Here’s a strange idea I just had: spend the rest of the day watching the LoTR extended edition DVDs. If I start now, I’ll be done right around 1am. I’m not sure I can sit on the couch that long, though.
Category: movies
The Best Films of the Year
It’s nice to see that Tokyo Godfathers made A.O. Scott’s Best Films of the Year list. It’s probably my favorite film of the year, although I think I first saw it in 2003.
The Polar Express
I’ve been seeing very mixed reviews for this movie. I’m really scratching my head over this bit from the New York Times review:
Tots surely won’t recognize that Santa’s big entrance in front of the throngs of frenzied elves and awe-struck children directly evokes, however unconsciously, one of Hitler’s Nuremberg rally entrances in Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will.” But their parents may marvel that when Santa’s big red sack of toys is hoisted from factory floor to sleigh it resembles nothing so much as an airborne scrotum.
Bizarre. Can’t anybody just watch a movie these days without thinking about Hitler and scrotums? There are a few good points in the review about the limitations of the motion-capture techniques used in the film. From what I’ve seen, I would agree that the characters look unnatural and a little creepy. Roger Ebert, on the other hand, loved it:
“The Polar Express” is a movie for more than one season; it will become a perennial, shared by the generations. It has a haunting, magical quality because it has imagined its world freshly and played true to it, sidestepping all the tiresome Christmas cliches that children have inflicted on them this time of year.
One reviewer’s “creepy” is another’s “haunting and magical”, I guess. I may have to go and see it, out of curiosity, if nothing else.
Bryant Park
Anybody want to go see Planet of the Apes in Bryant Park next week?
Harold and Kumar
I saw Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle today, and I have to say it was the funniest movie I’ve seen in a while. Lots of good New Jersey stuff in the movie.
Pixar
movies
I’ve read a bunch of top 10 lists from various movie reviewers recently, ranking the best movies of the year. I tried coming up with my own list, but I could only think of 5 really good movies. Not that anyone cares, but here it is:
- Millennium Actress
- Triplets of Belleville
- Finding Nemo
- A Mighty Wind
- LoTR: Return of the King
sci-fi movies
THere’s a nice series of sci-fi movies coming up at the Walter Reade Theater. And, yep, I’ve got a cold. Hopefully, it’ll be gone by Christmas.
Triplets Of Belleville
Looks like I need to check out The Triplets Of Belleville at some point.
Matrix
I haven’t gotten around to seeing Matrix Revolutions yet, but I just finished watching The Meatrix. Kind of clever, if a bit heavy-handed, as these things usually are.