BilmBlog500

So having completed the live blogging for the Oscars, this is my Baker's Dozen best of 2013, in no particular order: World War Z: This is grading on a curve.  But basically, there are so many really shitty special effects spectaculars around these days that I feel an urge to give some recognition to a movie that's just a little bit different.  Also, since I keep asking authors to revise their manuscripts, it's nice to see something in the popular culture where revision works.  In particular, the ending of this major CGI-ridden summer spectacular release is quiet.  One setting, one main character, a place where small little things count, where the tension is real.  A place where the violence is earned, justified by the movie being what the movie is, and now entirely thrown in just because someone thinks it's fun to plow a starship into a building, or to destroy Manhattan for the 18th time and pretend like it isn't, like Superman didn't save Manhattan in Superman ...

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...

Hunger, seen Saturday April 11 2009 at the IFC Center, Aud. #3.  3.5 slithy toads Sugar, seen Saturday April 11, 2009 at the AMC Empire 25, Aud. #5.  3 slithy toads. I saw these two films prior to heading off for London Book Fair, almost 2 months ago.  Sugar is still hanging around here and there, such as at the Cinema Village in New York City.   Hunger , you'll want to keep an eye out for on DVD.  I'd certainly recommend renting both.  Hunger is the better movie, but Sugar the more enjoyable.  I've been meaning to blog about both, but as you can tell from the small # of posts in May, it's been a busy time in the weeks since I got back from London, and the blog often feels the brunt of my busy-ness. Hunger is about a 1981 hunger strike in the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland led by Bobby Sands.  But while about Bobby Sands' hunger strike, the film makes an interesting and even courageous decision to NOT approach the story directly from Sands' poin...