Tag: Film

Three Excellent Movie Spoofs

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In the past two weeks, i’ve seen some great movie spoofs.  It seems that online video is getting better and better and the content is coming form all over the place.  I love these videos.  Check ’em out:

A Batman spoof:

A Point Break spoof. I love how Aziz does Keanu by just shouting.

A video describing all the ambiguous endings of movies. If you were unsure how they ended, now you know:

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Horror Films are for women?

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There’s an interesting article in the NY Times called Taking Back The Knife: Girls Gone Gory in which it talks about the recent increasing in horror movies being made and the strange findings of recent box office receipts showing that women have an even bigger appetite for horror films than men.

This surprised me although i have seen it first hand; last weekend both Diane and Althea put Halloween 2 tops on their “want to see” list.  Some of the reasons that the NY Times said were:

  • Women can identify more with horror films as their are other women as the main characters. Diablo Cody (writer of “Juno”) said, “When I watched movies like ‘The Goonies’ and ‘E.T.,’ it was boys having adventures. When I watched ‘Nightmare on Elm Street,’ it was Nancy beating” up Freddy. “It was that simple.”
  • Women enjoy pure adrenaline rushes. As Cody says, “Some of us just like that stuff. We like suspense, we like to be scared, we like to have visceral reaction in the theater. Maybe I’m starved for adrenaline, but for me watching a horror movie is very pleasurable. So making one was kind of a dream.”

Diane, the resident expert here, claims it’s because horror films are much more emotional than other genres.  Most movies are event driven or just visually pleasing which caters more to the male.  Horror movies, on the other hand, are all about messing with your emotions – which is much more powerful to the woman than the male (in theory).

Whatever the reason is, i was surprised to hear this gender preference.  Any one else have any ideas?

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Thoughts about Bruno

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Saw Bruno last night and here are some thoughts:

  • The trailer was hilarious BUT gave away way too many scenes.  Watching the movie, I found that there was a setup and you already knew what was going to happen.  This was true for the camping trip and the military attempt. Similarly, he gave away too many jokes from the movie on the Today show too which i posted about yesterday.
    • Trailers giving away too much of a movie is a monstrous pet peeve of mine.  I hate that films do it. I understand that it helps get people into the theaters more but it really degrades the actual experience.   This is a whole other post for me.  But man does it tick me off.
  • With Borat, they explained the camera because they were filming everything for the station back home, and you could tell when there was a hidden camera.  For Bruno, there was no explanation why the camera was following Bruno around for most of the time.  There are some scenes where you wonder how they are filming it – like the swingers party scene.   It made the movie feel less authentic and more fictional
  • There are some great scenes that really show the insanity of America and of Hollywood.  Some parents should be totally ashamed of themselves for how they pimp out their kids.  Bruno is able to expose the absurdity of LA really well.
  • The movie is lot like the movie Jackass except instead of doing anything just to be dumb, Bruno does gay things just to be dumb and films the reaction of other people.   There’s actually quite a lot of similarities between the two
  • I found that the narrative of the movie was pretty contrived.  It was more a series of funny events strapped together than an actual story.  Sure it tried to be a story of Bruno’s attempt to become famous but that is not really an arc.
  • This is the best marketed movie i’ve seen in a long time.  Everywhere i looked it was Bruno.  His appearance on Letterman and The Today show were great.  I really felt that this movie was an event which resulted in me marching out on opening night. I have to hand it to them – really great marketing.

So, i think as you can see, i felt the movie was hyped up abit too much for me and didn’t fully deliver.  I still think it was pretty damn funny.  I laughed a lot.  But, i think it’s more of a Borat sequel than another innovative step.  Personally i think Borat was better or at least more novel.  I’m going 7.5 out of 10

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Milk is Good

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As i was saying in a post i made a few months ago where i talked about how much i love milk, the drink, i saw the movie with the same name.   I think it’s really good – 8 out of 10.  I do have some thoughts about it

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  • Sean Penn is f’ing amazing.  He should definitely get a nod for this performance.  James Franco and Emile Hirsh are great too.
  • There is some serious guy-on-guy making out in this movie. More than i’ve seen in any other movie. I’ve heard from a few “old” people (over 60) that they don’t like it and really can’t sit through it. I don’t know if it’s a generational thing, or if older people just don’t know as many gay folks so it seems too odd and uncomfortable.  Personally, there is still shock value there for me when i see two guys really going at it out on the screen.  It’s just something i haven’t seen much in real life
  • I like how they portrayed Josh Brolin‘s character.  Nuanced and complex.  I’m starting to think i’m going to see Brolin in tons of movies. He came out of nowhere to be in last year’s No Country For Old Men and now he’s in W. and Milk.  I have a feeling i’ll be seeing lots of him over the next couple of years – similar to how we saw lots of John Travolta after he re-appeared in Pulp Fiction.
  • What did Harvey do before the age of 40?  Cutting out 40 years of someone’s life is pretty substantial.  The movie does mention that he was in the closet before he moved to San Francisco, but i could have used some more background about him and what was driving him.  Sean Penn created an amazing character but i never got a sense of why he felt he had to the the activist for the group.  He mentions that he wants to do something “he’s proud of” but why?

All in all, it’s a good movie and worth checking out.

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