic that seven years from now is blamed for nearly all of society's ills, of which the exact nature of the manufacture and...]]> http://www.cinemalogue.com/2006/07/14/a-scanner-darkly/ If the words "Lesbian Spank Inferno" mean anything to you, you'll understand precisely what's lacking in this film. We're reunited with the principals, Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), James Norrington (Jack Davenport) and of course, the ever-inebriated Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). Just as soon as we see the young Swann about to be married to her beloved Will, colonial armies storm the castle, apprehending the two from crimes against the King. Oddly, the...]]> http://www.cinemalogue.com/2006/07/07/pirates-of-the-caribbean-2/ In attempting to write a commentary on this film, it's become clear to me what I liked about the previous "Superman" movies (let's just pretend the latter two never happened) all along. The instant I hear the Krypton theme in the opening sequence, returning us back to familiar and almost hallowed territory, I'm transported back to childhood. But I'm no longer a child, and as much as I try, I cannot help but see Superman through twenty-six more...]]> http://www.cinemalogue.com/2006/06/30/superman-returns/ Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) is a recent graduate of Northwestern University looking for a job in New York. After some shots of her and some glamorous others dressing for the day in clothes too ridiculously impractical to be taken seriously by any employer, save the entertainment and fashion industries, she appears for her interview with Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the editor of ...]]> http://www.cinemalogue.com/2006/06/30/the-devil-wears-prada/ Crosswords... Crosswords... Does this sound like a fascinating subject for a documentary? Probably not. I've said this before—forgive me if it sounds redundant—but I'm growing more fascinated with documentaries every year. I feel like learning something about somebody or some people, or, in the case of "Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill," some birds—why not some nerds? I mean that in the most...]]> http://www.cinemalogue.com/2006/06/23/wordplay/ Kate Forster (Sandra Bullock) lives in a glass house (please, no jokes involving stones...) in the woods, near a quiet lake. As with all romantic stories (especially those involving Sandra Bullock), she's a luckless type who drives the obligatory beater, despite somehow being able to afford an architecturally-iconic house in the...]]> http://www.cinemalogue.com/2006/06/16/the-lake-house/ "I feel as if we failed to get the message across," ponders Al Gore while narrating at the introduction of this documentary. He's referring partly to the public disregard and slide in government policy toward the ecology and environment over the past 30-40 years during his tenure in Congress and as Vice President. Instead of browbeating and "I told you so's," Gore tries to approach the present situation by re-evaluating himself, his...]]> http://www.cinemalogue.com/2006/06/09/an-inconvenient-truth/ I wanted to start this review by writing about Robert Altman and the provocative films he has made throughout several decades, but as I'm no advocate of so-called Auteur Theory, I will not discuss "A Prairie Home Companion" in context of his body of work. Instead, I will only say that it is an exception and not necessarily in a good way. I thought I might appreciate this film more because I live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro Area, from...]]> http://www.cinemalogue.com/2006/06/09/a-prairie-home-companion/ Never did I understand the appeal of stock car racing. Cars of relatively moderate speed (considerably slower than Formula One) go around on a circuitous path for seemingly endless scores of laps. I tried doing a search on the internet for NASCAR rules, to understand more about the race but invariably it turned up dozens of articles about crashes. Wait... now I get it, sort of. People...]]> http://www.cinemalogue.com/2006/06/09/cars/ I spent my formative years in India. I went to school there... went to university there, worked there. I got married there. A large chunk of my adult life, formative years especially, I feel... are Indian. Anything as far as my work is concerned I think it's influenced by the west, more stylistically. The west has made me feel less...]]> http://www.cinemalogue.com/2006/06/06/interview-with-deepa-mehta/ As a movie intended to be a comedy about ethnic idiosyncrasies and, to a lesser extent, religious beliefs, "Steins" presents us with limited shades of Jews—e.g. the ridiculously-wealthy Steins throwing a "Titanic" themed party complete with stage show on the aforementioned ocean liner for their son's Bar Mitzvah, but Grandpa Irwin (Garry Marshall) can barely afford the shirt on his back. Is there no middle ground to being a Jew? Surely, just as...]]> http://www.cinemalogue.com/2006/06/02/keeping-up-with-the-steins/