Though I'm mightily anxious to see Richard Kelly's DONNIE DARKO follow-up SOUTHLAND TALES, the weekend's top film pick is a no-brainer.
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. People are calling it the best film of the year, and if it isn't, it's darn close.
The Coen brothers have been spinning their wheels for a while -- O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU was good, but I can take or leave INTOLERABLE CRUELTY, THE LADYKILLERS, THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE, and much as I know BIG LEBOWSKI is now beloved by stoner-hipsters,
Ooooh yeah, dig it...THE SAVAGES.
The name of the movie is one of those insufferable cutesy puns – these characters have the surname of “Savage” and they behave poorly! Why, that's ironic! -- but don't let that deter you from the rest of the movie, a film that achieves the rare balance of being both hilarious and tragic.
It begins with a lovably surreal musical number in the suburbs of Arizona, with elderly chorus girls, before rubbing our faces in shit, literally – Dad Savage (Philip
Our sister publications LA Weekly and Village Voice just published their annual, massive film critics' poll for 2007, which includes 102 of the nation's critics, some of whom you know and some you don't, though all of the critics you regularly read in our paper are included. (My own page in the poll is HERE.)
Topping the list are the usual faves: THERE WILL BE BLOOD, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, etc. But further down the list you get to more eccentric choices -- NORBIT? Comedy is highly subjective,
And yes, I'm up prior to the crack of dawn to get them to you. The biggest surprise, if you can call it that, is the strong showing by MICHAEL CLAYTON, with six nominations. Not so surprisingly, THERE WILL BE BLOOD and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN each have eight.
Via CNN, because it announced even before the official Oscar site:
The nominees for best picture are "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood," "Atonement," "Juno" and "Michael Clayton."
JUNO? Really? Just goes to show there's a ri
On February 23rd, which will be Oscar Eve unless some kind of strike-related silliness postpones the show, the AMC 30 at The Block in Orange will be one of approximately 80 theaters nationwide to screen a quintuple-feature of all the nominees for Best Picture. Thirty bucks gets you a pass to all five, plus a free unlimited-refill popcorn bucket (soda NOT included -- those tricky bastards!).
That's a pretty good deal, if not quite as good as SAWFEST last year (four SAW movies for the price of on
