Friday, May 28, 2010

Camera Obscura: More 'Lost"; Remaking "True Grit"; Coney Island; Withered Sex in the City

One of the most scathing and gleeful takedowns ever offered in a movie review was presented this week for the new sequel to the "Sex and the City" franchise. I've seen just enough of the TV show to know it ain't for me, and the following excerpts from the review indicate audiences should not just turn away from the sequel, but run screaming.

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[The movie] takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human—working hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled !$#@ like it's my job—and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car. It is 146 minutes long, which means that I entered the theater in the bloom of youth and emerged with a family of field mice living in my long, white mustache. This is an entirely inappropriate length for what is essentially a home video of gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls."

The full review by Lindy West is hilarious.

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One of the more tantalizing bits from the finale of "Lost" was that the lovable Hurley took over the "guardianship" of the weird island, and that the cool and dangerous badness of the character of Linus would be his second in command. And word arrived this week that the DVD set for the final season will include a 12 minute or so epilogue which is taken from that odd alliance of Hurley/Linus.

So here, from season 4, is a brief moment of Hurley and Linus sort of being friends as they wait for an island mystery to manifest and/or explain itself.



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Smart, cutting edge science fiction which brilliantly (and sometimes hilariously) forecasts the future resides in two books - "Neuromancer" by William Gibson from 1984, and "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson (1992). Is it smart or worthwhile to try and make movies from them?

Neuromancer and Snow Crash are two of my favorite books and are also two of the most groundbreaking and powerful novels of the last 30 years. And while some have been hovering over the books in hopes of making a movie from them, I really don't ever see that happening. But director Vincenzo Natali ("Cube") is working on it. He just finished a movie version of J.G. Ballard's novel "High Rise", but both Neuromancer and Snow Crash are far more complex tales. My suggestion is that you read the novels and marvel at their excellence.

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Jeff Bridges tackles John Wayne's Oscar-winning role as Rooster Cogburn and Matt Damon tackles the Glen Campbell role in a remake of "True Grit" from the Coen brothers, which is wrapping up production this weekend in Austin, TX. Blogger Joe O'Connell has been keeping track of the production and has some nifty pics from the production of True Grit. A sample with Bridges wearing Rooster's iconic eye patch (newcomer Hailee Stanfield, as Mattie, is also seen below, wearing a black dress). More are at the link.



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Since it's Memorial Day Weekend, it's worth noting that Coney Island is getting a sort of re-do and update as a new Luna Park opens:



The Village Voice has a massive article on the Past, Present and Future of Coney Island well worth the read.

photographer Weegee's Coney Island, 1940

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