Simpsonize me

As part of a shameless plug for the simpsons movie there is a Simpsonize me website that allows you to turn a picture of yourself into a simpsons style character. This is my end product.

Spiderman 3… just don’t

Sorry kids, I know what was being attempted. Unfortunately it just killed. The pacing was all over the place. There were too many bad guys. The character development was surreal.

While I don’t appreciate the deliberate heart string pulling

Forrest Gump is a good movie. I hate movies that make me cringe, this one doesn’t. It is a carefully crafted collection of ups and downs designed at the end to make me feel more happy than sad. I do wish there could be more movies that end on the proper inflection. Sad is more likely than happy, and reality is a drug best served on it’s own.

Grumpy? not really, just watching another of those convincing movies…

But not the remake… if you can call it that

The remake of ‘The Producers’ is practically the entire original movie – word for word, with some extra musical numbers. I mean they didn’t even try with this one. You would hope that they could at least try, but Matthew Broderick’s acting in this was cardboard to the point of annoyance, not a touch on the original Gene Wilder one (simply without compare). Nathan Lane was a bit better, but didn’t have the right level of desparation that Zero Mostel brought to the original one. Let’s just leave Uma Thurman’s role out all together, and Will Ferrell deserves to be clobbered for this one. Seriously, stick to the properly low-brow comedy like ‘the ballad of ricky bobby’.

Hot Fuzz is the best cop movie ever!

I laughed so much I nearly peed myself. You must see this movie; it is brilliant. It pays homage to practically every cop movie ever and most of those 70’s small village but something bad is happening here movies. I may just see it again tomorrow, and definitely one to buy on DVD.

Silent Hill – Popcorn movie

I went to see Silent Hill a few nights ago after signing up for an evening course. It feels like a game – lots of scary slashing nightmare/reality interleaving pieces. The monsters seem like something that walked straight out of an H.R. Giger print – somewhat scary, but at the same time really smooth and slithery.
Overall not the best movie, but worth seeing. The end is what you should have in a horror movie.

102 movies, how many have you seen?

Film critic Jim Emerson recently compiled a list of 102 movies that you should see before you can consider yourself movie literate:

…they [are] the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They’re the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat “movie-literate.”

Like another blogger, I decided to replicate the list, and mark with an asterisk the movies I’ve seen:

* 2001: A Space Odyssey
The 400 Blows
* 8 1/2
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
* Alien
* All About Eve
* Annie Hall
* Apocalypse Now
* Bambi
The Battleship Potemkin
The Best Years of Our Lives
* The Big Red One
The Bicycle Thief
* The Big Sleep
* Blade Runner
* Blowup
* Blue Velvet
* Bonnie and Clyde
Breathless
* Bringing Up Baby
* Carrie
* Casablanca
Un Chien Andalou
Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis
* Chinatown
* Citizen Kane
* A Clockwork Orange
* The Crying Game
* The Day the Earth Stood Still
* Days of Heaven
* Dirty Harry
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
* Do the Right Thing
La Dolce Vita
* Double Indemnity
* Dr. Strangelove
Duck Soup
* E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial
* Easy Rider
* The Empire Strikes Back
* The Exorcist
* Fargo
* Fight Club
* Frankenstein
* The General
* The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II
* Gone With the Wind
* GoodFellas
* The Graduate
* Halloween
* A Hard Day’s Night
Intolerance
It’s a Gift
* It’s a Wonderful Life
* Jaws
The Lady Eve
* Lawrence of Arabia
* M
* Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior
* The Maltese Falcon
* The Manchurian Candidate
* Metropolis
* Modern Times
* Monty Python and the Holy Grail
* Nashville
The Night of the Hunter
* Night of the Living Dead
* North by Northwest
* Nosferatu
* On the Waterfront
* Once Upon a Time in the West
Out of the Past
Persona
Pink Flamingos
* Psycho
* Pulp Fiction
Rashomon (guilt, I should have seen this)
* Rear Window
* Rebel Without a Cause
* Red River
Repulsion
The Rules of the Game
* Scarface
The Scarlet Empress
* Schindler’s List
* The Searchers
* The Seven Samurai
* Singin’ in the Rain
* Some Like It Hot
A Star Is Born
* A Streetcar Named Desire
Sunset Boulevard
* Taxi Driver
* The Third Man
Tokyo Story
* Touch of Evil
* The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Trouble in Paradise
* Vertigo
* West Side Story
* The Wild Bunch
* The Wizard of Oz
I’ve seen 76 of them, which I consider quite reasonable. Some may question the list, but it seems to contain the essence of good movies.