THERE WILL BE BLOOD: Deadpool

Posted: February 22, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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Warning: SPOILERS

rev 4I’m sure that Deadpool isn’t the first post-modern comic book movie, but I’m sure it has to be one of the most obvious ones, one that absolutely revels and glows in all its post-modernism glory. It not only feels as if it comments on such films, it feels as if it comments on comments on such films.

The style and tone is set by the opening credits which aren’t made up of the names of the people who actually did what the credits claim they do, but are more generically described. I don’t remember them exactly, but there was God’s Perfect Idiot as the star; The Obligatory Cameo; Asshats as the producers, and perhaps my favorites, the Screenplay is by the Real Heroes of the Movie, while the direction is by an Overpaid Tool.

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WHAT HAPPENED TO ONE THROUGH FIVE: Movie reviews of Big Hero 6 and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya by Howard Casner

Posted: November 23, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1,609 Comments »

First, a word from our sponsors. Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r

 

Warning: SPOILERS

big heroI’m sure you’ve heard the old joke, the one about the guy who said, “I’m not going to see Henry V because I haven’t seen the first four yet”?

Well, don’t worry, fair filmgoers, Big Hero 6 is not a sequel (though believe me, to paraphrase Paul Thomas Anderson, there will be sequels). It’s more an origin story of a group of X-Men like super young adults set in a city named San Fransokyo (so called because it’s an alternative future where Japanese immigrants rebuilt the city where I left my heart after the 1906 earthquake).

Big Hero 6 is a fun and satisfying enough animated movie, especially in the first half where it tends to show a bit more heart and emphasizes emotional resonance over the more prevalent action oriented approach of the second half.

True, it’s fairly familiar and almost Disney paint by number. I mean, c’mon, you gotta know that a mother or father or mother figure or father figure to the central character is going to die early on because, well, it’s Disney, and the only thing that studio likes more than making animated movies that rake in a ton of money is trying to traumatize pre-teens in the first fifteen minutes of their films (unless it’s about a dog, then they wait until the last fifteen). Read the rest of this entry »