Monday, July 4, 2011 at 1:00PM Or Happy Fourth of July to you Americans.
The Tree of Life (2011)
We've had off blog duties this weekend and today's patriotism to attend to. We'll be back later tonight to reignite the reg'lar posting schedule. Hope you're all doing well out there. Have fun today!
Holidays Monday, July 4, 2011 at 7:09AM 
<-- Look it's Brad Pitt on the set of World War Z in Malta. Is he trying to keep sand out of his eyes or faking tears? You decide. (I vote for sand since he's quite a good cryer, don't you think? Has anyone read this novel? I tried and admired the structure but couldn't quite get into it.) Speaking of Brad... let's start the links.
Shortlist 30 Facts about David Fincher's Se7en (1995)
Icelandic Cinema a new website offers on demand Icelandic classics like the Viking epic The Raven Flies and Noi the Albino. They also have free downloads of short films.
Cinema Blend ARGH. The televisionization of the movies continues. Turns out that Snow White and the Huntsman -- the one with Kristen Stewart and Thor -- now thinks it needs three movies to tell its story. In the past few years I have come to respect television more than I used to but they are two different artforms. Why this constant push to make them the same? It's so disheartening. There is much to be said for stories with beginnings middles and ends which you can absorb in one two hour sitting.
Grant Land interesting take on the lack of male movie stars and the real and manufactured cases of Will Smith and Ryan Reynolds. Very sports-analogy filled for those of you who are into that.
The Many Faces of... Leonardo DiCaprio "how to freak out and go crazy!" (as Jorge pointed out to me this is kind of a sequel or a spiritual cousin to my "dead wives club" and so I just love it.
IFC musical sequence from Sucker Punch restored for its blu-ray release
Your Movie Buddy best of 2011 thus far... in Oscar categories. Definitely some surprising choices and omissions here. Yes, yes, I'll do one soon.
Stale Popcorn on the poster for Paddy Considine's Tyrannosaur. It is arresting.
In Contention Kris on his ten year relationship with A.I. Artificial Intelligence (which I just mentioned but alas... my obsession with Gigolo Joe doesn't seem to be shared by many)
Off Cinema
DHARBIN "Some Common Fears" I love this guys comics. I've been so into web comics lately. I appreciate referrals if you know of good ones.
Towleroad Cher takes on the Bachmann anti-gay crazy on Twitter. Cher = forever fierce.
Boy Culture Matthew proposes the best callsign for Mr. Bachmann I've yet heard proposed "Lady Bird Bachmann" -- PASS IT ON.
Some Came Running on the politics of David Mamet now and Demi Moore then
Brad Pitt, Cher, LGBT, Ryan Reynolds, Snow White, Sucker Punch, Will Smith Sunday, July 3, 2011 at 8:49PM Craig from Dark Eye Socket here with Take Three. Today: Michael Shannon
Take One: Shotgun Stories (2007)
Shannon looks to be getting the best raves of his career for the ominous apocalyptic mystery Take Shelter, which stunned critics at Sundance and Cannes. It’s the second feature from Jeff Nichols whose debut, Shotgun Stories, also starred Shannon. In that film he plays Son Hayes, the eldest of three brothers along with Kid (Barlow Jacobs) and Boy (Tim Blackwood) who alternately avoid and pursues conflict with their recently-deceased father’s other family. (Maybe the conflict was originally over the father’s terrible child-naming skills, who knows?) Son is a quiet, intense guy. It seems like fortuitous casting: Shannon, in shape and presence, and with his innate ability to show us exactly what his characters are thinking whilst doing very little, is ideally suited to the role. He brings perceptive silent intelligence to this role of an unlucky man who keeps his cards, and all else, close to his chest. (Son has numerous shotgun-bullet scars on his back and only late in the film do we discover their origins.)
Although outwardly Shannon doesn’t appear to transmit much emotionally, there are many minor moments when he imparts a great deal with shuffling body movements and facial expressions. He turns a scene in which he hears devastating news in a hospital into a painful, sincere display of grief. His face turns red, crumples and then empties out in vacant disbelief. Even when Shannon is filmed working at the fishery or wandering his quiet house he never lets one minor aspect of his character slip.
Take Two: Revolutionary Road (2008)
Shannon’s most high-profile role to date is undoubtedly John Givings in Sam Mendes’ Richard Yates adaptation Revolutionary Road.
Sunday, July 3, 2011 at 12:29AM For the 20th anniversary of the James Cameron classic Terminator 2, Judgment Day a reposting of the Personal Canon essay on the film, easily one of the best actioners of all time with a performance by Linda Hamilton which rivals Sigourney Weaver's Ripley badassery ...and that's a nearly impossible feat.
T2: Judgment Day (1991) Directed by James Cameron | Screenplay by James Cameron and William Wisher Jr | Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Joe Morton, S Epatha Merkerson and introducing Edward Furlong | Released 07/03/1991
Once the big profits for the small budgeted The Terminator began rolling in in October of '84, James Cameron became a hot commodity. He wasted no time on the follow up. Twenty-one months later the release of the much larger sci-fi spectacle Aliens (1986 -- to be celebrated here very soon) catapulted him from "filmmaker to watch" to the real deal. His long absence from the multiplex -- Avatar's December 2009 bow ended a 12 year drought -- made it easy to forget this basic truth: the director once moved swiftly through the stages of filmmaking if never quite as rapidly as his movies moved through their action. After Aliens, he left outer space for the deep seas with The Abyss (another hit) and having proved himself thrice over, returned to the killer robots that made his name.
"Model Citizen"
The Terminator cost 6 million to make, Terminator 2: Judgment Day would cost 100 million plus. The budget wasn't the only thing exploding: salaries, visual effects, setpieces, ambition, and public reaction were all supersized. Yet for all of this exponential external growth, Cameron smartly kept his focus tight and intimate.
Early shots give you the color scheme: fiery reds|steel blues. (Michael Edwards as JC.)
Sarah Connor's opening narration and the imagery of post-apocalyptic LA it plays over, both review the first movie and download Cameron's game plan for the sequel.
The computer which controlled the machines, Skynet, sent two terminators back through time. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the human resistance, John Connor my son. The first terminator was programmed to strike at me in the year 1984 before John was born. It failed. The second was set to strike at John himself when he was still a child. As before the resistance was able to send a lone warrior, a protector for John. It was just a question of which one of them would reach him first.
In other words, it's more of the same... only bigger which we notice immediately by way of shinier effects and massive fireball explosions. This repeat template is familiar but it won't be comfortable. We're also going deeper. The story structure is varied only enough to reflect the passage of time. But what has that passage of time wrought?
Upgrade U: The origin T-800 (Arnold) and the leaner meaner T-1000 (Robert Patrick)
As before... two naked men arriving from the future are introduced first. Once clothes are violently procured, their target is immediately identified by text (a phone book in the first film, a police car monitor in the second). Cut to target: John Connor (Edward Furlong). He's even introduced with a shot of a motorbike just like his mother was in 1984. So far so remarkably similar. This makes the slight tweaks stand out all the more. First, the film is more self consciously "funny" (the "Born to Be Bad" accompaniment to the T-800's intro). Second, both visitors from the future are instantly portrayed as formidable threats rather than as a David and Goliath mismatch. Third... where the hell is Sarah Connor?
Saturday, July 2, 2011 at 4:00PM This article was originally published in summer 2009. [Thanks to Leave Me The White for some of the screencaps] I'm reposting with minor edits in celebration of the 20th anniversary of its sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day on this 4th of July Weekend. Plus, what's more American than spectacles of Hollywood violence that launced billion dollar franchises?
Arnold Schwarzenegger as "The Terminator"
"Tech Noir"
In March of 1984 when The Terminator began filming, the director James Cameron and the producer Gale Ann Hurd were no Hollywood heavyweights. Cameron was no one's idea of a visionary (except for perhaps his own) and had only one feature under his belt, Piranha 2: The Spawning -- auspicious beginnings! Hurd had learned the production ropes on B movies for Roger Corman. Cameron and Hurd intended for the dark, fast and cheaply made robot movie to be their calling card. Seven months later in October the movie premiered with only its deceptively simple premise (killer machine hunts woman) and Conan the Barbarian (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to sell it. The Terminator was an immediate hit, though not quite a blockbuster. It earned a Conan-like $38 million gross in its initial run (which I believe is something roughly in the ballpark of $100 million in today's ticket sales).
As a franchise it was a slow starter but as a stand alone movie The Terminator was anything but. The movie begins with a bone crushing (literally) view of "The Year of Darkness", in which massive machines hunt humans in desolate post-apocalyptic ruins. Very quickly we're thrown back to present day Los Angeles ...present day in in the 80s at least.
An electric storm begins and a naked crouching man rises from the clearing smoke. He proceeds to walk emotionless through LA and slaughters some punks for clothes. A second electrical storm follows dropping another naked man into downtown LA. The twin sequences are mostly wordless but already Cameron's story instincts are shining: The first man (we don't technically know he's a machine) is already embedded in the audiences mind as an cool collected deadly force to be reckoned with, the second Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) is, in contrast, a scurrying, less capable and frankly desperate looking man.
Contrasting Entrances
In short, he's mortal.
Ahnuld, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Original Score, Oscars (80s), Terminator, editing 