February 2012
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January 2012
6 posts
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Dine LA: Waterloo+City →
Andreanna and Mike reviewed the Dine LA meal we shared Sunday night. (Bubblegum & Blood and I were the other couple mentioned.)
Check out their full write up via the link below, but first here’s my 10 Word Review*: elevated pub fare, a tasty bit of UK in LA
theairstreamturkey:
Usually, the words ‘gourmet’ and ‘British food’ don’t end up in sentences even remotely near each other,...
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2011 Honorable Mention: Best Movie Trailer
The trailer that got the most attention in 2011 was for Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with its powerful Trent Reznor/Karen O cover of classic Zeppelin. Smart, effective…and completely obvious. “I come from the land of the ice and snow,” yeah, we get.
For me, true artistry was found in the first trailer for Battle: Los Angeles. A serviceable if unremarkable...
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2011 Honorable Mention: Best Reboots
Hollywood is bashed - and rightly so - for an over-reliance on sequels, remakes and rebooted franchises. This year’s 7 highest grossing movies (worldwide, according to THR) were all sequels: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Pirates of the Caribbean: on Stranger Tides, Kung Fu Panda 2, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn (Part One), Fast Five, and...
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2011 Honorable Mention: Best Middle Thrid of a...
“The Diary of Anne Frankenstein” is writer/director Adam Green’s contribution to the entertaining but uneven Chillerama. Set on the last night at bankrupt drive-in movie, the film offers three and a half movies-within-a-movie, of which “Diary” is by far the funniest.
Green is clearly a graduate of the Mel Brooks School of Hitler Humor (with a minor in Young...
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2011 Honorable Mention: Best First Third of a...
We Need To Talk About Kevin is impressive from the get go, from its bold, expressionistic use of color to its temporal fluidity. (Has any film ever relied so much on an actor’s hair style for narrative comprehensibility?) Tilda Swinton, in nearly every scene, is captivating as a strong-willed woman whose life is upended by her dark offspring.
Unfortunately, director Lynne Ramsay’s...
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10 Movies Released Last Year That I Really Liked,...
The best (in alphabetical order):
Melancholia
Rubber
Senna
Take Shelter
The next best (ditto):
Attack the Block
Drive
Hugo
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Stake Land
The rest:
Midnight in Paris
Note: only 2011 theatrical & direct to DVD/VOD releases were considered.
As in the past (see 2008 and 2009), the last spot was a virtual coin flip. I liked but didn’t love Paris, just...
December 2011
2 posts
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A Very Subjective 'Best of Fantastic Fest 2011'
Sixty-something days after the damn thing ended, I’m finally getting around to throwing some thoughts together about Fantastic Fest 2011. This is because (a) I miss Austin, (b) I finally found the keys to my Tumblr account (they fell behind the sofa!), and (c) in a few weeks I’m going to do my annual fourth annual 10 Movies Released Last Year I Really Liked post (TM Liz Shannon...
November 2011
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September 2011
2 posts
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Better Late Than Never: Favorites from FF 2010 and...
As promised about an hour ago, here are five of my favorites from my previous two trips to Austin for film festivals:
FANTASTIC FEST 2010
Stake Land (available on DVD), a road movie about a makeshift group trying to survive in a post-vampire apocalypse America. If you like The Walking Dead, you’ll like this.
Undocumented (now on IFC On Demand, finally), a truly scary portrait of a group...
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Bubblegum & Blood: Fantastic Fest! Tomorrow! Yes! →
bubblegumandblood:
Films I’m Psyched For…
Livid (Scary-house horror from creators of Inside)
Sleep Tight (from writer/co-director of REC & REC 2)
Screenings of Fulci’s House by the Cemetery and Zombie
Retreat (Starring Cillian Murphy— who can do no wrong. imo.)
Melancholia (New Lars von Trier)
…
What she said.
I love Austin, and trips there for SXSW and Fantastic Fest...
June 2011
3 posts
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"Killing" Time
The first season of AMC’s hit series, The Killing, concludes this Sunday. There’s a mystery embedded in the show that has kept me glued to the screen every week, but it sure ain’t “who killed Rosie Larsen.” The real mystery is “who killed The Killing?” Who turned a promising young series from brilliant to laughable in under 11 weeks?
Grab your umbrella,...
March 2011
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January 2011
2 posts
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10 Movies Released Last Year That I Really Liked
In no particular order except for the first three:
BLACK SWAN
MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT
THE KILLER INSIDE ME
DOGTOOTH
LET ME IN
THE LAST EXORCISM
INCEPTION
BLUE VALENTINE
SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD
WINTERS BONE
Black Swan was a lock for first. Aronofsky and Portman delivered a masterpiece whose final act left me exhilarated and breathless like nothing else this year.* On paper Black...
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December 2010
1 post
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November 2010
1 post
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September 2010
3 posts
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“I think we’ve probably exhausted 80% of reality.”
–
- Jeff Gaspin (my old boss). And I’m not 100% sure he’s referring to the TV genre…
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August 2010
1 post
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May 2010
2 posts
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April 2010
1 post
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You Know It's Been Too Long Since You've Posted...
…when Safari no longer knows how to autocomplete the URL for your blog. So here we are.
SXSW was great, and the city of Austin even better. I’m not sure I could live there, but I want to visit. Often.
I spent most of my time attending Interactive Panels and Interactive Parties, but the parts of SXSW that rocked my world were the midnight movies at the The Alamo Drafthouse....
March 2010
3 posts
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Catching Up + Last Minute Oscar Picks
I just wanted to pop on to say that I haven’t completely abandoned this blog, though I’ve been away too, too long; I’ll try not to leave you that long again. (Encouragement welcome in the comments. Also skepticism and derision.)
Highlights from the last five weeks of my existence included:
a memorable restaurant week meal at The Bazaar by Jose Andreas
The Wooster...
January 2010
3 posts
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December 2009
4 posts
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the ten movies released last year that I really...
The Hurt Locker
The Class (Entre Les Murs)
Antichrist
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
(500) Days of Summer
Up
In the Loop
The House of the Devil
Coraline
Zombieland
(Caveat: I’ve seen neither Avatar nor The Road yet, but plan to see both soon.)
Unlike last year, where Let the Right One In simply ran away with it, I could probably reorder the top 9 endlessly and still worry I...
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Dan O'Bannon, RIP →
The obit I wrote over at FEARnet for one of my two favorite O’Bannons.
If you haven’t seen Dark Star, Dead & Buried or Return of the Living Dead, come over some time and we’ll watch ‘em.
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November 2009
2 posts
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The Dirty Show
What’s that old real estate mantra - location, location, location? Seems it also applies to smutty art exhibits, as demonstrated by the LA installation of Detroit’s The Dirty Show, which had the good sense to abandon the usual galleries in favor of half a seedy downtown motel.
Entering via back alley (naturally), we moved from room to room. Spaces that would have been utterly...
October 2009
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September 2009
3 posts
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from "the more things change..." department
further proof that sharleen, jamie, gary and i were - and still are - ahead of our time.
i have the vhs tape to back this up. too bad i no longer own a functioning vcr.
SEPT. 4, 2009: Fox adds on-air tweets to `Fringe’ reruns
NEW YORK — Summer reruns are ho-hum television, but Fox is trying out a possible solution: Add Twitter.
On the network’s repeat broadcast of its supernatural...
August 2009
11 posts
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“you’re not saying you bought evan rachel wood as the vampire queen of new...”
– – me, about an hour ago, on twitter, re: the penultimate episode of season 2 of true blood.
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the bruni list
restaurants mentioned in frank bruni’s last new york times column.
i’ve been to the ones in bold.
accademia di vino al di là bar boulud bar centrale blt prime blue ribbon sushi bar & grill buddakan cafe cluny cafe luxembourg casa mono ‘cesca cookshop craft daniel dbgb kitchen & bar degustation dressler eleven madison park 15 east esca five points franny’s harry’s cafe...
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