motiondefined.com

In Roger Ebert’s latest ‘Why I’m so conservative’, Roger opines on what he considers to be critical to a movie going experience, and as I have in the past, I want to comment on one thing that he mentions in particular.

Attention.

Yes, we have all seen the cell phone wielding moviegoer, seemingly waiting for that perfect moment of the movie to take a call, and consequently jolt everyone around them back to attention, allowing the veil of imagination and escape to slip away.

Or for the hardened moviegoer like myself, you find it difficult to immerse yourself in a movie, as you have become so aware of the people around you, you sit there almost expecting and waiting for someone to ruin the film.

But, the people that I find most interesting, and no, not in a good way, are the people who come to the theater to seemingly hang out. They aren’t really there to see the movie - it’s more like a place to go for the evening.

They chat, they sit for a while and then leave for a bit, they take a call, they go check out other theaters to see what their friends might be watching, they make multiple snack runs and have conversations as if they were sitting in a restaurant or their living room.

It’s an entire movie length production that makes you consider whether to ever even bother returning. Your only real hope in these situations is that you are sitting far enough away in a big theater that you don’t even notice them.

Or, as I have had to do, condense the majority of your movie watching to a Friday afternoon double feature, when the theater is, for the most part, completely empty.

I wish I was running my own theater.

What you may notice around here is a bit of a re-arranging. New host (media-temple), new wordpress install.

I have brought forward from the old install a few posts just to get everything working again. These are the posts that are most linked to and I did not want to lose them or break the links for the people who actually took the time to link to me.

Writing will resume presently.

My first movie premiere and my first trip to SXSW all in one. Quite exciting.

The first thing I noticed with the kickoff film of SXSW was the line. By the time the movie started I think it covered 3 of the 4 blocks around the building, broken into groups of badge holders, pass holders and ticket buyers.

Also present along the red carpet were a few bits of media and of course people dressed as Superman and the Hulk. They were of course promoting another movie, but still, an odd thing to see at this premiere in such a prominent spot.

Starting about 10-15 minutes late Scott Frank the writer/directer of the movie came on stage to speak for a few minutes and introduce a few members off the cast such as Joseph Gordon-Levitt of ‘10 Things I Hate About You’ fame and Isla Fisher, significant other of Borat and from the film ‘Wedding Crashers’.

From IMDB…
Chris (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a once promising high school athlete whose life is turned upside down following a tragic accident. As he tries to maintain a normal life, he takes a job as a janitor at a bank, where he ultimately finds himself caught up in a planned heist.

Scott Frank has written quite a few enjoyable if not great movies over the past 15 years which include ‘The Interpreter’, ‘Minority Report’, ‘Out of Sight’ and ‘Dead Again’.

The difference between this movie, his directorial debut, and his previously written films seem to be the ability to get an A list cast attached. The acting in this film was great, but I don’t for see this movie being as bankable as others he has worked on, just by virtue of having a cast of mostly unknowns. With the exception, of course, of Jeff Daniels, who manages to steal every scene he is in as the blind, almost mentor-like roommate of the lead Gordon-Hewitt.

As an exploration of a person dealing with a life altering disability, I think the film works beautifully, and I wish that it was explored a little more.

As a crime-thriller it needed a little bit of work to me. While it may not be the right word, it had an almost ponderous build up to the crime and an all to quick resolution after the fact.

While playing her role nicely, Isla Fisher was almost unnecessary to the film, except as a means to lure Gordon-Hewitt into the crime and then disappear. And her sudden odd departure from the movie seemed to have a lot of heads scratching in the theater.

Scott Frank has proven time and time again that he can write a strong screenplay, but I guess I wish that he got the chance to open SXSW ‘95 with ‘Get Shorty’ instead of this year with ‘The Lookout’.

A good movie, maybe not a festival opener though.

Flakes was a movie I was looking forward to seeing at SXSW.

Starring Zooey Deschanel and Aaron Stanford, this romantic comedy centers around a cereal bar and Zooey’s desire for Aaron to motivate himself a little more and follow his rock dreams and get away from his dead end job. Along the way a rival bar opens across the street and Zooey jumps ship in order to try and help Aaron’s motivation.

Movies starring Deshanel usually have a quirk factor that wasn’t present here, and at the same time, sorely missed. While entertaining, there was nothing significant that would make this movie stand out above any other romantic comedy that hits the theater on an almost weekly basis.

The performances were fine, the story fine, and overall the movie was fine.

This will probably go down as the best movie appearing at SXSW this year, and the most popular.

The lines to get into this movie were unlike any of the other films I had seen for any film at the festival, including the opening night premiere of ‘The Lookout.’ And the movie does not disappoint in any way.

Seth Rogan plays Ben an out of work, internet wanna be loser living off of a fourteen thousand dollar settlement he received 10 years ago from a postal truck accident. Katherine Heigl plays Allison Scott, a recently promoted E Television personality, who on a night of celebrating and through a verbal misunderstanding gets pregnant after a sexual encounter with Seth Rogan. Hilarity ensues. And it actually does.

I haven’t decided if this was funnier than ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’ or not, because it is so different in its tone. Still equally as vulgar of course, but different in a way that more people can relate to.

The supporting cast is great in this movie, especially Ben’s roommates and their thoughts on life. Equally as entertaining are Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann as Allison’s sister and brother-in-law, with a tremendous highlight of the movie being a getaway trip to Vegas.

This is definitely a movie to see in the theater and I believe it will be released in June. I’ll probably have to see it again as in the old Paramount Theater the sound system couldn’t compete with the laughter in the audience.

This is an enjoyable film. Lean, tight, not a lot of fluff. It has a direction and stays with it till the end.

A nice, dramatic turn for Paul Rudd, who I’m used to seeing in comedy, playing a soon to be out of work clam digger in 1970’s Long Island, as the larger corporations move in and take all of the jobs. As he and his sister deal with the death of their father, he and his friends have to deal with the reality of losing their jobs in the increasingly corporate world.

Strong performances across the board make this a great little actors movie. Unfortunately, I don’t believe it is destined to hit many theaters, so this will have to be a DVD movie for most people, but I would highly recommend it as it was one of the best movies at SXSW.

This was an… extreme film to say the least. Graphic in its use of language and violence and extreme in its performances, this film was quite an experience.

The performances in this film, which basically amounted to a two person play, were way over the top while staying quite entertaining. Alan Cumming, in I believe his directorial debut, was able to pull a performance from David Boreanez, who previously seem to come from the George Clooney school of brooding acting, that I didn’t think possible. They way these two are able to run around the house expressing themselves the way they do really made this movie quite memorable for me.

Whether audiences will ever get to see this in a theater, I don’t know. But if there is ever an opportunity to see this film, seize it, you will enjoy it.

Been a while since I’ve actually seen this movie, so this review probably won’t do it justice, but this documentary tells the story of 2 people moving out to the midwest and buying there own acre of land to grow corn and follow it through the production process.

What we find out over the course of the movie is how bad corn actually is for you and most startling how it is used in the beef industry.

I would definitely recommend this movie, it changed my wife’s shopping habits completely, and encourage everyone to see it if you get the chance.

[tags]king corn, corn, documentary, film, review, movie[/tags]

Obviously, based on the line spilling around the block and the number of seats being held in reserve this movie is popular here at SXSW. The stars of the movie are here and the crowd is bustling with excitment.

That very much carried over into the film as well, cheers and yelps from the audience as antics ensued on screen that made this an almost ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ experience.

But was the movie any good. It’s hard to give a movie like this an unqualified thumbs up or down, because there are just people out there who don’t get this kind of humor. It offends them, it’s beneath them, or any other reasons that they will create to keep themselves from an enjoying a very funny movie.

I sorry if it comes off as stupid to that type of person, but Neil Patrick Harris as a bad-ass is very funny, and will always be funny.

The storyline as you can garner from the ppreview, picks up hours after the first film ends and finds the main characters preparing to leave for Amsterdam. Hilarity ensues.

You can expect the same drug humor, racist humor and political commentary found in the first movie and it all works just as well here. Yes, just as much nudity, maybe even more. And I believe just about everyone from the first movie makes an appeparance in this one, with a couple new faces added into the mix.

I think this movie hits the theaters at the end of April and with the popularity the first one had on DVD this one should be quite well recieved. It’s good fun.

It is funny, that you can have a movie with an Oscar winner and so many well known actors and come out thinking that you just watched such a small movie. That’s a testament to either how hard someone worked on the film to give it that feel, or how hard it was to actually get the movie made.

After listening to Helen Hunt talk about making the movie, you definitely get the feeling it was both.

‘Then She Found Me’ is a small movie about a near baby crazy school teacher (Helen Hunt) who, after being left by her husband (Matthew Broderick) and losing her adoptive mother, is approached by her birth mother (Bette Midler) to re-enter her life while at the same time falling for the father (Colin Firth) of one of her students.

It’s interesting that this movie is able to keep its sweetness about it with all of the drama that seems to follow Helen Hunt’s character. From Helen Hunt’s mouth she says that this is a movie about betrayal and she couldn’t be more right.

From the infidelities, to the lies and anger, no one character can stand apart in this movie and feel like they have always done the right thing. Until the very end when it seems like Hunt’s character realizes how long she has been betraying herself.

The performance in this movie are top notch, especially Colin Firth, who brings a lot of emotion into this role as a single parent of two children and manages to bring an equal balance of both humor and anger to the part.

The movie is both sad and funny, much like real life, and deserves an audience. With the way that most movies are marketed and shown now-a-days, I worry that this is the type of movie that will be ignored for lack of marketing, but it truly is a movie that should be seen and enjoyed.