Sunday, December 9, 2012
The holidays are a great time to get a head start on Oscar viewing!
December is Oscar time. Filmmakers need to get their movies under the wire so they'll be in contention for this year's awards. Consequently this month is a weird mix of crowd-pleasing mediocrity and painfully long masterpieces that mix horribly with a need for fluff. But what is a movie lover to do? Gotta see them! Having only viewed two of these films (Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook) I'm as in the dark (as it were) as you all are about how truly great these movies are, and how they measure up to each other as far as acting and scripting are concerned. All I know is what I hear, and I'm hearing a lot. All the critics associations are putting together their lists of bests, and they all influence how the Oscars go. So far, these are …
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Panoramic vistas take your breath away.
PARIS — This week, the Cinema Siren is writing from France, land of unpasteurized cheese, Jerry Lewis obsession, well-behaved dogs in restaurants and a great appreciation of auteur film directors. I'm here for the opening of a Star Wars toy exhibit at the Louvre that involves some film art friends of mine. Nowhere would there be a better place to speak of the gorgeous piece of animated film-making that is Frankenweenie than where there is in fact no literal translation for "director's cut," because it wouldnt occur to the French that there would be any other version of a film. Tim Burton is really the very definition of auteur, in that he has a very clear vision for his film-making, a recognizable stylistic stamp that fans embrace and …
Thursday, July 5, 2012
PG-13 film opened Tuesday in theaters nationwide.
Ahhh, Spider-Man. How amazing can another one be? If you've been reading my reviews for a while, you know two things about Cinema Siren: 1. There will be no bashing a movie just because it's the fashion to hate blockbusters. 2. There will be no bending to the will of the bigger critics, so whether they love or hate a film, it won't sway a review. All movies start out believing in their own greatness, and Cinema Siren walks in a theater doing the same. However, walking into The Amazing Spider-Man, I was guilty of thinking that but for stars Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, I'd have zero interest in taking a peek at a story that, after a (successively worse) trilogy whose final release was only five years ago, seems so picked over. I will …
