I’m morbidly devoted to the works of Charles Dickens. It’s a childhood aberration. At a young age I started reading whatever books were on the family shelves and bonded with Dickens and Twain before I had a fully formed cranium, practically. From them I developed a vaguely 19th century sensibility that’s been nothing but trouble. That’s how I come to ruin me-self. (more…)

Washington acting like a person

Director Tony Scott ought to put up a statue to Denzel Washington in his sculpture garden, then pray to it at least three times a day to express his gratitude for the way the actor saves his cinematic ass time and time again. Because Den-ZEL, the excellent Den-ZEL, is way, way too good for Tony Scott. He shouldn’t be spending his time and talent grounding Tony Scott’s nonsense in reality. But he keeps doing it: Man on Fire, Deja Vu, and now the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123.
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This is a vengeful slagging of previews I’ve seen at least ten-thousand times, maybe through bad luck, bad timing, bad karma, it’s hard to say. They’re all for movies opening March 20th. Except for The Soloist, which may never open, judging by the way they keep not opening it.

I Love You Man

This is the “bromance” one about a guy (Paul Rudd playing the same damn thing he always does) with no male friends who needs to recruit one to be best man at his wedding. The recruit is Jason Segal (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), who’s big and puffy and boring and yelly, yet other characters always regard him as outrageous or liberating or heartwarming or something. We need hardly add that Jason Segal needs to be taken out into the woods and shot, or abandoned on an ice floe, anything to put an end to the tedium. (more…)

Here’s a friendly warning for you: don’t count on the movies to get you through the holidays, any more than they got you through the Wall Street seizures or this gut-wrencher of an election. As bad as the movies have been recently, that’s how bad they’re going to be right through to 2009. Maybe even a tad worse, if that’s possible. Just to give you an idea, the title of one of them, a big fat one with stars and a major budget and everything, is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Just chew on that a minute while I check the polls. (Oh jeez, it’s tightening up, Obama’s only up by 5.4 nationally, 7 in Pennsylvania, 4 in Virginia. I swear, if we lose this one…!)

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A few weeks ago, I went to see a new Russian horror film called S.S.D. (the acronym translates to “Death to Soviet Children”) about a bunch of annoying Moscow urbanites who get slaughtered while shooting a reality TV show in an abandoned Soviet summer camp. I don’t usually get excited about new film releases in this country. I’ve been disappointed too many times and now try to avoid them as much as possible. But this time was different, this time I thought the movie couldn’t lose. It had too much potential. If you’ve ever spent time in a real Soviet pioneer camp, like I have, you’d be excited, too.

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