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Hosting the IMAX 3D screening of A CHRISTMAS CAROL at our local IMAX last night was bittersweet. Sweet, because we were seeing A CHRISTMAS CAROL before its world premiere in Hollywood tonight... Bitter, because my sister, nephew and wife could not attend. That wasn't at all a distraction during the movie, it was just... as I was leaving the theater with Father Geek - I found myself missing my own larger family.
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I saw ASTRO BOY seemingly forever ago... like late August/early September and I came out of the theater just feeling so so. This is entirely an origin story. Like... 100% origin story, and I get that the majority of the United States has the most remedial of knowledge regarding the very existence of this character, but frankly... ASTRO BOY wasn't nearly as fun as a real ASTRO BOY movie could have been.
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Hey folks, Harry here - and this is a look at a film that a friend of mine made. MASKHEAD is directed by Scott Swan, Drew McWeeny's writing partner (the brains behind the team, obviously) and sometimes contributor to the world of general fandom. Scott happens to be a dead ringer for Orson Welles. So when I got his DVD in the mail, his first directorial feature - I figured... ok. Let's see if he has the talent of Orson Welles.
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WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is the very best film I’ve seen this year. Not by a hair, not by a nose, but by a mile. More than that, it could very well be the best film ever created about what it is like to be a 9 year old.
Do you remember?
9 years old.
How did you play? How did you move? Do you remember the angles that you saw the world from? Did you ever start something that felt like the most fun thing in the world, until it wound up in tears. Your tears?
Do you remember how WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE spoke to you as a 9 year old?
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I'm not Jewish. Most of my friends that are Jewish, never share the secret phrases and codes that are apparently common phrases within the faith and community. So as a Goy, I'm pretty much ignorant of the customs and practices of Jewish society.
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Sometimes you can tell the instant you see an actor in character. The second I saw that first image of Matt "the fat" Damon with that magnificent hair, glasses and a frickin' gut... I smiled. Upon seeing the trailer, I really started to get excited, and last night... shortly after the film began, I was in a fairly constant euphoric state.
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Went to the premiere of EXTRACT tonight. I really haven't liked any of the spots on TV nor any of the trailers. I was there as one of the sponsors for the event, though I'm not real sure how that happened. I'm relatively sure that I was never even asked about it. Seriously Yet there on the marquee was AICN.
No, I was there because my wife and I worship KING OF THE HILL nightly on Adult Swim. Watching a little bit of Hank Hill's familial and friendly existence is just the thing to give you just a taste of joy, before going to sleep.
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I’ve had a lot of problems with this review. More than I’ve had with any film in a very long time. Why? Well, it is very complicated and I’ve been struggling with how to phrase it.
I love every moment of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. Every shot, every scene, every performance, every bit of music. I love it.
BUT…
This isn’t the World War II film I really wanted from Tarantino. And the reason has more to do with me, than with Quentin.
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Every now and again there is a film so special, so much better than everything else, that it flummoxes you. DISTRICT 9 is that film for me right now. I've seen it three times now and it just keeps getting better.
How is that?
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I have been dying to see Park Chan Wook's latest film, THIRST. Mainly because I had no idea what a Vampire story from his amazing vantage point would look like. Would there be new Vampire rules? Would it be a recognizable vampire story? Or would it be something entirely new?
Coming from South Korea - I was anticipating the latter. THIRST did not disappoint.
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The latest film from Judd Apatow is his least outrageous comedy yet. Most of the laughs come from the actual stand-up routines - with much of the real life... well, it reveals characters of a deeply flawed fashion. Seth Rogen's Ira Wright is a struggling mediocre talent living with two brighter and more successful comedic talents in Jonah Hill's Leo Koenig and Jason Schwartzman's Mark Taylor Jackson. Ira is filled with self-doubt and insecurity. He works a job he hates at a deli counter, and he desperately wants a break.
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More than after any other Harry Potter chapter in this run of films, I want to read the books. I'm frustrated by the film. Frustrated because I'm so unsatisfied with the state of things at the end of this latest film. I feel like there are MASSIVE sections of the book missing. I want so much more - I want more classroom instruction - more Hagrid - more Tom Riddle memories - more of the burgeoning love stories.
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So strange the timing on all this GREEN LANTERN news. Because in the midst of all of this, I got an early screener of GREEN LANTERN: FIRST FLIGHT - which is the DC Animated straight to DVD/BLU-RAY title coming out later this month.
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BRUNO isn't an easy film to review. There really isn't a plot. I mean, there is, but its essentially about BRUNO wanting to become a celebrity and the various harebrained notions that he embarks upon to become an internationally renowned celebrity. He then goes off to unleash this menace upon the unawares of the world.
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I loved Kathryn Bigelow's THE HURT LOCKER, but then... I'm a huge fan of Kathryn Bigelow's career. I love THE LOVELESS, NEAR DARK, BLUE STEEL, POINT BREAK, STRANGE DAYS, K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER and I really love THE HURT LOCKER.
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Hey folks, Harry here... I saw this at the IMAX. If you want to see this - that is how to see it. It makes two action sequences pretty fucking amazing to just stare at. You won't really be emotionally involved because frankly, no character work has been done to make you feel involved. But for pure IMAGERY - there are two sequences that the IMAX experience makes unbelievable.
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You know - sometimes you're at a Festival. You have a great first day, but then... you just seem to be on a roll of forgettable or worse films. That isn't to say this festival isn't wonderful, because CINEVEGAS is!
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I have been waiting to HATE this film since it was announced. Needless. Pointless. Unfun. I was geared to despise the film. This is one of those films that as it was cast, updated and put together, EVERYTHING that I loved about the original was being rendered mute.
The very idea of Denzel as Walter Matthau just depressed me. Denzel's a great actor, but Matthau was metaphysically perfect for the role.
Travolta as Robert Shaw. It grated me at every conceivable level.
The score by Lalo Schifrin. GENIUS.
FUCK THIS REMAKE.
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Hey folks, Harry here... up on the 52nd Floor in a super suite at the PALMS casino. I'm here in Las Vegas to not gamble, not pay for fornication, but to attend CINEVEGAS. Some of you readers may remember a few years back when I was a juror at this festival, a series of reports on a number of outstanding films, my personal favorite being SEXO Y LUCIA. Well, I'm back this year and leapt out of a crazy huge bed with an enormous picture window of the entire strip at the foot of the bed.
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I grew up with LAND OF THE LOST. But more than that, I grew up with liberal as hell parents that let me see everything from Cheech & Chong films to FLESH GORDON to the silent LOST WORLD, KING KONG, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH and on and on and on. It was the Seventies - and the world was very different. VERY different. As proof, you need look no further than Sid & Marty Krofft's Television shows. They were very bizarre. The show was amongst the most ambitious live-action children shows ever attempted.
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(Given every paper/site online has broken embargo. Here ya go)
It is a very rare thing for a film to shit squarely on my open and unexpecting eyes to such a degree that absolute hatred and loathing festers out of my every pore… but McG managed to do it with TERMINATOR SALVATION.
This is odd.
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I was not a fan at all of DAVINCI CODE. I wasn’t an offended Catholic – I just didn’t like the story. I just never got swept up in it. But I loved elements of it. I love the Hardy Boys aspect of it. The clue that leads to a clue that leads to another clue… I love mysteries – but I never felt there was a drive to the story.
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Hey there, Harry here!
First - it seems pretty sure that Brett Ratner is off of the relaunch of CONAN - at least according to Empire. Now the scary thing is that producer, Joe Gatta says that everyone on their team really wanted Ratner, which has me truly afraid of who they'll end up hiring to helm the next CONAN. Will this mean a Conan by someone like Len Wiseman or Paul W.S. Anderson or someone worse. Let's hope it ends up being someone like Michael Bassett.
Michael who?
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