Friday, December 31, 2021 at 10:34AM by Deborah Lipp
If you have clicked on this 50th anniversary commemoration of the James Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever, you are probably eager for a takedown. Diamonds Are Forever (1971) is a movie fans love to hate. But get your tomatoes ready to pelt me at me instead because I will be doing no such thing. I love this movie and I’m fully prepared to defend it...
Tuesday, December 28, 2021 at 2:30PM by Nathaniel R
Cons: I didnt understand a lick of The Matrix Resurrection (did you have to memorized the first three?), especially the last act "rescue" involving brain switching which played like a techno-babble illogic exposition in order to give us a botched Sense8 body-switching visual. On the other hand, writer/director Lana Wachowski claiming such ownership from behind the camera felt satisfying despite playing at times like meta snark. Definitely did not enjoy the suggestion that therapists are evil even though the cat with the bell was damn cute.
Pros: Absolutely loved Jonathan Groff as the new "Mr Smith". Witnessing Keanu & Carrie-Anne fall back in love was a good time; they've always looked sensational together and age-appropriate, too, so that was a rare doublesexy 50something thrill. This has been my review.
Yours?
Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 9:00AM Three tweets that made us giggle...
Less Dune Part Two talk, more 2 Barb 2 Star talk.
— Chris Feil (@chrisvfeil) October 27, 2021
If a movie has to be watched then it isn’t a good movie
— C. Mason Wells (@cmasonwells) October 26, 2021
Let's stop making movies until we've seen all the old ones.
— Dave Kehr (@dave_kehr) October 26, 2021
More after the jump including Derek Cianfrance, Paul Verhoeven, and lots of Dune and Dune Part Two jokes...
Tuesday, October 26, 2021 at 4:12PM by Nathaniel R
Dune Part One landed big at the box office this past weekend with a $41 million bow, a solid gross even in pre-pandemic times for a non-sequel (with the caveat that it's still a very familiar IP). That plus the overseas gross was apparently strong enough to get a greenlight on Dune Part Two quickly though it still feels insane that they poured money into the first half without a deal on the second. Good luck coordinating everyone's schedules; The cast is hardly B list and now they'll be even more in demand though we're betting they all had Part Two firmly in their contracts even without a start date so perhaps they'll be locked into whatever dates the production decides and other movies or tv shows will have to make do without them or wait until they're free of the desert again. Beginning in 2022 Warner Brothers films will no longer be immediately streaming on HBOMax as they have been all this year so, barring another pandemic, expect Dune Part Two to have a significantly bigger opening weekend in October of 2023.
Let the speculation begin: Will the Academy stump for Dune this season or wait until 2023 and, if it sticks the landing, shower it with statues a la Return of the King twenty years earlier.
Dune, Oscars (23), box office, release dates, sequels Wednesday, September 8, 2021 at 10:00AM by Elisa Giudici
Dreams are messages from the deep. This line from Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Frank Herbert's SF novel perfectly describes the seductive dangerous power of dream we've cherished for a very long time begin to come true. Villeneuve is one of many directors of a generation that grew up reading Frank Herbert visionary sci-fi novels about messianic leadership and predestination, colonization and contamination of an alien world and culture, and the dangers of mixing politics and religion (to name only a few of the main themes of the Dune novels).
He was well aware of how insidious it can be to work on something that's long been on the back of your mind and your abmition for decades. "I talked for hours with Hans Zimmer about the possibility (a long time dream for both of us), trying to understand if it wasn't advisable to let our dream remain in our heads"...
