John Carter (2012)

John Carter (2012)

(spoilers!)

John Carter is a decent, messy movie that throws too many things at the audience while offering too few really appealing aspects to make it worthwhile. It wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be but it certainly wasn’t really anything special either. The effects move from interesting to obvious, the acting is okay at best as no one really stands out, the plot is convoluted and the movie’s mood also alternates between pathos, comedy, action brawl and sci-fi standard. It is amazing yet again how a movie can be made for hundreds of millions of dollars, developed over decades and still leave such a little mark, not only in film history (besides being seen as a disastrous flop), but also for the audience. I can hardly imagine remembering much of this movie in a year or two.

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Superman Returns (2006)

Superman Returns (2006)

Superman Returns is a disaster I didn’t see coming. I read about the movie of course and I know people were disappointed. And after Man of Steel, I thought, well, I should watch this one too because even if it’s not great, it can’t be that bad. And it wasn’t, but only in the most objective perspective I can imagine. I hated Man of Steel, but it wasn’t boring and it had an emotional impact on me. True, that impact was mostly negative because it made me so angry for its content. But Superman Returns made me angry because it was such a waste of a movie, of talent, of ideas. It is one of the most boring movies I’ve seen in a long time, where absolutely nothing happens for the first thirty minutes and where even the action set pieces seem off, like it’s an accident if they actually excite you. The main problem is that it is almost impossible to care about any of the characters. This is also one of the most bland movies I have ever seen, a word I rarely use, but the only word I could think of (beside ‘boring’). None of the characters seem to be interested in anything, no real stakes are ever raised. How a great actor like Kevin Spacey can make a fascinating character like Lex Luthor so uninspired is beyond me. The attempts at recreating a feel for the original Superman movie made me cringe because it just didn’t work. Nothing really worked me. It just made me more angry the longer I had to suffer through all its incredible 154 minutes in which not much happens for 80% of the running time and the main character barely speaks.

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Comics Are for Everyone: 1940 Edition - Spanking During War Times [1940 Week]

Comics Are for Everyone: 1940 Edition - Spanking During War Times [1940 Week]

(Coincidentally, this is the 200th post on this blog! Yes, go and count, it's true. Hooray!)

Comics in 1940 were very different than they are now. If you know anything about comics history you know that publishers back then didn’t really care about artists or writers, let alone royalties. Stories were cobbled together with no time and not much care. That the mess of the origin of many famous characters is the basis for what we still read and watch today is somewhat amazing. If you actually look at those comics, you see no great art in most cases and certainly no stories that are well-written. I decided to take a look at some #1s that came out during that year and focus on the most interesting, funny, weird or problematic panels.

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Poster of a Girl - 1973 Edition: [1973 Week]

Poster of a Girl - 1973 Edition: [1973 Week]

It’s time for another poster post since looking at posters from 1973 is incredibly intriguing. And you’ll see some amazing posters here. Man, things were really different back then, sometimes for better, but mostly for worse. Keep in mind that many of the more outrageous posters are of movies that are obvious B-movie trash, but then again there are some posters that look silly and have some known names on them, on movies I have never heard of. As always, I scanned the IMP page for 1973 and picked a lot of posters to look at. I’ll put them in categories again, like in 1980, because I just couldn’t leave out so many of them and the themes are very recurring. There’ll be a gallery for categories with many posters so you can see for yourself, but I’ll highlight some favorites. This is not the week of short articles!

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Poster of a Girl: 1980 Edition

Poster of a Girl: 1980 Edition

It’s 1980 Week! What does that mean, you ask? Well, I decided to try out doing theme weeks from time to time, dedicating each post during that week to cultural artifacts (movies, comics, books, music) or historic events from one specific year. In the future, I will pick those years randomly, but for a start I decided on 1980, the year I was born, because, well, today’s my birthday. I don’t know how this will work out, so it’s an experiment. But I like experiments, obviously, which means I’m very excited!

To get an overview of this particular year, I thought it would be nice to look at its movie posters. I looked at all the posters of 1980 that can be found on IMP Awards and picked out the ones I found interesting. Which is still a lot (49). But because there are so many, I grouped them in categories, because many things repeat themselves. Without further ado, let’s give it up for 1980!

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The Bourne Legacy (2012)

The Bourne Legacy (2012)

The Bourne Legacy is a very interesting sequel. I watched it in school with my 7th graders because one of them suggested it. Most of them hadn’t known the earlier movies and were very confused by the plot. I would argue that this comes from a rather intelligently written screenplay by director Tony Gilroy and his brother Dan Gilroy. I know the movie was rather panned by critics but I enjoyed it a lot. The plot is demanding, the acting is excellent because of its amazing cast (especially Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton and Dennis Boutsikaris) and the action is well-made and mostly has a story-telling purpose. There is a moment where Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) climbs up a house parkour-style and shoots someone, which is expressive physically (although there probably was some trickery involved) but is also filmed amazingly as the camera (by the great Robert Elswit) follows him from the outside of the house through the window to the inside in one amazing take. The action scenes in Bangkok are less convincing, though, and expect us to suspend a lot of disbelief.

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