Don't judge a movie...

The Prestige was fantastic, a fine example of a movie matching the tone of its trailer. I saw TV promos for Lucky Number Slevin that touted it as a thriller even though most teasers and trailers for the movie made it clear it was a dark comedy.

There's something else that bugs me about movie distribution. Have you ever browsed a video rental store and noticed striking similarities between video covers? I'm not sure which came first, but the covers for the home video releases of Highball and Swingers are a good example; one is obviously ripping off the other. I'm sad to admit that when I see a lesser-known movie with a cover design resembling one from another more popular movie, it turns me off from wanting to see that lesser-known film, even though the covers of both films are almost definitely designed by advertising companies or an artistic arm of the distributor. I shouldn't let the zeal of marketing people influence my decision to watch the movie, a decision which should be based on the merit of the movie itself and the people who produced it. I just can't help it; cheesy cover-ripoffs make me lose respect for a movie.

Speaking of The Prestige: I loved it, but will people please stop heralding Christopher Nolan as the second coming of Christ in filmmaking? He's made four great movies in the last six years but his style needs a lot of work. The fight scenes in Batman Begins were too muddled. Filmmakers should adhere to two tenets: the camera doesn't always need to be zoomed in so far, and most scenes don't need a musical score. Less is more, people. Less is more.

One last note: this Blogger text editor is a pain in my ass, probably because it's editing the HTML formatting on the text as I type it and it's getting the tags all screwed up. It's funny how I complain about Internet nuisances even though the Internet makes finding information 100 times easier than it was a decade ago.

First post of the spooooky month

What should I write about? I know ... MOVIES!

Netflix is great because it tracks all my returned rentals. I can refer to it to see what I've watched lately and help myself come up with easy fodder for this blog!

Brick was great, as was Dog Soldiers. My Summer of Love was as good as its perfect trailer. Ghost in the Shell made me wish someone would adapt Snow Crash as an anime. Red Eye showed off more of Wes Craven's deft use of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio (called "Scope"). Immortal Beloved was sad, as I expected, but had a couple moments of technical folly that ruined the moment. The Illusionist was really good; its only sin was the use of the terrible type of slow motion that looks choppy because the crew didn't shoot the scene at the right film speed for slow motion but decided to slow it down in post production. Alas, the movie was enchanting, even if parts of the plot were inexplicable.

I watched Palindromes tonight. It was wonderful. It was truly off the edge of the map, a surprising movie that defied convention, which, you might recall, is a quality I prefer films to have.

Speaking of defying convention, I read some movie reviews by Pauline Kael recently; she was a professional film critic. Her review of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels made me desire a sequel, but here's the catch: It would be totally serious. It would be a clever, noirish con-artist movie in the vein of The Spanish Prisoner. I don't think I'd be happy with a sequel in the spirit of the first movie, but changing the genre would be acceptable. And I believe Steve Martin, Michael Caine and Glenne Headly are up for the challenge. It would be time and money better spent than on Cheaper by the Dozen 5. It baffles me to think of all the daring, original ideas Hollywood could produce instead of wallowing in the security of lame-ass teen comedies (Mean Girls) and bad thrillers (Taking Lives).

I really need to do some research on an important topic and write an editorial in here, but ranting about movies is so much easier.