BilmBlog500

This is the time of year when my membership to the Museum of the Moving Image is worth it, when the film distributors with movies they want to have in the mix for awards season get busy with screenings.  And as a general rule, if I can make it to a screening I will, it sometimes means seeing movies I wasn't interested in paying for that are screening late in their run, sometimes movies I'm not all that interested in at all, and not as often as I'd wish something I'm hugely enthusiastic to be seeing. In the "purposely missed in theatres" category, was last weekend's screening of Beasts of the Southern Wild at the Museum.  This film has had buzz dating back to Sundance in January, when the Variety review called it a "stunning debut."  Hence, I was anticipating it.  But when it actually opened, and I read more reviews, I was quite certain of the fact that there was little the movie would have to offer me. Which, essentially, turned out to be true. ...

TCM had Titanic on Saturday night, and I watched large chunks of it. It's so much nicer to watch this three hour plus movie when it isn't interrupted with on toward an hour of commercials. So if Avatar wins Best Picture a week from when this post goes live... Well, not only will it be wrong on its own terms, but it will demean Titanic. Which is really everything that Avatar was not. Three hours, but oh, does it move. None of the toe-tapping of Avatar. When I turned to Titanic at around 12:28 AM, I was utterly rapt for the next 40 minutes; couldn't go for the dental floss until the movie was over at 1:32. Serious minded, but with a constant twinkle in its eye. Oh, the bad husband character played by Billy Zane is a bit of an unwanted buffoon, but there's a subtle pleasure to David Warner's performance as the valet that gives compensation. Kathy Bates is a joy, Gloria Stuart is a wonder, the music by James Horner is such a delight. No, the special effects are...

Seen at Clearview's Chelsea Cinema; auditorium #1, Sunday March 16, 2008; 2 Slithy Toads, maybe So I should have listened to Stanley Kauffmann on this one. Over the years, this long-time film critic for The New Republic has been my compadre; the one critic more than any other who speaks to my own tastes in movies. It was bitter solace when I was writing film reviews for The Michigan Daily in college, ran up in my final semester against an editor who did not appreciate me, and saw Stanley Kauffmann pick up on some of the same things in his review of Compromising Positions that I had mentioned in a spiked review of the movie. Which as I recall was replaced with one that ended with a line about seltzer in pants. And Stanley Kauffmann gave a thumbs-down on Paranoid Park. But..., the reviews were all over the map, I kind of liked the coming attraction, the release broadened from theatres where I didn't have discount tickets to one where I did, there haven't been a lot of mo...