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Stopped Motions!

I was happy to find this bit of Outlook advice today:
File, Options, Mail, Editor Options, Advanced; When selecting, automatically select entire word (uncheck).
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Dead!

Dead!

After all that windup, it's time for the big letdown! Because, honestly, everyone has different taste. Hey, me at some age would have gotten a kick out of that Full Monty ripoff movie. I'm just too bitter and old to watch Terence Stamp be bitter and old now!

ANYWAY, this movies look really fun:

A Conversation with Richard Linklater

Not actually a movie. But there's plenty of Linklater having conversations with himself in his movies (besides the Bad News Bears remake), so except for the fact that the redhead dream girl from Waking Life won't be there, this should be just as good.

Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay

This one would pair nicely with "Murch" from a few years ago. They both cover the art of telling people what they're going to see, and telling them what they're seeing.



Much Ado about Nothing

Whedon does Shakespeare - you doth have to be curious, right? Also, the music track on the trailer is fantastic. Yes it has Captain Tightpants.



Peaches Does Herself

Frankly, this one might be a bit self-indulgent.



Rent a Family Inc.

This one seems to creepily cringeworthy to be true, so I have to see it. The company is Japanese, of course.




Waxworks

This is the accompanied silent film this year, with a bunch of good players. I suspect this will also be creepy, but in a good way.

Let's be honest now: I have a two-year-old and a wife who hates going to movies. I'll be lucky to see two of the movies in the upcoming "awesome" category, much less these. But these movies look darn good.

Byzantium - Neil Jordan, vampires, "waterfalls gushing blood":



Cold War - Hong Kong movie, Aaron Kwok, Tony Leung



Ernest & Celestine - animated mouse and bear movie. I wish the boy was old enough to watch this with me. As it is, he'd just cry and ruin it.



Kings of Summer - Supposed to be funny, but you can't trust film people. I just like the trailer:



Nameless Gangster - Like a HK movie, but in Korea!



Outrage Beyond - Like a HK movie, but in Japan! Rod Armstrong did the write-up, which is always a plus, and says it is "peppered by pitch-black humor"



The Pirogue - 30 West Africans emigrating to Spain in a small boat. Maybe this violates the monkey rule? The trailer is beautiful.



Twenty Feet From Stardom - doc about backup singers. Hallelujah!

I think I already called this movie out for the title alone, but it's also noteworthy for making me wonder if the Weinsteins literally have a factory that makes these things:

In really good movies the characters drive the plot. In okay movies the plot just happens. In these movies, the plot just doesn't happen. Here are the code phrases the SFIFF uses to tell you this:

The Artist and the Model - This gentle and knowing meditation on the nature of art, those who make it and those who inspire it...

Big Blue Lake - "a touching and keen meditation on aging, memory and healing the wounds of the past."

Eight Deadly Shots - "a Zola-esque depiction of life’s complicated reasons, where time and duration become little by little a hypnotic force..."

Everyday Objects - "a compelling and elliptical portrait through the routine occurrences and banal moments of solitude that comprise life."

A Hijacking - "Tobias Lindholm's thriller chronicles a fictive instance of [....]grueling, dispiriting, claustrophobic tedium "

Il Futuro - "an engrossing meditation on Italy’s moviemaking past"

Just the Wind - "a riveting portrait of everyday Romani life"

Mai Morire - "a haunting meditation on death as a part of life" There are movies I like that have death. Some of them have lots of death! Some of them have haunting! None of them have meditation*.

Marketa Lazarová - "Upon its release in 1966, Variety declared Marketa Lazarová—with its three-hour length, elliptical, dream-like narrative and totally foreign flavor—"a stunning work... unsuitable for general commercial release.""

Helsinki, Forever - "a poetic tribute to film as a form of collective memory."

Memories Look at Me - "a serene meditation on life."

Nights with Theodore - "an evocative, eerie tale in which the park becomes a geographic character, a silent, elemental presence that is capable, by its very nature, of imposing a tragic fate" [boredom? - CTD]

Pearblossom Hwy - "a challenging, delicate and poetic examination of wounded souls trying desperately to assimilate into a universe that appears to have no room for them."

Museum Hours - "a beautiful and poetic exploration of lives that are artful and art that is full of life."

A River Changes Course - "This gentle and visceral film transcends the studies and statistics to present a deeply personal portrait of the cost of these changes."

The Spectacular Now - "Unexpectedly nuanced in its portrait of teenage friendship" The only thing more boring than a portrait is a nuanced portrait.

Thérèse - "Thérèse is not an exercise in stylish depravity so much as an affecting, simmering psychological melodrama that creates a portrait of a central character no less dark than Hitchcock’s heroines, just differently shaded." [So, Hitchcock without depravity? Extra boredom points for "simmering". -CTD]

Youth - "Youth is a nuanced portrait of identity coming into focus" [More nuanced portraits! And Yahweh knows, with one you already have a glut! - CTD]


* "Yoga Temple Massacre III" excepted

Dead!

Dead!