BilmBlog500

I've had a generally good relationship with Penguin over my 28 year career, but right now I am not feeling very charitable toward the folks on 375 Hudson Street. Sometime in 2012 or 2013, it's hard to know exactly when because they don't really announce these things, they started a Print on Demand program. Which is not, in and of itself, a bad thing.  POD has come a long way since its early days, and you can do very attractive POD books, especially trade paperbacks, that are hard to tell from the standard offset edition. But that's not what Penguin is doing.  They are doing mass market POD editions, and they are awful and crappy and markedly inferior to the regular offset editions in pretty much every way imaginable. Today's example, a copy of Simon R. Green's Hell to Pay, the 7th Nightside novel, spotted at a Barnes & Noble in CT. I knew it was POD the second I opened the book.  That's kind of bad sign #1.  You shouldn't be able to tell a POD book f...

Over the weekend I saw Lone Survivor with Myke Cole, my favorite Coast Guard Reserve officer. Wow! The only real question is this:  In ten years, when it is movie night at FOB Somewhere, are the troops going to be downing their popcorn with this, or Black Hawk Down.  Lt. Cole votes for Black Hawk Down.  I vote Lone Survivor. An odd choice for me.  Black Hawk Down tried hard to let us get to know its characters, and Lone Survivor tries hardly at all.  The context comes from a montage of SEAL training under the opening credits, to give you some sense of what these men endure to get where they are.  And other than that, an email or two with the gal at home, some discussion of whether to get the gal an Arabian (or is it Arabic?) horse, a race around the base channeling either the yard race in Chariots of Fire or the volleyball in Top Gun.  Hazing the new guy.  But not much.  And all the guys are buried in facial hair so you can't see their featur...

Rather to my surprise, Her turns out to be a great science fiction film, every bit as worthy of your attention as Gravity.  If you read my blog, there's an excellent chance that you have an interest in science fiction, and so you really really do need to go and see Her. Why a surprise?  I like Spike Jonze's Weezer videos, but his previous feature films haven't been favorites of mine.  Being John Malkovich was a nice concept but petered out, and Adaptation I thought was just plain bad.  I've disliked these or thought these overrated enough that in my mind I've given Spike Jonze credit for other bad films by people he worked with on his own bad films.   While the coming attraction for Her made it look interesting, I just thought of Adaptation of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or other dreary critics darlings. Color me wrong! Take your Mac worship to the next level, and imagine that Siri has a crush on you, that you have a crush on Siri, and that your conver...

In case you haven't noticed, I'm trying to catch up on a year of movie reviews in the week of/after the Golden Globes and before the announcement of Oscar nominations. Lots of people have seen the excellent Captain Phillips.  As well they should! Tom Hanks is fantastic in this movie.  Unlike in Saving Mr. Banks, you never forget that he is Tom Hanks.  But the much talked about last scene of the movie which is harrowing and amazing (and all the more so for being partially improvised, with Hanks playing against a non-actor) is all the more so for us knowing that if it's Tom Hanks in this situation, it really could be any of us.  It's directed by Paul Greengrass who is a quite perfect choice.  He started out as a documentarian, moved to doing documentaries like the quite excellent Bloody Sunday and United 93, jas done action-oriented feature films like Green Zone and two Bourne movies.  So here, he gets to take a real story which is full of ways to show off h...

This post is going to link three movies that have absolutely nothing to do with one another -- Gravity, 12 Years a Slave, and Philomena.  One movie is called Gravity, and the other movies are about very serious subjects, slavery in the US, and the Magdalene laundries in Ireland.  And the reason I'm doing all three in one post is that I'm not sure what to say about two of them, so I'm reaching to find a way to throw in a third movie. Gravity:  The problem with talking about Gravity is -- well, if you're interested in the movie you've probably read lots and lots about it already, and what can I add to that.  Furthermore, it's often harder to talk about something that's really good than something you can pick at.  There isn't anything to pick at in Gravity.  I saw it in 3D, the rare movie that's worth seeing that way, on a pretty small screen in Connecticut.  Would have liked seeing it on a bigger screen, but that was how it worked out.  The movie's...

What makes a brand last forever? Well, Frozen is an example of the kind and quality of animation that's never entirely left Disney, even during the darker time periods of the animation studio -- and which, just to say, a lot of other studios would probably be happy to have their darker periods defined by some of the movies that define Disney's. And on the specifics, Frozen shows how brands that do last for just about forever manage to do it.  They go for that which is timeless, for things which will resonate decades after the advertising itself has ended. Coca-Cola does this really well.  Coke would like to teach the world to sing .  The sentiment is timeless.  The shirts are a little period, but the hairstylings even today aren't so of their day that you notice them.  And Coke is The Real Thing.  It's Always Coca-Cola.  McDonalds has done this really well in many of their best advertisements. And Frozen will be timeless without being frozen in time. ...

I first remember Bruce Dern from Family Plot, not considered the best Hitchcock, but definitely the last Hitchcock and possibly my first Hitchcock.  That was some 40 years ago, and this veteran actor now gets to chew some scenery in Nebraska, which won him the acting prize at Cannes, and is the newest film from Alexander Schmidt.  Schmidt has garnered more consistently wonderful reviews over his career than Dern has over his of twice the duration, often for films like Election or Citizen Ruth or About Schmidt that have often been good or had their moments but not really been that good, and in the case of Sideways been downright dreadful.  But he is coming of his clearly best film, The Descendants. So Nebraska... It isn't The Descendants.  It isn't that good, though I venture to say some the pleasures of Nebraska might longer longer than those of The Descendants. It is much better than his raft of other never-really-that-good movies. God knows it isn't Sideways! This ...

A year ago this time I was leading the cheers for David Russell's Silver Linings Playbook. This year, I want to say clear as day that David Russell's American Hustle is a giant snow job of a good movie, and I cannot believe critics are falling for the hustle, I cared about the characters in Silver Linings Playbook.  It was old-fashioned at its heart and sweet at its core, and very well acted. I didn't care about a thing in American Hustle,  Christian Bale plays a two bit hustler whom I don't care about.  He runs a con with an FBI agent played by Bradley Cooper, whom I don't care about.  All the movie does is remind me constantly. of films like The Sting or Catch Me If You Can that do it better. There is the occasional pleasure.  De Niro is good and has a great moment.  Amy Adams is brilliant but too little seen.  But mostly, I was bored early and often. If you're looking for a cinematic snow job this winter, The Wolf of Wall Street would be your better...

We'll always have Paris!  Llewyn Davis and I, that is. as the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis is the first movie I saw in Paris, a few weeks ahead of its US release, at the UGC Rotunde.  A good film to see in France as it was a star of the Cannes Film Festival, and Joel and Ethan Coen poster children for the auteur theory of cinema. I am not a fan of the Coen Brothers.  It is nearing 30 years since I saw Blood Simple while in college and couldn't understand the fuss, and for most of the 30 years since I haven't understood the fuss.  I have skipped the occasional film of theirs, loathed some I have seen (Barton Fink), liked the wrong films (Burn After Reading). By those standards, I have to say that I consider Inside Llewyn Davis to be one of the best films by the Coen Brothers. Llewyn is a bit of a schlemiel, to use a Yiddush term.  The kind of person who lets a cat escape though an open window but tries to make it right.  Who isn't quite a great musicia...

Saving Mister Banks started out kind of slowly at the box office in its initial limited release.  I went to see it opening weekend on the primary screen at the Village East, a landmarked beautifully ornamented former Yiddush play house surrounded by much smaller screens in the basement and stacked in the one-time stage area. The movie was playing on four screens,and there were maybe a few dozen people watching in this very large one. Happily, to me, the film picked up some steam with families over the holidays.  It is quite entertaining, boasts some fine acting, and for my clients and people in my trade it poses some interesting questions about the boundaries between art and commerce. It is the story of an artist, the author of the Mary Poppins novels, and her money-driven flirtation with Disney over the making of the film based on her books, which the author wouldn't have enjoyed with a five-pound bag if sugar, let alone a spoonful. The acting first.  Tom Hanks plays Wal...