2013-02-28

Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
This article is a part of a series of imposed movie reviews in the participation of this films critic to the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die Club. It is an attempt at catching up the reviews that I’ve missed in my recent period of inactivity in the blogosphere.
Back in 1993, I was 10 years old and the movie Jurassic Park was on the lips of everyone. It was the Star Wars, the E.T., or the Avatar of my childhood. I vividly remember when my father bought the VHS and we would sit in front of the television to watch the film. It is one of the films I’ve seen the most times in my life. TO illustrate that : in 2006, I was in Italy with my wife and I watched the film in Italian and I could cite every line in French with the right intonation. I can play the movie in my head and I remember every frame and camera movement. Lately it has been announced that the movie that made 900 millions of dollars, when it came out, will be re-released in 3D for its 20th anniversary. This mean two things : the fact that this movie could have easily came out this year and that it passed through time and that I’ll be thirty years old this summer.

2013-02-27

Mike's Movie Goals For 2013 - Update

 
End of Febuary update.
With the recent Oscars, I find myself revigorated with a new thirst for watching films and blogging about them. I know that I've been pretty absent here and that my posting has been sparsed. Well, for the few out there who cared, I was starting a new job and as time and energy consuming as it was I did not found the proper moments to sit in front of a film and to write about it. Those are some of the reasons you won't see me hosting the Classic Chops on the LAMB and I won't be presenting my blog to the new edition of the Lammys. First, I don't think I deserve any of those recognitions and since I haven't been nominated it would be a waste of my time anyway. The passion of films and film writing is my reward so I don't need any other recognition other than your comments and reactions on my posts. Just having the chance to write them is enough for me. Enough of this and let's get to the update of my goals of 2013.
 For those who have been here a while you sure all know that I’ve been obsessively rambling about a particular list of films I’m targeting to complete. Since this list evolves from year to year, around January of each year the fine folks at They Shoot Pictures Don’t They? update the 1000 Greatest Films of All Time list. Every time I more or less gain some positions with the adding of more recent films that I had the luck to have seen before their intrusion.
With the recent update of the list I'm now at 551 546, on the day I wrote those lines down, I still have 454 films to catch before calling it a day. It is quite a huge assignment since my number of watches per year is clearly on a downfall since a couple of years. However, I’ve decided to spot my priorities for this quest (just like Kevyn Knox used to call his) and spot films that are grabbing my attention and that might open my viewing tastes.
First, I made a list of films I’ll likely try to tackle down while trying to get rid of my list of Pantheon Directors at the same time. The Pantheon Directors list stands as the foundation of every film enthusiast and or film critics’ theories and views on the cinema. It is quite arbitrary since American author theorist Andrew Sarris first made it in 1968. Anyhow, I still think it holds the road pretty much.

2013-02-23

85th Oscars Predictions

by Olly Moss as seen on tdylf.com,
Click on the Image for Higher Resolution

As I'm taking the time to post my mandatory Oscar Predictions I have to confess that I was not very active on this Blog since the debut of 2013. Let's take the Oscars Predictions and get a big push into 2013 movies and films cirtics.

Argo

Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012)

A dramatization of the 1980 joint CIA-Canadian secret operation to extract six fugitive American diplomatic personnel out of revolutionary Iran.

As History goes the common people like you and me are more and more aware of international issues around the world with the democratization of the medias and the spread of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. In past years, many revolts in the Middle East have been fueled with the social networks. Sometimes it's for the best. In the case of Argo we are transported in 1979-1980's uprising of Iran with the Ayatollah and the Political refuge of the Shah in the USA. The Shah, being funded by the Americans against the wide spread of Communism of the Soviet Union and in the not so secret issue of keeping the access to petrol, has been declared an enemy of his land. During the uprisings, a group of 44 Americans of the Embassy were kept by the Islamic Republic of Iran. A small group of 6 escaped to the Canadian Embassy and were secretly living there waiting to escape the country.

2013-02-19

10 Years

10 Years (Jamie Linden, 2011)
The 10 year reunion of a group of friends from High School is the setting of this one night story with an ensemble cast of Channing Tatum, Justin Long, Kate Mara, Chris Pratt, Rosario Dawson, Max Minghella, and many others.  This plot line resumes well the movie that in fact shows different vignettes of the young adults having not really evolved since their high school years. The plot has many problems and one major is the fact that the characters have each their past in High School and we seem to never really get involved in their gang or to be able to get the big piucture. The failure of the director Jamie Linden is to not make us feel we are in the gang. Being the same age of these adults I was expecting to easily connect with the different characters but I feel that they are from a High School that is only possible in films and that the group of friends is so stereotyped that compared to a near-masterpiece like Dazed and Confused, 10 Years is a very poor film.

2013-02-18

Intouchables

Intouchables (Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, 2011)
A seriously handicaped rich man (François Cluzet) seeks for an aidant, but the task is very hard and even if it is well paid the number of people who occupied the position is huge. This goes on until he meets a young black man (Omar Sy) from a poor milieu with a great heart and a lot of pragmatism.
This comedy had every ingredient to fall into the easy path of melodramas and the victimization of wheelchair handicaped people. However, the angle of approach of the two directors (Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano) brought an encounter of two improbable person becoming best buds. It is the overused concept of the Odd Couple, where two very different kind of characters get along in a way that only buddy flicks can, that can be one of the most obvious elements of the plot. Mostly because of the many times the same story has been done over and over again, I was expecting something very convetional and obvious. And even if the story is inspired by true events and characters, we feel that the plot hasn’t been that much romanced.
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