What I'm Watching

 I loved PACIFIC RIM...I was totally excited to see it and not only did I go opening weekend, my co-worker and I went to the DBox seats with 3D. DBox are chairs that move during the movie...which made us laugh very very hard as they tend to move during suspense sections of ta movie. I won't seek out the chairs agin...bt they were alot of fun for this movie. I loved everything about this film...especially the way the director played with scale and size. The director Guillermo del Toro also directed PAN'S LABYRINTH and HELLBOY. 10/10

I've wondered why the crazy in 3D pictures. I get the challenge to a film maker for sure...and I enjoy them but they don't draw me to the theatre. VANITY FAIR HAD THE ANSWER recently in an article about Brad Pitt's Zombie movie.

Paramount originally agreed to green-light the film with a budget of about $150 million, said studio executives, an eye-popping sum for a horror film and even more so for the zombie genre. Because the story took Pitt around the world, the movie would be easy to market internationally, executives reasoned. And Paramount planned to convert the movie into 3-D, a big draw for Russian, Brazilian, and Chinese audiences, which meant the studio could earn a substantially higher price over regular tickets. Indeed, China, which limits the number of foreign movies imported yearly, is so important that, Paramount said, the filmmakers deleted a reference to intercepted e-mails from China, where, in Brooks’s book, the zombie scourge originates. Rob Moore, vice-chairman of Paramount Pictures, said the film has not yet been screened by Chinese censors. But, he said, “China has become the second-biggest market, and we evaluate how things play there.”

Aha...if you wonder why something is happening in culture...follow the money!

 Stagg and I watched this movie last night. Wow...what a great movie! It is paced like a 70's movie...building suspense and using characters and politics and emotions for suspense and yet...it moves along really well. The cast was incredible and the story of 60's radicals coming out of hiding was really cool. I like these two examples of posters, one for Europe one for United States. This movie is a good example of a film that can hold up against all the fantastic tv programming with intense complicated plots, sorties and deep character study. This movie is a good exaple of how now...tv is like a novel...and movies are like short stories.

 I love Richard Jenkins and Redford and Jenkins in an art gallery was one of my favourite scenes. Anna Kendrick, Shia Laboef, Susan Sarandon and Julie Christie bring out their best. And the chemistry beteen some of these actors was what also added to the movie. 9/10.

Talking with my friend John Vanderheide ...we always stay up and talk and talk and talk...usually about the nature of reality...lol and so of course Cormac McCarthy and Breaking Bad enter the conversation...

 So, like, Jesse has to die…right? Breaking Bad is a marriage of BLOOD MERIDIAN and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN… So someone has to die and if Walt is the Judge …Jesse is surely the Kid. For many of us fans in seasons past we wondered if Walt was gonna get cancer again. But…duh….Walt is cancer. Manifest Destiny for Walt is the ultimate freedom to empire build killing anything in his path, unless he allows it to live. If Walt is like the Judge or Anton Chighur, then Hank is like sheriff Bell; unable to act or do anything to stop the cycle of greed and violence Walt embraces to fulfill his dreams and desires for power and control. Only a few more episodes of Breaking Bad left and I think Jesse will have to assimilated…

 BREAKING BAD has such a strong Manichean character structure we can compare it to all kinds of literature that uses that format or philosophy. 

 Oh Dexter,,,how do I love thee? And his sister Debra. DEXTER series coming to a close has been overshadowed by the media and following of BREAKING BAD...but I find it every bit as good as each other. I am loving how this final series is playing around even more with justice...and who has the moral highground of deciding how to deal with bad people.

 We saw THE ICEMAN and it was really a terrific movie this summer. Again, great to see Winona Ryder in a  movie. The cast was crazy good. Just a great movie and scary portrait. True story of a hitman.

INTO THE DARKNESS is probably the best 3D movie I've seen...it really used the 3D to perfect effect...at one point I thought a space craft had hovered over the movie audience. It had classic Star Trek humour among the characters and really played with the history of the show and movies. Long live Star Trek!