Cinematical

• Roger Ebert Reviews the Olympics
  

  Filed under: Critical Thought, Fandom, Newsstand

  Leave it to Roger Ebert to compare the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics to the Nazi propaganda doc Triumph of the Will. In a blog entry, Ebert wrote in part: "The closest sight I have seen to Friday night's spectacle, and I mean this objectively, not with disrespect, is the sight of all those Germans marching wave upon wave before Hitler in 'Triumph of the Will.'"

  In context, Ebert was addressing the "astonishing" $300 million show featuring "thousands of painstakingly drilled performers" who had spent "four months in rehearsal. Eight hours a day." His fascinating article includes thoughts on the opening ceremony, the challenge...
  




• Discuss: Are Male Critics Sexist Against 'Mamma Mia!'?
  

  Filed under: Music & Musicals, New Releases, Universal, Critical Thought

  Film critics are often criticized themselves for being the wrong audience for a movie they've panned. Whether it's old white guys who aren't the right audience for a Tyler Perry movie or old white guys who can't appreciate a "chick flick," the subjectivity of certain reviewers is sometimes even called out for being too racist, sexist or otherwise prejudiced. We saw a high level of apparent chauvinism going on recently with the release of Sex and the City, and now it's happening again with Mamma Mia! Last Friday, in her his review, New...
  



• AFI Dallas Preview: 'Stuck' in the Psyche of a City
  

  Filed under: Drama, Horror, Independent, Critical Thought, Cinematical Indie, AFI Dallas

  
  
  The second edition of the AFI Dallas International Film Festival gets underway Thursday night. Among the dozens of films premiering for local audiences, Stuart Gordon's Stuck, inspired by real-life events that transpired in nearby Fort Worth, stands out like a sore thumb to me. The film received some good reviews when it premiered in Toronto last fall; our own Scott Weinberg called it "more of a twisted thriller than an out-and-out horror movie ... [with] a sly and simple streak of social commentary." But my...
  



• Natalie Portman Says She's Frustrated By Lack of Good Female Roles
  

  Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Romance, New Releases, Critical Thought

  Some enterprising journalist at today's Manhattan junket for The Other Boleyn Girldecided to pull Natalie Portman's chain on issues of women in film, and well ... she has a lot to say on that subject. I'll let her take over. "I've recently been getting frustrated. [turns to Scarlett Johansson] I don't know if you've had this experience, but we're probably seeing a lot of the same variety of what's out there, but I mean the number of roles for strippers or prostitutes -- or the opposite -- which, is like, 'She's the moral center...
  




• Joe Wright Talks About Oscar Snub
  

  Filed under: Drama, Romance, Critical Thought, Fandom, Focus Features, Politics, Oscar Watch

  You could go batty trying to figure out why Oscar voters like what they like -- these are the rocket scientists who thought Crash was Best Picture material, as opposed to say, a candidate for the worst movie of that year -- so it was only with mild bemusement that I greeted the Academy's decision this year to snub Atonementdirector Joe Wright, who deserved a Best Director nomination for every reason you can possibly summon. A few reasons: 1) He managed the extraordinary challenge of taking a piece of...
  




• Tarantino Talks 'Inglorious Bastards' and His Slave-Ghost Story That Didn't Make 'Grindhouse' Cut
  

  Filed under: Critical Thought, Celebrities and Controversy, Fandom, Quentin Tarantino

  In a new, in-depth interview with British magazine Sight & Sound, Quentin Tarantino, who I had the pleasure of meeting at this year's Sundance, goes into all his upcoming and most of his past projects, and gives a detailed update on exactly where he is with his next feature, a war movie calledInglorious Bastards. "I've got tons of material and a lot of stuff written but now I've figured out what to do, I gotta start from page one, square one," Tarantino says, seemingly putting to rest any notion that this thing will be going before...
  




• Slate Declares 'Meet the Spartans' a "Massive Consumer Fraud"
  

  Filed under: Comedy, New Releases, Critical Thought, New in Theaters

  I'm always relieved when I don't have to review a film like Meet the Spartans, because it's such a writing challenge. What do you say about a movie that's intentionally bad? Thankfully, Slate's Josh Levin is up to the challenge, skewering the film riotously in a new piece. The first part of his reportage is focused on the length of the film, which he declares is less than what other reviews are telling you -- he clocked it with his watch and says that it's no more than a hour and three minutes from opening to closing...
  




• Paul Dano Talks 'Blood' In-Depth, Answers Key Plot Questions
  

  Filed under: Drama, Casting, Critical Thought, Paramount Vantage

  One of the best moments in There Will Be Blood comes when oilman-misanthrope Daniel Plainview first meets preacher Eli Sunday, after having already met and done a business deal with Eli's identical twin brother Paul earlier in the film. The camera lingers on Plainview's face as he examines Eli, trying to ascertain whether this is some kind of scam and if the person he's talking to is really Paul, passing himself off as the new brother for some nefarious reason. Some have speculated that this scene and the whole identical twin device P.T. Anderson uses has a lot of...
  




• eFilmCritic's Critic Quote Whores of 2007
  

  Filed under: Critical Thought, Lists

  Our own Scott Weinberg recently told you about the canning of quote whore Pete Hammond from the pages of Maxim Magazine, and brought you many of Hammond's incredible quotes, culled all year long by the indefatigable Erik Childress at efilmcritic.com. Now Childress has announced his annual Criticwatch "Whores of the Year" list, saving his "2007 Michael Medved Bag of Douche Memorial Award" for Hammond. Jeffrey Lyons and Earl Dittman made the top ten this year, along with young E! Online critic Ben Lyons -- son of Jeffrey -- for calling I Am Legend "one of the greatest films ever made." Says Childress: "If he...
  



• The History of Cinema, from A to Z
  

  Filed under: Critical Thought, Out of the Past, Lists

  I have no idea what the purpose of this list is, other than that somebody on the Arts beat for The Telegraph was bored, but it's pretty entertaining. Starting with A and going to Z, encyclopedia-style, every letter gives us a benchmark in the history of cinema or an interesting piece of trivia. Example? B is for Bollywood: this trivia item tells us that Britain is now a major shooting locale for Bollywood films, so much so that London tourism guides are now catering to Indian tourists who want to see where certain movies were shot. F is for First Film,...