Film is Pwn

Check out our two new pages, “Podcast Log” for recaps of our podcasts and “Rating System” defining the categories “Buy It/Ticket”, “Rent It”, “TV”, or “Skip It.”  Also, four new movies have been added in the “Films Banned By the Geneva Convention” page, featuring some major talents in some terrible, painfully awful movies: “Alexander,” “Babel,” “Town & Country,” and ”Double Jeopardy.”

With apologies to Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese, in my opinion the greatest director who ever lived is Alfred Hitchcock. Vertigo, Rear Window, North By Northwest (my personal favorite), Dial M For Murder, Strangers on a Train, Vertigo, and the list of the man’s works goes on and on. Hitchcock knew how to create tension, and invented a number of cinematic techniques. He was a master at pulling the audience in to his stories and pulling the rug out from under the audience as well. And perfect for those who appreciate the man and his work is the documentary from Ted Haimes, Dial H For Hitchcock.

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In what has unintentionally become my theme of the week, I’ve watched another not-ready-for-theaters film featuring a cast member of TV’s Lost, this time Daniel Dae Kim (a.k.a. “Jin”) in the 2008, A&E mini-series, “The Andromeda Strain.” And, to be brutally honest, I didn’t care for it.

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We went to see Iron Man a couple of weeks ago and we sat down right afterwards and talked about it. Daniel’s brother, Joseph Roos, joined us for the talk. It was late, we had just seen one of the most fun movies ever and so we are a little stoked. You’ll have to bear with us if it’s all a little rambling.

-Tom

One day I scanned upcoming shows using the guide on my DVR (digital video recorder), I came across a movie on TNT that I hadn’t heard of called “Whisper.” The description listed the movie as being made in 2007 and read: “A kidnapper (Josh Holloway) and his associates discover that the boy they hold captive is a real devil.” This inane recap was enough to get me to record the film, having little to do with the description but rather the name Josh Holloway, a.k.a. Sawyer.
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I just saw a news report that director/producer/actor Sydney Pollack died at age 73 from cancer, and thought I’d write a quick tribute to a great filmmaker whom I respect a great deal. 
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A few years ago, John Travolta got involved in a bank heist movie that wanted to be more with “Swordfish”. It wasn’t a bad movie but the irony that haunted the movie, I think, was its early self comparison to “Dog Day Afternoon”, a classic with Al Pacino. The movie didn’t stand up to the criticism it put on other movies in that discussion. Spike Lee gracefully skated over that thin ice in 2006 with “Inside Man”.

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When Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe teamed up to make the epic crime saga American Gangster in 2007, it was a clash of titans – arguably two of the greatest living actors going mono e mono. However, in 1995 a not-yet-a-star Crowe played the villain in the Denzel futuristic, action movie, Virtuosity, where Crowe virtually stole the show (pun intended).
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Something a little different, some quick hits on three movies I’d watched recently but didn’t have a full blog on their own:
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Before we discuss National Treasure: Book of Secrets, let’s talk history . . .
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There’s nothing like a fun bad movie. Being sick of good movies Daniel and I rented the latest Uwe Boll movie In the Name of the King. We spend sometime talking about this movie and bad movies all around.

We are having all sorts of problems with sound quality on our podcasts, this one is good but the next two (which are actually older) probably won’t be so good. Bear with us while we work out the kinks.

-Tom

Alone In the Dark is rated by RottenTomatoes.com to be the second worst movie of all time. Second to, the recently reviewed by me, Ballistics: Ecks vs Sever. My first reaction to this was anger, there are movies I’ve enjoyed watching less than either of these, Babel for example. Let’s break this down:

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