I’ve been neglecting this poor Web site to write and publish interesting things elsewhere. And I’m not the only one writing some good stuff about film right now. Here are some articles written by me or by other fascinating people, for your holiday weekend perusal … or for Tuesday morning when you can’t get going on actual work and need something to help wake up your brain.
I don’t follow celebrity news much myself, except as is unavoidable in the pursuit of film-related news. Cinematical asked me to take over the site’s weekly gossip column, and I decided to look on the assignment as a writing challenge. The first column appeared Friday — go read it, it won’t bite you. I’ve had several compliments on the writing style, which is non-snarky. I’m not very good with the snark — for some reason, it’s one of the few writing styles I can’t seem to master — so I went with a more down-home approach. It still feels weird that I’m writing a gossip column, though.
I can think of one item that I’d love to hear some gossip about: the inside story behind the very limited release of Idiocracy, Mike Judge’s latest film. I have been writing about this movie everywhere, it seems. Earlier this week, I discussed the mystery of the non-publicized release on Slackerwood. On Friday, the Beau and I caught the movie at Alamo on South Lamar, and I wrote a review for Cinematical. I took some photos at the movie Friday night and posted them, along with some observations about the screening, to Slackerwood.
The Beau and I spent a lot of time this weekend discussing the possible reasons behind the limited release. Did 20th Century Fox recut the film at the last minute, and give it a perfunctory release just so it wouldn’t go direct to DVD? Did Mike Judge finally lose his cool and have it out with Fox? Are the Fox execs clueless idiots? We’re hoping someone spills the beans eventually.
Other local reviews:
- Micah at Dumb Distraction(Dallas)
- Brian’s Movie Blog (Austin)
- Sarah Lindner at Austin Movie Blog (the Statesman’s movie blog)
- Quint at Ain’t It Cool News (Austin)
Admittedly, Austin and Dallas film writers got the rare experience of getting first crack at reviewing a limited-release movie — usually we have to wait a month behind New York and LA.
Reviewing Idiocracy made me realize how dependent I am on Web resources for getting movie details straight. I bring a notebook when I review movies and write down certain details such as main characters’ names, because I don’t know always know the actors by sight and IMDb often doesn’t have complete and accurate info posted before the movie opens. I never rely entirely on IMDb and usually check the movie’s Web site as well as any other promotional materials I receive. The info for IMDb on Idiocracy is very sketchy — among other things, the main character’s last name is misspelled. It’s “Bauers”, not “Bowers”. You can tell which critics relied on IMDb for their info because they all misspelled the name.
But in the case of Idiocracy, unless you took notes like a speed demon during the credits, you were forced to rely on IMDb because there was no publicity or pre-release info available anywhere. I didn’t spot actor David Herman (Michael Bolton in Office Space) in the movie, didn’t know he was in it until afterwards so I didn’t check the credits … and now am unable to discover which role he played. I remember having these problems reviewing movies when I was in college, because the LSU paper rarely received press kits and I wouldn’t have known the internet from a hole in the ground (this was 1990). It made me realize how much new technologies have changed the ways in which we review movies, and of course, the ways in which is it usually easier now for smaller publications to get the info they need to write professional reviews. Since I fall squarely in the category of “smaller publications” right now, I’m extremely grateful.
Was David Herman the army office who got arrested?
Did you also catch the guy from Bottle Rocket (the kid with the car) as Wilson’s Army boss at the beginning of the movie?
Note: I still think this wasn’t a very good movie.
That was Michael McCafferty as Officer Collins, if IMDb is right – it was hard to read what was scribbled in my little notebook, but ‘look up Collins’ was legible, since I thought he was a stand-out.
I talked to a couple of other people at our screening, and suggestions for Fox’s treatment included a possible perception of racism, trouble from large Corporations because of the way they were seen in the future, or just the power of Fox News itself. Who knows?
Jette, your gossip column started off well – putting a photo of George Clooney was a good tactic! But will you have a killer instinct for finding out the bad stuff?
Annie