Results tagged “cliveowen”

                     

I can understand people disagreeing with Michael Moore's political beliefs, but his talent as a documentary filmmaker is unquestioned. This is a man who knows exactly how to move an audience. His latest, Capitalism: A Love Story, deals with the thieves that populate our financial industry. If all you are looking for are some good laughs, buck up and a buy a ticket to I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (LAist review here). I think you'll like it more than you expect. Sheesh, could Surrogates look any more obvious and silly? Pass.

                            

When I think of my favorite movies of the last twenty years, the most curious inclusion is probably Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco. Now that it's been given the Criterion treatment (it's been out of print on DVD for years), I can't recommend it highly enough. If only Stillman would actually write and direct another film (Disco was his last and that was eleven years ago!). I enjoyed Adventureland so much at Sundance that I watched it again when it landed in theaters. Equally sad and sweet and funny, it was poorly marketed as a straight comedy and never really found an audience. I imagine that it will on DVD, though. Sunshine Cleaning was okay, but had that "deliberately quirky" vibe coursing through it. Duplicity was one of several failures earlier this year that probably marked the beginning of the end of the big-budget, adult-targeted film. Shame that.

       

I was a big fan of Gran Torino when it originally dropped in theaters last year. The one complaint I constantly heard from those who didn't like it was that the young Asian actors weren't very good. My reply to them was that within the universe of the film, these kids had a less than perfect grasp of English so naturally they would struggle to speak. At any rate, Gran Torino was a great flick that you should definitely catch now if you missed it last year. The International and Crossing Over belong on the endangered species list of "Expensive adult dramas that don't make much money." The future of these movies is on DVD, I think. Too bad.

Two very good studio films opened at the box office this weekend (I Love You, Man and Duplicity) and, naturally, neither of them managed to win the box office crown. That went to the terrifyingly moronic Knowing which tricked America's rubes into shelling out approximately $24.8M of hard-earned money. The quite funny I Love You, Man under-performed to the tune of $18M as did Julia Roberts' Duplicity which only managed to bring in $14.4M. Last week's champ Remake of Witch Mountain fell all the way to fourth but still had a solid performance ($13M/$44.7M). The ambitious Watchmen, however, continued to flounder ($6.7M/$98M).

Knowing looks so spectacularly bad that it may almost be worth seeing. Nic Cage really is a national treasure. The Apatow brand is so strong these days that a movie like I Love You, Man -- which isn't even an Apatow film -- actually feels like one. I'll see it for the ravishing Rashida Jones alone. Does Julia Roberts still have juice at the box office? The performance of Duplicity will let us know. I'm gonna go with a 'no' on this one. I've never understood the fuss about her anyway. It's still appalling that she beat out Ellen Burstyn for the 2000 Oscar.

Ad spending in the US dropped by 2.6% in 2008, with only cable increasing ad revenue for the year. TV and cable still retained a leadership position as the preferred media, taking more than 60% of all ad dollars.

Considering the downward-trending turbulence of our current economic environment, now might not be the best time to release a movie that so glories in conspicuous consumption like Confessions of a Shopaholic. Then again, it has the winsome Isla Fisher so it might be worth a look. Clive Owen rules. Naomi Watts sort of rules. Considering that, why can't I get excited about The International. It just feels so...generic. Oh, great. Another classic horror film is getting raped, er, re-packaged, er, re-made for today's audiences. The new Friday the 13th "film" better have copious amounts of gore and pointless nudity. And when are they re-doing Leprechaun?

Did any of you watch the Grammys? Did you enjoy it? OK, so you might actually like pop music but tell us what you specifically like about it. To us, the performances seem somewhat off and the staging heavy-handed. There was a 17% increase in viewership of the Grammys this year over last year with most folks watching during the 8:30-9:30pm hour.

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Recently we got the opportunity to see Alfonso Cuarón's latest flick at the local cinema megaplex, Children of Men. Having seen the trailer months ago we put this on our short list of movies to see because anything regarding a dystopian future and Clive Owen we're first in line for. We sat down in the theater captive to the ads on the screen and then the theater dimmed and we were transported.

When we heard that Tom Hanks was cast as the lead Prof. Robert Langdon in The Da Vinci Code, LAist was worried. Then when we heard that Dan Brown's page turner would be directed by Ron Howard, we were totally bummed. Not to take anything away from Hanks or Howard, but really, why do the studios need to always take the safe (read: boring) route with the blockbusters?

This LAist contributor would watch a BMW ad if it promised Clive Owen, so we happily handed over the $ to see Inside Man yesterday without complaint. Plus Denzel Washington? Crime thriller — whatever. We know a chick flick when we see one.