The PopMatters Film Blog 2009-11-22T14:07:56Z Copyright (c) 2009, PopMatters.com ExpressionEngine tag:popmatters.com-short-ends-and-leader,2009:11:20 tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115558 2009-11-22T20:15:12Z 2009-11-22T20:15:12Z Diepiriye Kuku See A Patch of Blue (1965), staring Sidney Poitier who by that time was already a seasoned actor. Recall that Poitier only two years earlier, he was the first Black actor to win an academy... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.116614 2009-11-21T16:00:20Z 2009-11-21T16:00:20Z Valerie C. Gilbert When it comes to Hollywood and representation of African-American women, I propose that the present decade might be viewed as beginning with Monster’s Ball (2001) and ending with... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.116593 2009-11-20T21:30:13Z 2009-11-20T21:30:13Z Bill Gibron There is nothing worse than child abuse of any kind - physical, psychological, sexual. It's a demonstration of power perverted, of adults taking advantage of impressionable and vulnerable minors in... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.116539 2009-11-19T22:15:02Z 2009-11-19T22:15:02Z Bill Gibron Kevin Smith is the Richard Pryor of lo-fi independent cinema. No one in modern moviemaking works better "blue". He is a sorcerer of scatology, a God of the dick and fart joke. And yet, just like the... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.116449 2009-11-18T23:00:00Z 2009-11-18T23:00:00Z Bill Gibron It holds too many titles to be totally beholden to just one: most popular movie of all time (adjusted dollars or straight admissions, of course); greatest example of classic Hollywood filmmaking... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.116356 2009-11-18T02:00:15Z 2009-11-18T02:00:15Z Bill Gibron Who would have thought it? Marla Singer is the sanest, most honest person in the entire piece. Even through all her hypochondria and emotional rollercoasterism, she puts the cracked combination of... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.116352 2009-11-16T23:19:50Z 2009-11-16T23:19:50Z Bill Gibron There is nothing in this world that could get me to sit through this week's screening of The Twilight Saga: New Moon. My last experience with the faux fright franchise, a sorry excuse for... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.116284 2009-11-15T05:33:32Z 2009-11-15T05:33:32Z Bill Gibron All Brüno has is its hit or miss nature, and for the most part, the targets are too easy and often sideswiped instead of struck head on. ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.116239 2009-11-13T20:00:04Z 2009-11-13T20:00:04Z Bill Gibron Instead of being the kind of bracing, insightful docudrama that sheds light on a subject few outside the UK know about, what we wind up with is a bloated effort that tries to be everything to everyone -- coming of age comedy, pop art period piece, political satire, crafty character study, ensemble romp, and/or hilarious history lesson. ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.116210 2009-11-13T07:41:19Z 2009-11-13T07:41:19Z Bill Gibron Come on, what did you expect? Logical plotting? Complex, three dimensional characters? Some shred of recognizable scientific or technological reality? Seriously? This is Roland Emmerich we're talking... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.116052 2009-11-12T15:33:36Z 2009-11-12T15:33:36Z Bill Gibron Two hours and 35 minutes of dour, dark neo-cannibalism and hopelessness along a long “road” leading to nowhere, or 155 entertaining as Hell minutes of CG shit blowing up. ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.116049 2009-11-11T17:00:24Z 2009-11-11T17:00:24Z Bill Gibron By the fourth film in their then fledgling catalog, Pixar was at a crossroads. They had seen Toy Story make money hand over fist, becoming a recognized commercial and critical hit. They were... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115972 2009-11-10T21:20:14Z 2009-11-10T21:20:14Z Bill Gibron Inspiration can come from the most unlikely of places. Artists of all kind find their muse in music, memories, or even some of the more minor things that life has to offer. For Bob Peterson,... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115967 2009-11-09T16:00:29Z 2009-11-09T16:00:29Z Bill Gibron Will the real motion picture version of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's Watchmen please stand up? In the span of eight short months we've had the official theatrical release of Zach Snyder's... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115928 2009-11-09T07:30:00Z 2009-11-09T07:30:00Z Bill Gibron In the '80s it was called the high concept film. The basic premise was that studios, desperate for guaranteed, easily marketed moneymakers, would come up with outlandish, can't-miss ideas, fuse them... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115933 2009-11-09T00:00:28Z 2009-11-09T00:00:28Z Bill Gibron Holiday films earn their place as categorical 'classics' in a couple of significant ways. The first is in the standard language of film itself. They're funny or sweet, dramatic or creatively... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115907 2009-11-08T05:59:28Z 2009-11-08T05:59:28Z Bill Gibron Sometimes, the cinema can be a lot like oil and water. Certain facets of a film can struggle to stay together, eventually separating like the fabled proverbial liquids. While it's possible to try and... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115782 2009-11-07T21:15:10Z 2009-11-07T21:15:10Z Bill Gibron Take trailer park titan Giuseppe Andrews, marry him to the king of trash John Waters, let them procreate under a sleazy South Park sky, and wean their wicked offspring on a deranged diet of... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115931 2009-11-07T17:45:06Z 2009-11-07T17:45:06Z Bill Gibron It is perhaps the most maligned Best Picture Oscar winner of all time. While Sam Mendes' equally misjudged American Beauty gets an equal number of harsh dismissals, it doesn't have the... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115816 2009-11-06T17:10:05Z 2009-11-06T17:10:05Z Bill Gibron At this point in the post-modern, cynical dicta, nothing really surprises us about the military. From defense contracts which result in kick-back rich toilet seats to useless wars which tend to... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115818 2009-11-05T18:06:08Z 2009-11-05T18:06:08Z Bill Gibron The Fourth Kind is NOT the truth. It is a piece of fiction using other pieces of fiction to verify its already fake plotline. ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115682 2009-11-04T20:00:52Z 2009-11-04T20:00:52Z Bill Gibron If only his mother wasn't playing bridge. If only Roger O. Thornhill ("My own personal motto - R.O.T.," he snidely explains), twice-divorced New York ad man hadn't forgotten that important facet of... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115680 2009-11-03T18:00:34Z 2009-11-03T18:00:34Z Bill Gibron People like to complain that Disney - or better yet, the mega-multimedia side of the 2009 version of the company - owns the world. What with video, television, movies, music, theatrical productions,... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115588 2009-11-02T16:00:50Z 2009-11-02T16:00:50Z Bill Gibron "At its heart, it's a love story…albeit a relatively strange one" or so says Oliver Stone at the beginning of the latest DVD version of his 1994 murderers-on-the-run masterwork, Natural Born... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115584 2009-11-02T06:00:44Z 2009-11-02T06:00:44Z Bill Gibron It’s a shame that John Hughes died when he did. In self-imposed exile for most of the last decade, he was clearly talented and certainly had more to offer the world of entertainment than his... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115583 2009-11-02T02:30:29Z 2009-11-02T02:30:29Z Bill Gibron While it's rare, it is indeed possible for a single element to save an otherwise standard piece of cookie cutter cartoon entertainment. For the last few decades, Hollywood has been cranking out the... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115572 2009-11-01T19:30:02Z 2009-11-01T19:30:02Z Bill Gibron We will never see the final version of Michael Jackson's This Is It concert. We will never experience the full blown macabre mastery of the epic "Thriller" number, complete with 3D zombies and... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115215 2009-10-31T16:08:29Z 2009-10-31T16:08:29Z Bill Gibron One of the most profound dogmas in Chinese (and other Asian) philosophies is the notion of balance, yin and yang, the equilibrium between light and dark, good and evil. It's a basic ideology, a... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115549 2009-10-30T21:29:23Z 2009-10-30T21:29:23Z Bill Gibron The best horror films become iconic for several reasons. They offer up monsters or murderers who are insidiously memorable. They provide violence and visions of death that chill the very marrow in... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2009:pm/blogs/short-ends-and-leader/17.115482 2009-10-30T04:00:05Z 2009-10-30T04:00:05Z Bill Gibron While the comparison has been made before, the passage of time has confirmed it as fact: Monty Python's Flying Circus is indeed the Beatles of sketch comedy. True, similarities do stop at... ]]>