New Screen Junkies Articles

So it’s been awhile since I came out with new Screen Junkies stuff, but in the past couple weeks I’ve published two articles. Here are the links, knock yourselves out! 😀

This one is a couple months old, but I never linked to it here, so here ya go…

12 Delicious Movie Theatre Munchies

In honor of the new South Park season coming out…

12 Best South Park Political Parodies

And a continuation of my article awhile back, 11 Terminally Typecast Actors, here is…

13 Terminally Typecast Actresses

Enjoy!

Shutter Island (9/10)

Every last thing in “Shutter Island” is conducive to the stifling atmosphere of fear, a tour-de-force mystery that tightens around your neck like a noose at the beginning of the film and drags you, unknowingly, into the creepy black corners of the room, where secrets live and gnaw at the edges of your vision, ducking into shadows before you can spot them. It weaves a fascinating and absorbing tale about corruption, the psychological effect of war, and the horrors of the mind, real or imagined, that haunt the dark places in our hearts.

My Picks for the Decade

Why 25? Because I can. A decade only comes along like what, once every eight years or so? So much goes into a movie, and so much more goes into our experience of viewing it. As such, this list may seem puzzling to a lot of readers (you forgot THAT movie? How could you possible include THIS movie??), but what I chose to do is pick the movies that impacted me the most, affirmed and rewarded my love for film, while also showcasing exceptional filmmaking quality and memorable characters and storylines that I believe will transcend this decade and last for many more down the road. The further you go down the list, the more the distinction between the numbers gets fuzzy – the final five are all so close to each other there’s debatably no point to numbering them at all, but hey, that’s part of the fun of list-making.

Good art is a tricky subject, perhaps especially in film, but I think what it does is leave with you with a sense of something beyond just what you see on screen, that penetrates deep into your heart and leaves you hungering for something truly new and wonderful. All of these films, in one way or another, took me places I never quite expected and unleashed the true creative power of film, so I hope you enjoy them.

25. Napoleon Dynamite

The success of this movie can be seen in how much money it grossed: 44 million dollars; about 100 times its budget, but a paltry sum compared to most releases. So why was it so popular? Because few movies have dared to show the utter and slightly unpleasant normality that every day life on the fringes of popularity can bring. If you were one of the popular kids, you probably didn’t really get this movie. But if, like Napoleon, you never really found yourself fitting in, had a hard time making friends, and spent your time learning super sweet dance move skills and drawing fantasy creatures in the margins of your notebook, then he speaks to you, like few other movie “heroes” ever have.

The Harry Potter Movies (And Why They Fail)

This past summer I, like millions of people worldwide, sat down to enjoy the sixth Harry Potter film. Upon leaving the theatre, I knew that I enjoyed it more than the fifth movie (which was basically David Yates’s “Harry Potter 5’s Greatest Hits”), but didn’t quite know exactly how much I liked it. I mulled it over for a few months, my unease about the movie growing, no longer sure I liked it as much as I thought I did. Now, I know, and knowing David Yates is going to direct the two-parter seventh movie as well, I am more than apprehensive – I’m downright pessimistic.

I’ve always said about book to movie translations: change plot, change characters, names, places, if you must. But keep the spirit of the original. Stay true to what the author was trying to say, because if you’re going to twist the author’s thoughts and ideals, make a different freakin’ movie, because that’s what you’re doing.

Essentially, this is the problem with the Harry Potter series (the last 3 especially).  I’m able to shrug off plot points easily, even if they’re huge holes (Dumbledore disapparating in and out of Hogwarts??), because let’s face it, adapting these big fat books is a monumental task, and as long as you keep the theme, you can’t be expected to include every single detail of JK Rowling’s fully realized world. But as the HP series has gone along, more cuts have been made, reducing the length of the films (apparently the studio doesn’t trust fans that can plough through a 700+ page in a week to sit still for more than two and a half hours), until, I am so sad to say, the point of the series, with this most recent sixth movie, has been lost completely.

Spoilers Ahead

Inglourious Basterds (9/10)

Nearly every camera shot and line of dialog in this movie is pure Tarantino – and yet, it’s probably one of the most mature and airtight films he’s ever directed, a masterwork (not a masterpiece) that weaves all the juicy dialog, larger-than-life characters, and gleeful violence that we’ve come to expect and love from this movie-loving director with a few subtle moral themes and winks to the audiece about violence at the movies and the nature of our response to it.

Top 15 Magic Babes From Movies & TV

My newest Screen Junkies is article is up, just in time for the new Harry Potter coming out this Wednesday. A tribute to famous magical cinematic and televised babes from years past all the way up through to Hermione. Enjoy and please digg!

Best and Worst Talking Movie Animals

Another list for Screen Junkies! This one details the absolute trash of the live action wisecracking animal world, as well as some of those classic babbling beasts that made us laugh and love. (Shoot me for that schmaltz.)

Enjoy the 5 Best & Worst Talking Animals!

9 Most Obnoxious Movie Watchers….

….has now been dugg over 1,000 times over at Digg.com! Pop open the champagne, we gotta celebrate!

Oh yeah, and just in case you were wondering, here’s the article itself, courtesy of Screen Junkies. Enjoy, dear reader.

Watchmen (9/10)

Originally, I was going to write a review based on Watchmen purely as a movie, unrelated to the graphic novel. That was before I actually read the graphic novel, and having done that, and been more able to appropriately grasp the spirit of the book, it’s impossible to look at Watchmen the movie as entirely separate from its origins. As I read through the graphic novel, I began to comprehend the immense scope of the whole thing – it’s much more than a graphic novel, incorporating elements of poetry, art, novels, newspapers, comics, and more into a seamless whole that traces the development of this superhero world from basically its beginnings to its present. It’s engrossing and impossibly well executed, and the very thought of trying to write a script for this beast almost makes the brain explode.

Not-so-Horrible Horror

I haven’t posted a review in awhile, for which I profusely apologize, but today on Screen Junkies you can now find my review of Last House on the Left. Enjoy.

Also, check out The 7 Heroes Who Need to Die, a feature I recently penned for Screen Junkies.

And I saw Watchmen today – expect a review within the week!