tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55910382012-02-16T12:44:37.025-08:00A place for discourse about stuff I'm interested in: movies, television, politics, spontaneous combustion.Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.comBlogger2951100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-67117210816007625302010-06-15T00:19:00.008-07:002010-06-15T13:27:25.802-07:00

The good news is, this movie isn’t truly horrible. The bad news is, there seems to be no reason for it to exist – nobody involved in it really seems to know what they’re doing. I'm guessing there was a lot of awkward silence around the craft services table, a lot of furtive glances and avoidance of eye contact.The story structure closely follows in the steps of the original 1974 film directed by

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-32304750090078956972010-02-28T22:43:00.004-08:002010-03-01T19:47:14.440-08:00

Or as this post should also be known, "I should really have at least one post for the month of February 2010." Anyway, take a look at these excerpts from a failed 1990 pilot about a cop reincarnated as a bulldog - it's really hard to believe anyone other than a network executive could have ever thought this would be a good idea.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-12563350780329855902010-01-29T14:35:00.002-08:002010-01-29T14:37:39.992-08:00

I have to break my silence to share this awesome, ridiculous pre-game video with you.Alaska Nanooks 2010 Hockey Intro from Szymon Weglarski on Vimeo.Up soon: Avatar.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-91550658391849131442010-01-08T02:05:00.004-08:002010-01-08T02:08:29.169-08:00

First of all, Happy New Year.Second, this is what I've been feeling like lately:I plan to be more active soon, thanks for your patience.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-64157069206039728212009-12-18T18:25:00.000-08:002009-12-18T18:26:53.597-08:00

This is pretty awesome.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-84090875949517690582009-12-11T21:23:00.011-08:002009-12-11T22:27:36.245-08:00

Okay, it's been a while and once again I've been reminded that people actually read this blog so here are a few thoughts on the new movies I've watched in the last month or so. First, real quick, I could use some suggestions on the design and color scheme - I went black for October because black is spooky, but in general? This gray isn't cutting it. I think I want to migrate the whole thing over

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-554478251196242082009-12-11T12:36:00.002-08:002009-12-11T12:39:01.044-08:00

The swearing is pretty good, but the fact that the swearer is a member of Parliament who nonetheless looks like he just wandered in off the Dublin streets after a relaxing pint? Even better.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-46740380089443111392009-11-24T20:27:00.000-08:002009-11-24T20:29:23.677-08:00

Awesome.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-28228079340558998972009-11-19T22:34:00.016-08:002009-11-20T04:15:30.094-08:00

This was an interesting documentary that played at the Silent Theater a couple of weeks ago. Basically, it's the story of Todd Walker, a down-on-his-luck Kentuckian who strolled into a Goodwill one day, bought an odd-looking object that struck his eye for $0.69, went home, stared at it for a few hours (like you do) and realized that he was having visions of demons and pyramids and whatnot. A

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-20202255941243380192009-11-16T02:29:00.003-08:002009-11-16T02:34:51.002-08:00

Okay, bear with me - today is the birthday of character actor Clu Gulager, who I don't actually know, but have seen many times at the New Beverly Theater where he's a regular. He seems to be a great guy, and he was in a lot of movies, of which this - Uninvited - is perhaps my favorite. It's about a genetically engineered cat that, when angry, launches another, smaller, evil radioactive cat out

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-91935349181837333342009-11-13T01:36:00.004-08:002009-11-13T01:40:55.623-08:00

If I had been born about ten or fifteen years earlier, I'd probably hate the entire Friday the 13th series as much as I hate the Saw series - a bunch of pointlessly identical misanthropic cash cows. But since I've only seen them all on home video with a respectable distance, they're basically all '80s kitsch, which means that I kind of like some of them - and I like Part 2 the best of all. Happy

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-4723506722074314482009-11-06T22:35:00.007-08:002009-11-06T23:21:25.964-08:00

This one is going to split viewers - or at least, the small number of viewers who get to see it since it's basically been dumped by the studio. In each of his three movies, Jared Hess has walked the fine line between making fun of his oddball characters (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre) and empathizing with them and their unusual plights. Many have seen these movies as essentially mean-spirited

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-54163109995436222752009-11-02T20:24:00.013-08:002009-11-02T20:57:37.179-08:00

Sometimes it's the little things that stick out in a movie. Offerings is a pretty undistinguished Halloween ripoff from 1989 (way to jump on that slasher bandwagon in a timely way, guys!) and made in Oklahoma. It slavishly follows the Halloween template - weird kid gets locked up, comes back years later to kill a batch of teenagers, there's an expert who tries to track him down, etc. This killer,

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-75347137043880123692009-10-31T18:15:00.015-08:002009-11-03T00:55:58.802-08:00

Okay, so being unemployed for 3 weeks out of the month allowed me to watch a total of 38 horror movies, old and new, seen-before and never-seen-before. Yes, that disturbs and alarms me as well. Anyway, here's how they stacked up:WORST OF THE WORST: Canvas of Blood (1997)Mind, Body & Soul (1992)Danger on Tiki Island (1968)Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders (1996)BLAHSuperstition (1982)The Horror

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-91357416378620425542009-10-27T22:42:00.004-08:002009-10-28T00:05:47.026-08:00

Okay, I haven't actually seen this movie, but I stumbled upon this trailer and isn't it kind of craptacularly awesome? An Exorcist ripoff with Piper Laurie riding the success of her character from Carrie and featuring all manner of wind-machine hauntings, wheelchair flops, Lesbian romances (?!) and underwater skeletonfights? Yes please.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-64476973700213806882009-10-25T20:30:00.007-08:002009-10-25T22:49:43.937-08:00

Typically, a big budget is considered to be the best way to ruin a comedy - Evan Almighty, Land of the Lost, name your own. Ghostbusters is a rarity, a movie that ambitiously seeks to be a whole bunch of different things - raucous comedy, horror film, tentpole adventure movie - and does them all well.One of the reasons why the movie succeeds so well, for me, is that it clearly takes place in a

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-8495162430358264182009-10-23T20:33:00.011-07:002009-10-24T03:15:11.083-07:00

Well, it's nice to know that the totally misbegotten sequel to a big studio hit has a long tradition behind it. This movie is pretty much a failure on every level except as camp. How does a mega-million-dollar corporation let something like this happen? But if not for bizarre studio choices we wouldn't have Citizen Kane or Inglourious Basterds either, so anyways.Anyway, while it's a dismal

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-75496720830026116722009-10-21T22:25:00.009-07:002009-10-21T22:56:35.191-07:00

This played at the New Beverly Tuesday night in a double bill with Blacula, and even though I hadn't heard of this movie before, I think it was the more entertaining of the two. It's a pretty simple set-up: nice guy Glynn Turman gets put into a trance by a Bourbon Street hypnotist and then gets possessed (as will happen) by the ghost of vengeful 1940s gangster J.D. Walker.The trailer makes it

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-50107177090223288112009-10-18T23:57:00.007-07:002009-10-19T00:36:57.390-07:00

Speaking of movies with backlashes, here's another one, although the backlash against this movie is less about commercial hype than it is about political correctness, so let's get this out of the way: yes, The Exorcist is ultimately a movie with a regressive attitude towards gender roles (two priests must do battle against an unruly female) and towards morality (stark medieval good vs. evil).All

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-88710059998289958772009-10-17T23:20:00.005-07:002009-10-19T00:08:08.096-07:00

When you have a horror movie without stars in it and without a standard premise for a marketing hook, it becomes necessary to market it as "The Scariest Movie of All Time". And then when when people go to see it and it's a perfectly respectable scary movie, but not so scary that everybody watching it has their eyeballs explode in terror and the ushers all quit because the seats are covered in the

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-29666513146757896252009-10-15T00:52:00.006-07:002009-10-15T01:13:16.853-07:00

This scene is pretty much all you need to know about the partially-Spanish-made 1982 slasher Pieces - a college coed has just been murdered, chainsaw-style, in a locker room, and Lynda Day George here has discovered the body. What I especially like about this moment is the total bewilderment the other actor has on his face - how is he supposed to react to this insane bit of performance? I'm just

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-88940800026622629942009-10-13T23:46:00.012-07:002009-10-14T01:12:25.630-07:00

Ugh, save me from the '80s slasher movie where NOTHING HAPPENS. There's a reason why there were so many Halloween ripoffs in the early '80s: they were cheap to make. All you needed was a small cast of unknown actors, a few simple locations (a house or two, a college gym, a summer camp) and a decent special effects guy with some gore experience. Put it all together and you have a huge rate of

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-6233554078455974732009-10-11T23:55:00.013-07:002009-10-12T01:16:12.567-07:00

God, I love the New Beverly, LA's grungiest non-porn repertory theater. This year, as last year, they showed an all-night horror movie marathon in the lead-up to Halloween and I was there, here's the quick rundown:Dog Soldiers (2002): I had seen Neil Marshall's directorial debut before on DVD; on a second viewing it's still a pretty kickass action/horror hybrid, but at the same time some of

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-19926861063951548442009-10-10T18:07:00.005-07:002009-10-10T18:43:33.503-07:00

As far as I can tell, Jose Mojica Marins basically pioneered the Latin American horror movie at about the same time that the British, Italians, and Japanese were all launching into the worldwide exploitation market. And like most of those movies, JMM's work is raw, pulpy, and an expression of raw id. Marins' alter-ego, Coffin Joe, is basically the world's worst undertaker, with an ego of colossal

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-45238601191550846392009-10-07T23:53:00.005-07:002009-10-08T00:01:22.948-07:00

Anyone who watches enough basic cable has seen these ads, and I want to congratulate the fine people at Broadview Security for inventing a new subgenre: Fear Porn. Without the services of Broadview Security, you too will be the victim of a brazen daylight attack!Basically, I think these things are terrible, blatantly exploiting peoples' (specifically women's) fears through slick filmmaking, and I

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-79468461439297826142009-10-06T23:55:00.008-07:002009-10-07T22:28:30.145-07:00

This one played at the New Beverly about a month ago and I didn't know anything about it except that the premise involves Barbara Hershey getting raped by a ghost. Obviously this was a can't miss premise in the post-Exorcist era even if it sounds utterly ridiculous now. And sure enough, that's what happens, about five times during the course of the movie, each time accompanied by the most

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-61922928777518869782009-10-05T21:25:00.022-07:002009-10-05T23:53:01.709-07:00

It's a strange feeling to be in a theater full of people who are having a different experience than yours. The best example of this feeling in my lifetime was when I went to see Eyes Wide Shut on opening weekend, and when the audience of mainstream movie-goers expecting a Basic Instinct-style erotic thriller actually got a lengthy dream-fugue on sexual morality, the audience's emotional strain (

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-76030820980653593692009-10-04T18:29:00.021-07:002009-10-05T22:30:42.622-07:00

Creepshow creeped me out before I even saw it. This was thanks to the Berni Wrightson graphic novel that came out the same time as the movie, which my Stephen King-loving mother bought and which I gobbled up (it being a lot easier and quicker to read than, say, The Stand). And, at the age of 5, it was my first introduction to the world of the E.C.-style comics that it was homaging, full of lurid

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-92195789963996932332009-10-02T21:35:00.008-07:002009-10-03T15:27:19.573-07:00

Lame. There's a lot of untapped potential here in this story literalizing the hell of high school social relations into an actual story of demonic possession, but what ended up on the screen looks like it was about three screenplay drafts away from being ready to shoot - the character relationships are underdeveloped, the structure is clunky, things are set up and then poorly paid off, if at all.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-48383585449333307302009-10-01T23:43:00.016-07:002009-10-02T00:56:18.444-07:00

Sweet jeebus, I went the entire month of September without making a single entry here? Dammit. It was a busy, stressful month, a time now relieved by the magic of...(drum roll)...Unemployment!So here's the deal: I have no job to go to and it's October, so my goal for this month is to actually make a blog post every day. And the best way for me to do that is to set myself a goal: Review a horror

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-89639765330949064542009-08-28T01:15:00.002-07:002009-08-28T01:19:56.317-07:00

This now rockets to the upper echelons of my must-see list.Also, I hope to go on a blogging spree soon and write up my thoughts on a bunch of movies, including Whatever Works (6/10), The Hurt Locker (8/10), Orphan (7/10), Thirst (8/10), Taxidermia (8/10) and Inglourious Basterds (9/10). Fingers crossed!

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-91621480253729033722009-08-19T00:14:00.001-07:002009-08-19T00:16:56.228-07:00

Wow, this goes way beyond what I was expecting. Looking forward to it now a lot more.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-90763338123814612802009-08-18T01:42:00.003-07:002009-08-18T01:53:37.711-07:00

Good stuff, in general from the Dardenne brothers, but I fear that their formulas may be beginning to yield diminishing returns. Specifically in this movie, we once again have a movie about the plight of immigrants in scuzzy modern Belgium (just like La Promesse) and a feisty young woman trying to own a cafe (just like Rosetta) and dealing with an acute moral crisis (just like all of them) which

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-76496797333280869942009-08-17T01:28:00.003-07:002009-08-17T01:38:50.226-07:00

This is just a quick little ramble so as to maintain some presence on this thing. Basically, the G.I. Joe movie was tolerable. It's watchable in that hit-your-head-enough-time-and-eventually-it-feels-okay kind of way that's increasingly dominating American movies. It's certainly better than Transformers 2, and there are big parts of it that I enjoyed, including the bad guy performances of Sienna

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-78375713735472702812009-07-28T20:56:00.003-07:002009-07-28T20:59:18.029-07:00

As usual I'm about three steps behind everyone else in finding this stuff. The first time I watched this I was 'meh'. By the third time, I realized it was AMAZING.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-50068946412198304492009-07-23T22:20:00.008-07:002009-07-23T23:18:21.090-07:00

I've developed this pattern of only posting two or three times a month, mostly involving a Youtube video and a post of short reviews starting with the phrase, "I apologize" so let's just move on from there with quick thoughts on things I've watched since my last review.Drag Me to Hell. Something of a minor masterpiece, and pretty much the best studio movie I've seen this year. Sam Raimi makes

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-73043323116365966922009-07-22T23:44:00.004-07:002009-07-22T23:49:55.710-07:00

This happened in 2002, but I only saw it for the first time a few days ago amidst the hubbub over the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. Buzz Aldrin may be a lot of things (astronaut, recovering alcoholic, possible UFO spotter), but this shows that American hero is still one of them. And goddammit, I hate conspiracy theorists.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-4377251215443224652009-07-13T22:25:00.004-07:002009-07-13T22:28:27.822-07:00

It's been a while since I posted anything really weird and disgusting, so please enjoy this colony of worms discovered in a Raleigh, N.C. sewer. Why the sewers in Raleigh have video footage, I don't know.(thanks to Drew McWeeny's blog for showing me this.)

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-33695687651827070552009-06-27T03:30:00.013-07:002009-06-27T04:04:07.970-07:00

I don't think I've really processed this one, yet. It's an epoch-shattering event, on the same level as the deaths of Elvis or John Lennon, but by now we've seen so many of these superstars-turned-crazy-tabloid-fodder-turned-corpses that it almost feels like it was inevitable, like this was the logical next step after Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, and Anna Nicole Smith. I mean, we all knew

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-54443338625082599172009-06-02T12:16:00.009-07:002009-06-02T18:05:38.266-07:00

Ron Howard seems like such a nice guy, why does he insist on making such shitty movies? So here we have another Dan Brown movie - stiff, self-important, blithely clueless on its own subject matter (church history, particle physics) at the service of some kind of weirdly self-serving rhetoric about the Catholic Church being out of touch with the modern era. It has a little more energy than its

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-36331656105913369302009-05-31T17:27:00.012-07:002009-05-31T18:47:05.438-07:00

Yeesh, it's hard to keep up-to-date on this thing when I'm working 60-hour weeks. But enough excuses, here's a quick roundup of the last several things that I've seen:Anvil: The Story of Anvil. Why the redundant title? Otherwise, it's a pretty good, if limited, picture of a couple of guys in mid-life crisis as they try to recover their glory days, basically a cross between American Movie and This

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-89076444436815232222009-05-09T02:09:00.006-07:002009-05-31T18:42:37.240-07:00

Two things:1) This movie has one of the most retarded titles in movie history. Worse than The Incredibly Strange Creatures that Became Mixed-Up Zombies or Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. 2) This movie is a huge snoozy waste of time. I didn't care about any of the characters. All of the action sequences were mundane and tedious and the movie as a whole lacks a reason to exist. Basically, it makes Brett

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-69623309339362937222009-05-01T23:54:00.001-07:002009-05-01T23:56:45.182-07:00

This is one of those Youtube things that probably everyone's sick of by now, but I don't care - it doesn't fail to crack me up whenever I watch it. It's like watching a concert piped in from a parallel dimension.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-88956078086966142342009-04-30T23:12:00.012-07:002009-05-01T23:58:09.351-07:00

Full disclosure: sometime around 1993 or 1994, I won a Star Trek trivia contest at a convention, the prize being a free ticket to the next convention. So yeah, I'm an old-school Star Trek nerd of a pretty high order - not such a high order that I ever got dressed up as a Borg or went to Klingon language camp. But high enough that I do indeed know at least a couple of Klingon words (Qapla'!)This

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-49931042274938384082009-04-20T22:02:00.004-07:002009-04-20T22:36:34.562-07:00

James Ballard reached his widest audience with Empire of the Sun, his memoir of his childhood during World War II, but I first discovered him thanks to David Cronenberg, whose film of Crash (the only good movie with that title) led me to the novel of Crash and also to Concrete Island and The Atrocity Exhibition - novels that are cold, detached, filthy, deranged, deterministic. They also represent

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-86028807010926923902009-04-19T23:07:00.011-07:002009-04-19T23:50:05.464-07:00

Seeing this movie again for the first time in several years, I finally figured out the two strands of filmmaking that it's attempting (without really succeeding) to synthesize. It's a combination of the bold visual spectacle and brainy, existential concepts of 2001: A Space Odyssey, mixed with the turgid melodrama and flatness of an Airport movie. I mean, it even looks like an Airport movie (

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-10424043314390331032009-04-13T01:09:00.006-07:002009-04-13T01:37:20.213-07:00

Okay, so I haven't done any posting here in a while, because all of my time has been taken by my current job. So in the interest of putting something, anything up here, I'll just put a scoreboard up of the last two months' worth of movies that I've seen:First, new movies:Watchmen: Mixed bag. Some great scenes and performances, especially Jackie Earle Haley and Billy Crudup; some total garbage

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-50651135550624590362009-03-03T23:11:00.005-08:002009-03-03T23:38:01.145-08:00

I saw this for the second time a few days ago at the Silent Theater, here in Los Angeles. I'm a relative latecomer to Francois Truffaut - I didn't see any of his movies until about five or six years ago, but was instantly hooked. Of the Truffaut movies that I've seen, Adele H. is one of my absolute favorites - for one thing, I'm a fan of the 'person goes crazy' subgenre of movies. It's a personal

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-1879982486110173842009-02-22T16:17:00.007-08:002009-03-03T23:05:28.221-08:00

Just before I'm completely irrelevant, here's my ten favorite movies from last year (including a couple that are technically 2007 titles, but whatevs).First, my ten runners-up (#s 11-20):20. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull19. Be Kind Rewind18. Encounters at the End of the World17. Wall-E16. Ballast15. Wendy and Lucy14. Stuck13. Burn After Reading12. Tropic Thunder11. Let the

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-3634796583476891332009-02-20T20:49:00.008-08:002009-02-20T21:18:59.322-08:00

I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. Filmmakers are always looking for real-life stories to draw on for material, and liberal filmmakers are always looking for abuses of the system to make movies about that'll get their audiences riled up in rightous indignation, and liberal filmmakers who also have commercial instincts are going to look for ways to make socially relevant material

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-19368734132136952192009-02-12T23:05:00.009-08:002009-02-12T23:34:08.328-08:00

Before the date passes, I wanted to give a little shout-out to the man who (with Mendel) basically invented modern biology as we know it. Before Darwin, biology was classification, of species of plants and animals into different categories, the curious creations of unknowable forces. After Darwin, biology was a science, an interconnected system of predators and prey, habitats and ecosystems

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-44911944723672399652009-02-10T23:58:00.008-08:002009-02-11T00:34:08.547-08:00

(Catching up on titles that I haven't covered in the last few months).This one strikes me as a good example of a film that knows the words, but not the music, of its source material. Director Sam Mendes has made a very highly-crafted film - gorgeous cinematography from Roger Deakins, pretty good score from Thomas Newman, and the best performances I've seen from either Leonardo DiCaprio or Kate

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-26259365066241851962009-02-05T18:58:00.027-08:002009-02-05T20:58:05.745-08:00

Okay, so I think I've finally seen just about all of the movies I needed to catch up on for some good, serious list-making. And I also intend to actually write some reviews of the major releases from the last year over the course of this next month, to try and get some real content up here. But first, before we get to the good, the bad: my list of the Ten Worst Movies of 2008.Now this is always a

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-37267453440353687992009-02-02T17:15:00.002-08:002009-02-05T18:42:43.262-08:00

Watch the whole thing.It's terrible, but it's wonderful.UPDATE 2/5/09: Thanks, Youtube, for the goddamn spoiler. This is best appreciated when it takes you by total surprise.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-19728649879440538212009-01-29T17:03:00.005-08:002009-01-29T17:16:35.407-08:00

First of all, if only there was some way to end our energy crisis by harnessing Rod Blagojevich's colossal, self-denying ego:My favorite moment, at about 1:05, is when Blagojevich pretends that he's just another victim of unemployment.Then there's this, which is just amusing:

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-48208521416259496312009-01-27T17:16:00.007-08:002009-01-30T04:50:53.387-08:00

This is the best story so far that I've seen about the birth, yesterday, of eight babies to an unidentified mother in a Los Angeles suburb.When you have that many babies, it should really be labelled as a litter. And there are few things that I would want to label as a 'perversion of science' but along with extreme plastic surgery, this is one of them. There's a reason why some species have large

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-91318837614163522582009-01-26T23:41:00.014-08:002009-02-05T18:55:01.148-08:00

I've been lucky enough (it certainly wasn't based on my prolific output) to be invited to participate in this year's Muriel Awards, which are organized by Paul Clark to honor the year's best films and filmmakers, by the most knowledgeable and opinionated people around: amateur movie bloggers (okay, there are some professionals in there too).Among the awards given out are the 50th/25th/10th

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-73097932376735455452009-01-23T02:34:00.016-08:002009-01-23T03:41:15.188-08:00

This was my most recent double feature at the New Beverly theater, partially chosen in honor of Barack Obama's inauguration as the first black (and/or bi-racial) President. Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde gives us Bernie Casey (Under Siege, Revenge of the Nerds) as Dr. Henry Pride, a devoted scientist who researches experimental liver transplant techniques and volunteers at an inner-city clinic during his

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-6386938529616018312009-01-22T16:03:00.004-08:002009-01-22T16:36:10.508-08:00

Okay, so there were some surprises. I underestimated the Academy's preference for WWII/Nazi-centered films, which partially accounts for The Reader getting nominations for Best Picture and Director. I disliked Stephen Daldry's last film (The Hours) and based on middling reviews, I've been ignoring The Reader, so now I guess I need to go see it.Everybody figured The Dark Knight would get a Best

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-75343294719072037002009-01-22T02:29:00.007-08:002009-01-22T03:24:26.838-08:00

It's so close to the announcement that the only real purpose of this will be to make me look wrong, but whatever:BEST PICTURE:The Curious Case of Benjamin ButtonThe Dark KnightFrost/NixonMilkSlumdog Millionaire These five have been locked in for a while. Possible upset: Doubt bumps out The Dark Knight.BEST DIRECTORDanny Boyle, Slumdog MillionaireDavid Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-54958667263436289962009-01-19T16:02:00.003-08:002009-01-19T16:06:21.905-08:00

Finally, someone digs up video footage of the USAir emergency landing in the Hudson from last Thursday.I'm actually surprised that there weren't any amateur or cell-phone video clips of this thing happening - I would have guessed that the noise of the flight coming down would have been pretty noticeable, and aren't New Yorkers attuned to that kind of event?Hats off again to Captain Sullenberger

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-46078621414689900542009-01-15T01:59:00.004-08:002009-01-15T02:17:14.863-08:00

I'm a fan of irrational, inexplicable, unresolved things happening in movies - mainstream American filmgoing gets so sedate and predictable that it's nice to have something bizarre happen every so often, and besides, isn't that the way life works? Which is all why I enjoyed the '80s horror movie Blood Beach, which I picked up thanks to the abrupt closing of a Video Hut in my neighborhood. Blood

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-1650984818544965752009-01-12T16:17:00.004-08:002009-01-12T16:29:43.143-08:00

Not a movie I've seen, but a Norwegian Nazi-zombie film that's screening at this year's Sundance and which I hope to see sometime later down the road. Yeah, it's the umpteenth zombie-parody-pastiche that's been made, but this one looks pretty solidly made. Here's a clip:

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-85134946291828025592008-12-30T08:30:00.005-08:002008-12-30T08:38:10.569-08:00

And apologies for not posting more stuff, or more interesting stuff. One of my New Year's resolutions will be to try and get more stuff up on this damn thing more regularly - I mean, I am unemployed for the foreseeable future, so I should be able to, right?In honor of the season, here's a tidbit of delightful sleaziness:And here's a talking cat:I hope everyone out there, whoever you are, is

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-40396762592044598312008-12-21T03:40:00.005-08:002008-12-21T03:47:29.841-08:00

Why is it that, no matter where I go or how much I pay, I can't get a good haircut? They always leave it too long in one part of my head or (and this makes less sense) cut it too short on another part of my head. Doesn't it make sense, from a business perspective, to leave it all a little long, so I have to come back sooner? Jesus, now I wander around looking like a special needs kid for a week

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-86690699915719546842008-12-18T04:54:00.028-08:002008-12-18T07:41:32.208-08:00

I still have a lot of watching to do before I can come up with a Best of 2008 list, but I'm reasonably comfortable in putting together this list of the best old movies that I saw for the first time this year. I'm especially proud to say thank you to the people at the New Beverly, the Silent Theater, the American Cinematheque, and the UCLA Archives, where I saw a lot of these.First, in

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-23893993416800468112008-12-15T02:09:00.006-08:002008-12-16T01:27:08.404-08:00

As a big fan of Stephen King, it's always interesting for me to see what he thinks of the world of movies, he's a guy with very regular, everyman tastes that he expresses with great clarity and intelligence, even when I disagree with him, or when it looks like he just flat-out hasn't seen very many movies. Here's his list for this year, if you want all the specifics, but here's the simple top ten

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-38773245515009475862008-12-14T18:13:00.003-08:002008-12-14T18:16:41.957-08:00

Hopefully this is the final punchline to the long, sad, debilitating joke that has been the Presidency of George W. Bush. I mean, it's kind of an appropriately ridiculous and humiliating way to end his term (although to the guy's credit, he has great reflexes and ducking ability). God, it'll be nice to have him finally gone.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-1139386211548318152008-12-09T01:01:00.011-08:002008-12-09T01:40:33.744-08:00

I saw this over the weekend at the New Beverly in a beautiful 35mm print. It's funny how you just flat-out can't appreciate certain things until a later phase in life. Back about ten or fifteen years ago, when I rented Saul Bass's Phase IV, I thought of it as a mildly entertaining man-against-nature sci-fi movie. Watching it this time, my thoughts were something along the lines of, "Holy shit,

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-32821836178293756542008-12-08T00:02:00.008-08:002008-12-08T00:23:09.790-08:00

This is the time of the year when any number of talented, hard-working actors vie for awards in classy, glossy studio movies, so it seems appropriate to also remember the career of a talented, hard-working woman who worked in Hollywood for decades but is today best-known for My Three Sons and a handful of early Roger Corman movies - a realm in which good acting is even harder to recognize, when

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-33040152698295387272008-12-07T23:18:00.004-08:002008-12-08T00:01:55.250-08:00

I've been living in Los Angeles for seven and a half years now, and one of my big regrets is that I didn't make it to the Ackermansion while there was still time. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, the legendary Forrest J. Ackerman, who coined the term 'sci-fi' and set thousands of young minds alight with his Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, transformed his house over the years

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-6663838414037511942008-11-29T16:11:00.007-08:002008-11-29T16:37:45.864-08:00

Based on my mixed feelings on the other Baz Luhrmann movies, and pretty weak advance reviews, my expectations were pretty low for this one, but it was reasonably satisfying in a kind of big, dopey, eager-to-please kind of way, the cinematic equivalent of a friendly dog. It's a love story between Nicole Kidman's Lady Sarah and Hugh Jackman's 'The Drover' and the two of them pour on the charisma

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-7437338203891082712008-11-24T17:49:00.003-08:002008-11-24T17:52:07.586-08:00

Here's a pretty nifty video of a meteor striking somewhere around Edmonton, from a police car dashboard camera. I love the look of it, the kind of spontaneous majesty that no Hollywood effects artist could create.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-3519598644327753242008-11-22T03:54:00.017-08:002008-11-22T04:49:45.568-08:00

Mostly due to boredom, I decided to put together this list of my least favorite, most hated movies for each letter of the alphabet. And believe me, there's a reason why the likes of Pearl Harbor and Saw IV aren't on this list - the selectees are just that awful. ALso, please note that my choice for Y is, in fact, a perfectly OK Italian giallo thriller which is significantly better than the rest

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-35422587670247658392008-11-18T00:02:00.020-08:002008-11-18T03:08:15.026-08:00

Craig Kennedy of Living in Cinema was nice enough to invite me to participate in a communal blog game where each participant is supposed to pick their favorite movie for each letter of the alphabet. But of course, that would be too easy (and a little boring - gentlemen, we can't all pick Vertigo for 'V') so my list is 26 of my favorite B horror movies (sorry Jaws, no A-level productions here).

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-39204569371181067242008-11-14T01:13:00.002-08:002008-11-14T01:15:59.095-08:00

My good friend Joe White, who served as the director of photography of Repo! The Genetic Opera (now in release - it's worth taking a look at) just joined Facebook, and he chose this as his Facebook photo. He is not any of these three people.More content coming soon!

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-74480361008853987862008-11-10T00:56:00.009-08:002008-11-14T01:16:54.613-08:00

Apologies once again for going so long without posting - apparently there are about thirty people out there who check this thing at least once a week for updates, and I'm letting you down. Also, do I know more than thirty people?First of all, let's just consider the most magical event from this last week: Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, we now have a President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-11963119060956359762008-10-18T02:16:00.006-07:002008-10-18T02:26:02.550-07:00

When did it happen that comedians started doing the jobs of journalists? I know that metaphorically, it's always been the role of the jester to tell the truth in a way that the court appointees couldn't manage, but when did it happen that our custodians of truth relegated themselves so far to the back that the Stewarts, Colberts, and Lettermans have become the key truth-tellers of the current

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-77889051799250103662008-10-15T22:57:00.005-07:002008-10-15T23:07:36.895-07:00

I don't believe in complacency, and a lot can happen in three weeks, but this race is basically over, and McCain's attitude - clearly angry and seething - is a big part of why his numbers have gone down. I mean, he does realize there are cameras on him even when he's not talking, right?In other news, hopefully I'll have some more stuff posted here soon - I've recently seen Eagle Eye (5/10)

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-74515409282291797452008-09-28T23:57:00.005-07:002008-09-29T01:09:21.554-07:00

In a year that's seen some pretty major losses of Hollywood talent, here's another one. Paul Newman was the kind of guy that Hollywood was all about - tough yet sensitive, glamorous yet down-to-earth, one of the most successful stars of his generation yet still possessed of a remarkable integrity and taste for projects that rarely pandered to the lowest denominator. In other words, he was a

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-61192594526948235142008-09-23T00:41:00.013-07:002008-09-23T01:59:35.204-07:00

Two more Pasolini movies before I try and make a stab at the feces-encrusted elephant in the room, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. Anybody who ever snuck a look at what Cinemax used to show late at night (do they still?) will be familiar with the style of Pasolini's The Canterbury Tales, which, alongside his The Decameron and Arabian Nights were pioneers of the softcore European skin-flick, tales

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-62362506754467630172008-09-08T22:55:00.007-07:002008-12-09T05:16:12.211-08:00

I've been watching some Pasolini movies for the last couple of weeks to gear up for watching the new Criterion DVD of Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. First, Mamma Roma, which is a sort of updated Neorealist parable about a middle-aged prostitute's attempt to break way from her sordid lifestyle, for the sake of her teenage son - do I need to say that it doesn't have a happy ending? What's most

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-31039700410481950402008-09-08T22:35:00.004-07:002008-09-08T22:53:36.771-07:00

First, sorry to whatever faithful 'readers' there are out there for the lack of posting for the last couple of months, a month of unemployment coupled with a two-week trip to Denver screwed with my schedule and sucked my will to blog. So I'll be trying to keep up a more even pace for the next couple of months - or a least, until my next bout of unemployment, currently scheduled for late

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-6569122368687799852008-08-22T01:50:00.004-07:002008-08-24T15:58:06.973-07:00

It'll be announced pretty soon, and basically what I'm hoping is: please not Joe Biden. The guy would make a great Secretary of State, but as a running mate he'll be boring. Obama needs to pick somebody who isn't your standard boring old white guy. Meanwhile, I'll be perfectly happy if McCain picks the laughable Mitt Romney, so here's hoping.In other news, soon I hope to have up reviews of Vicky

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-46240573347489058292008-08-12T01:53:00.004-07:002008-08-12T02:08:30.262-07:00

Apologies once again, but I'm back in Los Angeles after having been in Denver for the last two weeks, helping my friend Dan Bleskan with his feature-length musical about broccoli. So here are just a few quickies:Ugetsu: A really great film, 8/10.Sansho the Bailiff: An even greater film, I think, it had more of an emotional impact on me, perhaps because of a slightly more nuanced and complex set

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-82870350543799669572008-07-22T00:58:00.011-07:002008-07-22T01:51:14.470-07:00

I've been trying to figure out something intelligent and erudite to say about Ugetsu or Sansho the Bailiff, which I saw lately, but I honestly don't know what I could add beyond "they're very good", and I need to get to Wall-E, Hancock, and The Dark Knight at some point, but for right now I'll just deal with something easier and more fun, the latest piece of Eurotrash that I watched over the

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-10834583593994873222008-07-21T03:21:00.004-07:002008-07-21T03:28:29.973-07:00

This is old news by now, but I still think it's a pretty remarkable bit of video, especially because it shows John McCain squirming (check out what he does at 0:52, it's hilarious and tragic) in a way that none of the other major political figures out there would do - Obama and Hillary Clinton have been preternaturally composed in the last few months, tears aside, while Mitt Romney and Bush

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-20094015242721298662008-07-18T21:16:00.006-07:002008-07-18T21:49:03.201-07:00

I love and admire Werner Herzog - he can kind of do anything. Given the opportunity to make a film about Antarctica, he set off without any particular person or place to document and had three weeks to come back with enough footage to make into a finished film, and sure enough, he did it. The secret is, he knows what kinds of questions to ask, what kind of oddities to explore, and most

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-26471580250178695302008-07-16T03:56:00.005-07:002008-07-16T04:21:07.588-07:00

Since I'm currently unemployed, in theory you can look forward to more reviews of stuff that I've accumulated on DVD as I plow through titles I already own. So in that spirit, I rewatched the 1972 British horror movie Raw Meat, also known as Death Line. The 'Death Line' referred to is whatever subway line runs through the Russell Square underground station in London, where an upperclass twit,

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-74539442396815793272008-07-15T03:17:00.009-07:002008-07-15T03:38:18.990-07:00

I hope to have at least something movie-related up here before too long again, but first I wanted to point out this tidbit. I'll make the modest proposal that this controversial New Yorker cover is obviously a piece of satire, in the grand tradition of satire that works through subtle exagerration, in this case, taking every element of innuendo and rumor-mongering build up in the media over the

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-32021981314204428472008-07-08T00:53:00.007-07:002008-07-08T01:36:09.695-07:00

First, apologies (to anyone out there who cares) about the lack of posts lately, the holidays and my impending unemployment ($&#*^ing freelance job) have kept me out of it. So here's a couple of easy ones. Get Smart is pretty much a waste of time, with lame direction from Peter Segal (the guy who gave us Tommy Boy), a lazy screenplay, and cruddy digital cinematography. The only things it has

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-90385186793606087972008-06-29T20:02:00.006-07:002008-06-29T20:50:11.404-07:00

A double feature at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, and yet another reminder of how, even though there's traffic and pollution in Los Angeles, that it's worth it to live here, because where else (besides New York or Paris) can you get a chance to see two amazing musicals from Jacques Demy on the big screen, the way they were meant to be experienced? I haven't seen Demy's other films, but what

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-57921016960500638142008-06-26T01:12:00.004-07:002008-06-26T01:18:32.943-07:00

I love this man. First, on the subject of the iPhone:The amazing thing is, in the comments section there are people who think he's wrong - 'today's consumer wants choices' blah blah blah. They're all idiots.Next, a tidbit on product placement:What I like here is the "What? I said it all" look at the end.

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-7658276278615446082008-06-25T00:31:00.010-07:002008-06-25T01:07:06.195-07:00

I wanted to see the new one, so I revisited the Ang Lee one. To me, these two movies are best analogized by food. The Incredible Hulk is proud to be nothing other than a Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Burger, it's totally a piece of product, of prepackaged responses, a collection of action sequences justified by a gummy connecting tissue of drama. Meanwhile Ang Lee's film from five years ago intends to be

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-84579016793354641432008-06-23T01:17:00.003-07:002008-06-23T01:29:03.992-07:00

In a year in which celebrities have been dropping dead left and right, this is one that really hits home for me. George Carlin wasn't just a comic, he was a pioneer, a leader second only to Lenny Bruce in a singular realm: that of the supreme cut-through-the-bullshit artist. Carlin was 71 when he died, but he always seemed much younger than he really was to me because he retained an air of still

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-65468862699922166992008-06-17T01:37:00.007-07:002008-06-19T00:33:40.011-07:00

(Revision Thursday 12:30 a.m.)I love that M. Night Shyalaman, who likes to think of himself as a genius and the cinematic heir to Steven Spielberg, is in reality now making the world's most expensive student films. All the hallmarks are in The Happening: the overuse of close-ups, the bizarre gaps where characters should have dialogue but don't and have to fill in the dead air with odd facial

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-41351773211313926802008-06-13T01:33:00.009-07:002008-06-13T04:02:24.017-07:00

So after watching Ben-Hur again I had a hankering for another epic or two. Godard once said the best way to criticize a film was to make another film, which is pretty much what happened with Spartacus. Kirk Douglas coveted the starring role in Ben-Hur that won Charlton Heston an Oscar, so he bought the rights to Howard Fast's novel and produced it at Universal for himself to star in. After a few

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-63208499295051063052008-06-09T23:59:00.006-07:002008-06-11T02:55:47.604-07:00

When Charlton Heston passed away, I really wanted to watch this movie on the big screen, having only seen it on TV, and thankfully, the American Cinematheque obliged this last Friday. On the big screen, Ben-Hur is certainly an impressive film, with those thousands of extras, lavish costumes, spectacular set pieces, and cameos from the Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, and Jesus himself. In

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-16330431246918395982008-06-07T02:07:00.006-07:002008-06-07T02:12:01.123-07:00

This is pretty much the funniest thing I've seen all week, from the McCain website as of Thursday afternoon, featuring the top four items on his policy agenda:. He's a living Letterman parody.(Thanks to Josh Marshall of Talkingpointsmemo.com.)

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5591038.post-78264851108018615422008-06-06T00:04:00.006-07:002008-06-06T01:04:36.087-07:00

Horror is cyclical, and clearly now we're moving out of the gory Texas Chainsaw Massacre '03/Saw/Hostel phase and into a bunch of movies in which a young couple gets terrorized somewhere remote, like a motel (Vacancy), or a country house (Ils/Them), or a bullshit art realm (Funny Games), or another country house (this movie). They're basically slasher movies with less slashing and more suspense,

Jeff McMahonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17455194268519396055noreply@blogger.com0