Sunday, December 02, 2007 Rant Archive
I’m old enough to remember when Christmas movies were sweet. Every December, they’d gather us all in the school auditorium to view MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET on a projector set up by the AV squad. By the way, I mean the 1947 original starring Maureen O’Hara, John Payne and a very young Natalie Wood.
We’ve come a long way since then when it comes to Holiday fare. But DECK THE HALLS goes too far – even for a Grinch like me.
Steve Finch is the to popular town optometrist in Cloverdale, Mass. Beloved by all, he is the town’s Mr. Christmas. He’s in charge of the annual Winterfest, the one who gathers singers to go caroling and is consulted on town Christmas tree decorations. Each year his family gets dressed in the matching sweaters for the Christmas card photo. Everything is done at the same time every year, as noted on his Special Holiday Calendar.
Sure Finch acts like he has a stick up his, uh, behind, but it’s hard to blame him. When his wife Kelly (Kristin Davis) suggests that the Holidays might be more fun if they were a bit less programmed, he explains:
“My dad dragged me from one Air Force base to another. We didn’t even have a tree. I want my children to have traditions they can look forward to.” By children he means a daughter who is a loner ands a 10-year-old boy going through a mid-life crisis.
Adapted from the first book in author Phillip Pullman’s HIS DARK MATERIALS trilogy, THE GOLDEN COMPASS is a story of a young girl’s journey to a parallel universe, where she is tasked with freeing her best friend and other children, who have been captured and experimented on by a mysterious organization.
The books won critical acclaim and enjoyed strong sales, due in large part to the fantastical worlds they created, full of perilous quests, epic battles and all else that fantasy fans have traditionally adored. As an official stamp of his success, certain religious groups have recently accosted Pullman (a confessed agnostic) for his alleged attempts to weave agnostic themes and philosophies into his narratives, with the sinister aim of turning impressionable children away from organized religion.
Check out the new clip inside and get back to us.
DVDs often bring surprises. The comparative intimacy of a smaller screen regularly brings to life things I missed in a movie theater: an actor’s subtle gesture, an inflection in a voice, an unexpected expression.
With LICENSE TO WED, well, not so much. In fact, watching it for a second time convinced me how wrong I was to watch it a first time.
A colleague recently posted a Critical Mass rant, offering what he considered the top ten – how did he so delicately phrase it –
Holy Sh*t moments. By that, of course, he meant moments so unexpectedly surprising that the only normal reaction is “Holy Sh*t!”
Well I had a series of Holy Sh*t moments watching this one, such as, “Holy Sh*t, someone approved this script.” The story is so retro it might not even have worked as cave drawings in the cinemalithic period.
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For those who haven’t heard, or cared to hear, legendary 80’s TV show KNIGHT RIDER is getting a snazzy update for modern day TV. We here at criticsrant.com have snagged the first confirmed
pics of the new version of talking-car KITT, who is one half of the KNIGHT RIDER team.
The new KITT will be “played” by a 550 HP Ford Shelby GT500KR, black with gray racing stripes. While this new car is a lovely piece of machinery, the loss of the GM third generation, F-body black car we came to love is no small amount of heartbreak. And while I do like KITT’s new look, he now seems a bit too bourgeoisie to cart around a mullet-haired lothario like the Hoff was in his heyday. I guess the times, as they say, are a changing.
Take a look at the pics inside and rant back to let us know what you think of KNIGHT RIDER’s new look.
THE SAVAGES is a story about life and growing. I guess a lot of movies are about life and growing, but realistically this story is about confronting the fact that as you go on with your mundane life everyone you know does also, regardless if you keep in contact r not. There are themes of growing and forgiveness and the necessity of family in a society that is trained to run away from their childhoods in order to grow up and away from the people they knew as a child.
The film begins with introducing us to Wendy Savage (Laura Linney). Wendy’s pathetic life exists between her boring temping job and the affair she’s having with her married next-door neighbor. She’s trying to get a grant so that she can write her play, which is suppose to be her magnum opus or something, and her entire lame life is interrupted when she gets a voicemail saying that her elderly father, Lenny Savage (Philip Bosco), she hasn’t thought about in years has been caught having a scat party in his own bathroom.
She immediately calls her slacker bother, Jon Savage (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) in the middle of the night to freak out. Jon tells his sister they’re only having a yellow alert and they should go back to sleep. Soon thereafter they enter red alert status when the woman their father’s been living with for the past twenty years passes away and they have to fly from New York to Arizona to come and manage their father’s affairs.