Posts

KPop Demon Hunters

Image
Zooey (Ji-young Yoo), Rumi (Arden Cho) and Mira (May Hong) are KPop Demon Hunters. Netflix photo via IMDb.com  Bet you never expected to find a glowing review of something called “KPop Demon Hunters” in this space. Me neither. But if you've got preteen kids or grandkids, you get it. Or, if you noticed last weekend's box office numbers, or music charts, or show-biz news that this animated PG-rated Korean musical is the most successful project Netflix has ever produced, your interest might be piqued, too. I have our grandson Niko, now 11, to thank for already knowing a bit about demons in various Asian cultures and the intrepid young warriors – often barely more than children – who fight them. My filmmaking buddy Tom Vendetti has climbed some of the highest mountains in the Himalayas to shoot Buddhist monasteries celebrating colorful multi-day festivals depicting monks locked in eternal battle against the demons of illusion. Same song, different verse. Under his soccer-playing, g...
1 comment
Read more

Sequels of summer

Image
  Liam Neeson in action in “The Naked Gun.  Paramount Pictures photo via IMDb.com One afternoon in 1980 when I was the entertainment reporter at the Santa Cruz Sentinel, a man appeared at the front counter in the newsroom. He was in his 30s, and reminded me a little of the Fonz. He was, if I recall, wearing a bowling shirt. His name was Jim Abrahams. Co-writing and directing with brothers David and Jerry Zucker, he had just made a movie, and was making a cold call at the newspaper trying to drum up publicity for it. The movie was called “Airplane!” As screen comedies go, it was destined to be a game changer. The trio of filmmakers, soon to be known as ZAZ, had a simple formula for getting big laughs: Make everything a parody of itself. And the silliest thing of all is seriousness. I read that Jim Abrahams died last year at age 80 of complications from leukemia. The ZAZ brand of comedy died a long time before that. Case in point: the Liam Neeson reboot of 1988's detective spoof...
Post a Comment
Read more

Chief of War

Image
                 Jason Momoa with his men in “Chief of War.”  Photo courtesy of Apple TV+ via IMDb.com. Even with all the footage of nearly naked men charging through jungles and across beaches to engage in grisly dances of bone breaking and neck slitting with weapons made from shark teeth, Apple TV's “Chief of War” is a work of impressive filmmaking and awesome storytelling. The visuals of the $340-million production capture the majesty and pay proper respect to Hawaii's landscapes and seascapes (even if much of the filming took place in New Zealand). As of the end of the second episode, most of the characters were still speaking Hawaiian, subtitled on screen. It was one of the many demands for authenticity made by producer and star Jason Momoa. Whether or not Momoa deserves  all  the credit, the production is steeped in realism, integrity and soulful understanding of the culture it depicts. Although Captain Cook had arrived a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Phoenician Scheme

Image
A certain shade of chartreuse upholsters the seats of an art-deco private airliner crashing to earth in the opening scene of “The Phoenician Scheme.” That dazzling green color framing the cartoon-mustached face of Benecio Del Toro is the sort of mind-bending vision that can only be beheld in movies made by Wes Anderson.  Whimsical, eccentric, brightly colored, unmoored in time between a literary past and a cockamamie present, these visions are postcards from the parallel universe where the Oscar-winning filmmaker's imagination resides. His characters speak English in clipped cadences out of storybooks, rather than actual geographical states or nations. His scripts seem childishly naïve, but their storylines are as intricate as vintage clockwork. His singular visual style is like live-action cartoon, blurring the line where animation and “real life” meet. Now, just don't ask what the movie's about. The plot revolves shaggy-dog-like around sad-eyed industrialist and arms deal...
Post a Comment
Read more

Eddington

Image
Joaquin Phoenix on the job in “Eddington.”  A24 photos via IMDb.com So, what does  dark comedy  mean, exactly … ? “Eddington,” which falls under that genre on the Internet Movie Database, isn't the first movie that's left me asking the question. It's just the most recent. The film is also labeled a Contemporary Western, a concept easier to grasp. Eddington is the name of a tiny, out-of-the-way New Mexico town, grappling – as the rest of the country was when the story opens in 2020 – with the outbreak of the Covid pandemic.  You can't get much more contemporary than that. Written and directed by Ari Aster, who has developed a cult following for leading audiences into scary sometimes gross places, its cast is heavy with Oscar winners and nominees. Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Pablo Pascal, Dierdre O'Connell, Michael Ward, Luke Grimes and Austen Butler, for openers. Phoenix plays Eddington's Sheriff Joe Cross, a sad-sack lawman who's got about as much as he can...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rhiannon at the Rialto

Image
           Click on the link for video.   https://youtu.be/W3rXipubv14?si=UGq9jItSYgq_0d3G   Freight train, freight train, run so fast Freight train, freight train, run so fast Please don't tell what train I'm on And they won't know what route I'm going Accompanied by Dirk Powell's gentle finger picking on Elizabeth Cotton's classic folk song, Rhiannon Giddens opened a sold-out concert at Tucson's Rialto Theatre Friday with a voice as pure as a bell, as free as a bird, as powerful as a locomotive, as lonesome as midnight. Two hours later, she concluded the concert triumphantly with a joyful jig, riding a crest of artistry and energy that had shaken the historic theater to its rafters. You'd think being an awesome artist would be enough. But for the 48-year-old native of Greensboro, North Carolina, it's only the beginning. She's more a force of nature, a barefoot prodigy, a virtuoso on banjo and fiddle with an operatically trained voice. Daughter ...
1 comment
Read more

F1: The Movie

Image
                                                                                             Poster and photo images via IMDb.com Seeing “F1: The Movie” with my 11-year-old grandson reminded me of my own motor racing career when I was about his age more than a half-century ago. It took place on a go-kart track at the Marlboro sports car raceway outside Baltimore. My dad would pack my kart in the trunk of his Pontiac Bonneville, and we would go racing a couple of Sundays a month. That go-kart was the greatest joy of my junior high school wonder years in an era when a young senator from Massachusetts was inaugurated president of the United States one sunny snow-covered Friday morning a few miles from our home in the Washington suburbs. Feeling like that kid ...
Post a Comment
Read more