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Dork Report for February 20, 2008 (Special Mutant Freak Edition)
Whut- duh- huh? Wow! The Daily Telegraph: World’s Only Blue-Eyed Koala Flickr: Pizzler’s Albino Moose photos Today’s Dork Report featured guest reporting by Dave.
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Ben Affleck’s pervasively grim Gone Baby Gone
Good ol’ Bahstuhn Cahtholick Ben Affleck is an all grown-up, big-boy director now, and lookit, he made himself a pretty decent movie. That said, Gone Baby Gone is a big plate of grim, with side order of depressing. Affleck makes excellent use of location footage and local color. And not surprising for a movie directed…
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The 10 Most Disappointing Movies I Saw in 2007
As I was compiling the best and worst movies I saw in 2007, I found I still had enough for a special category: movies that absolutely don’t deserve to be called bad, even when it’s just me here talking to myself on my stupid blog. But for one reason or another, here are the movies…
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The 9 Worst Movies I Saw in 2007
Just like Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Before Sunset, it’s the sequel that no one asked for! After the warm fuzzies of yesterday’s list of the Best Movies I Saw in 2007, it’s time for a little meanspirited snark. I might be committing professional suicide for publishing this list, for five out of nine of…
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The 8 Best Movies I Saw in 2007
Followers of this blog (a statistic which I believe can be plotted on an arc approaching zero) may have noticed an accumulation of digital dust this past year. Indeed, I watched my own blog drop off the first page of Google results for my own name. Who’s feeling lucky? A new year, another birthday (good…
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Cate is great in Elizabeth: The Golden Age
I’ll have to gang up with the general critical consensus around Elizabeth: The Golden Age, best summed up as: Cate Blanchett is astounding, as usual (yawn – the Academy Award nomination was virtually assured before the cameras rolled), but the movie is a disappointing sequel to a powerful original. Oh, and did I mention that…
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Julie Taymor does The Beatles songbook in Across the Universe
I believe I’m in the minority opinion here, but I really liked Across the Universe. Already loving the songs of the Beatles and the films of Julie Taymor, perhaps I’m predisposed. Taymor rounds up all the usual suspects from the Lennon & McCartney oeuvre: Lucy, Jude, Maxwell (as in “Silver Hammer”), Jo Jo (from “Get…
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U2 in a state called vertigo: U23D
U23D is actually a fairly traditional concert movie, a mostly straight-up filmed record of a representative show of a single tour. U2 had already produced one theatrical feature film about themselves (1988’s Rattle and Hum), and released numerous productions on video and DVD before and since. So what could have been just another video of…
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9/11-ploitation: J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield
First of all, let me just say I get it. I get that Cloverfield is meant to be a modern day analogue of Godzilla. I get that postwar Japanese moviegoers witnessed an enraged giant lizard borne of nuclear technology stomp Tokyo flat in an unstoppable pique, and I get that Godzilla became a classic for…
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The Dork Report for Feburary 3, 2007
Kids-in-Mind is my new favorite site, boldly making no distinction between parents (looking for information about the latest piece of crap their kids are begging to see) and right-wing cultural warriors (looking for something else upon which to blame society). According to my non-scientific survey of the site contents, Scary Movie is possibly the most…
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The Dork Report for January 27, 2007
Horning in on our spottily-updated territory, Mean Teacher gets her Dork on and pens a proper concert review (but not before paying the price). That said, no, you’re never too old. Although it’s probably best The Peppers don’t rock out with their socks out anymore… do they? Peter Gabriel’s gone indie. (spotted on Genesis-Movement) This…
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The Dork Report for January 18, 2007
Wikipedia’s Unusual Articles entry does exactly what it says on the tin, and it’s a veritable goldmine. Just to name a few gems at random: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo, famous body parts, list of self-referential songs (no longer online: en.wikipedia.org:80/wiki/List_of_self-referential_songs). Bouncing back from last year’s biking injury, Michael Brook lines up…