Speaking Space Here’s more about the challenge of architecture and cinema. It is not trivial, the problem of what spaces mean in films? What narrative role does it play? What vocabulary is relevant? This film is rather mundane in most ways. It is a biography of a fellow of influence. He’s quirky, but always in… Continue reading Visual Acoustics (2008)
Tag: f2008
Films released in 2008
A Movie With Me in It (2008)
Interesting and Uninteresting Muddles Once again, we have a script concept that is promising enough to matter. Once again, we have an inept film built on that idea, inept because the writer wanted to be in it. The overall shape is an ordinary, explicit fold: one buddy is a blocked film writer, the other an… Continue reading A Movie With Me in It (2008)
21 (2008)
Surf Heard in the Background It is a matter of tone. No matter what a film does, it has to take us somewhere. Ideally it goes another place after it has established you, but it has to establish a place, a form, a tone. MIT is a place worth being taken to. Not the fictitious… Continue reading 21 (2008)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
Puppets This has jokes that often work. It has a genuine pathos that is surprisingly rare and is now the trademark of Apatow productions. It has Hawaii and two women, one pretty the other a beauty. It has a deftly comic foil in the “other boyfriend.” It has some frontal male nudity that probably should… Continue reading Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
Doctor Who The Unicorn and the Wasp (2008)
Minority Report A reader suggested that I watch this. So I engaged with a few episodes, enough to find the most appealing ones to me. The supposed attraction is the extended magical journey, sort of a cross between “Doctor Strange,” the best Marvel comic character and “Hitchhiker’s guide,” with a plucky, admiring redheaded sidekick. I… Continue reading Doctor Who The Unicorn and the Wasp (2008)
Poirot, Appointment with Death (2008)
The Gathering Christie invented so much, and much of that has found its way into the film vocabulary. As with Conan Doyle, one can hardly work on her material without taking chances. Part of the risk is readers who will be upset with the translation to film. But others, like myself, may be annoyed not… Continue reading Poirot, Appointment with Death (2008)
Appalossa (2008)
Shifty Sometimes you can see the notes of the writer in a film. It is as if he or she sat down with the intent of accomplishing certain things and wrote a story. But instead of the story, we still see the unerased list of goals. When the writer isn’t a real writer, but an… Continue reading Appalossa (2008)
Flash of Genius (2008)
Wipeout There are all sorts of fabulous interminglings between film and life. At a general level, I study these things. But when “life” is meant in the sense of historical truth, and the film purports to represent that, then the examination gets a bits boring. Okay, so we have a movie where Napoleon went somewhere… Continue reading Flash of Genius (2008)
Glitch (2008)
Canine Cells This is bad in all the ordinary ways. The idea is bad and the general setup. The science is bad. But many of the background characters are worthwhile. The usual pattern for these cartoony projects is to have the main characters operate in an environmental sea of props and secondary characters who are… Continue reading Glitch (2008)
iMurders (2008)
Kernel Panic You know what? This is pretty incompetent in a few ways, but the incompetence works for it. This is a murder mystery of the old school. You are introduced to characters. Murders are being committed. Clues are placed around. Many suspects and many motives are given. There is a chatroom angle, but that… Continue reading iMurders (2008)