http://dan.criticalblogs.com i'm totally gnarly Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:38:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Saw this on Imax, which was pretty awesome. The visuals were great and actually fit the story and weren’t just technical masturbation. The action scenes were mostly pretty interesting and inspired. Overall I was impressed and pleased. The one time Po gets hit in the nuts while training was very ... http://dan.criticalblogs.com/2008/07/18/noodle-folk/ I kind of half watched this while I was doing something else, but it was still funny enough for me to notice. I was mostly surprised at Tony Curtis’ voices. I thought his woman was more convincing the Hoffman’s in Tootsie and his millionaire was really funny. Lemmon’s was really ... http://dan.criticalblogs.com/2008/07/18/jello-on-springs/ Definitely fun, especially Cassel. I thought they needed to tread the line a little more of him being more of just a rural bumpkin and not so outright fucked up. I think it also would have helped if that red-haired girl had been around more, as an enticement for the ... http://dan.criticalblogs.com/2008/07/18/barbarian-bastards/ I had very fond memories of my first viewing of this way back when it came out, then my niece recently had Elf on auto-repeat so it reminded me of it. And now I see why I don’t rewatch movies much. All the impact from the first time was kind ... http://dan.criticalblogs.com/2008/07/05/and-pecan-logs/ Holy heingey hot Turkish lesbian revolutionaries! The time shifting and interweaving and coincidences are usually pretty annoying storytelling tricks to me, but by the end it felt like these tricks served more to reinforce the importance of the basic 1 on 1 relationships of the characters. And this ultimately was ... http://dan.criticalblogs.com/2008/07/05/edge-of-heaven-holy-heingey-hot-turkish-lesbian-revolutionaries/ A lot of this felt forced and was also a bit of a chore. I liked the setup a lot - Luna was great and I appreciated the earnestness of the voiceover and themes. When we got to the commune it felt like they turned their backs on those themes ... http://dan.criticalblogs.com/2008/07/05/time-to-be-a-new-person/ Definitely appreciated the dialogue and performances, but too much prettiness intruded I thought. Like the opening montage and the excessive ‘ahh’ shots. And the music, too, especially after Norman gets scared in the forest and finally tells Ethel about it. It’s a really powerful moment but the music is just ... http://dan.criticalblogs.com/2008/06/22/golden/ Well this was certainly a mess, with noble savages and whitey still the best and especially the moronic polygamy scene. It was somewhat fun when he was bouncing around in different careers but they didn’t really have much purpose in doing so - all the effort and heart seemed to ... http://dan.criticalblogs.com/2008/06/22/human-beings/ There were a couple actual laugh moments. The birthday party was fun. The kiss avoidance really made me laugh. I liked the indictment of Michael and how he treated Teri Garr, but he seemed really annoying overall so I wasn’t too into rooting for him. His annoyingness was also part ... http://dan.criticalblogs.com/2008/06/21/toots/ This was ok. The biggest problem seemed to be that the coolest parts of the story just aren’t cinematic at all. Discovering some plot from a foreign language novel is really cool but only explaining it in outline wasn’t. Also the kidnapping was completely forced and unnecessary. It seemed like ... http://dan.criticalblogs.com/2008/06/21/today-its-oil/