tokilltheking

Let's just chime right in with the chorus, shall we?

Spider-Man
2

is the greatest superhero movie ever made. It goes well past amazing –
although amazing it is — and enters that rare realm of extraordinary,
approaching its subject with the kind of depth and sophistication usually
reserved for dramatic movies

not

based on comic books. Relating its
narrative with both gravity and a supreme lightness of being, the movie
broaches its fundamental theme of heroism with intelligence and profundity. And
it does so without skimping on the thunderous, heart-pounding action we've come
to expect from such films.

Spider-Man 2

ensnares us in a web of
unexpected emotions, all the while entertaining the hell out of us. It's a
defining moment for the genre.

Much of the credit for the movie's brilliance goes to director Sam Raimi, who
also directed the first film and has agreed (thankfully) to helm the third, as
well as screenwriter Alvin Sargent (

Ordinary People

,

Julia

) and
an ensemble who perform to the fullest of their considerable abilities.

The first installment was enjoyable enough, though it suffered from some
glaring flaws — notably Willem Dafoe's scenery-inhaling Green Goblin. Raimi
and company bring out a bigger, better villain this time around — Dr. Otto
Octavius, aka Doc Ock. A kind-hearted scientist whose experiments with fusion
go terribly awry, Octavius winds up with four mechanical arms merged to his
body and a villainous mindset that is driven by the usual megalomaniacal need for
mass destruction.

Unlike most superhero films, the focus in

Spider-Man 2

is not on Doc Ock
and his fights with the web swinger (although the three battle royales that
exist are mind-blowing showstoppers) — it's on Peter Parker's inner-turmoil
over his new life as a voluntary crime-fighter. His selflessness has taken a
toll — he's stressed beyond all measure. Inevitably, he trashes his suit with
a resolute "I am Spider-Man no more."

We know this won't last. It's Parker's Aunt May who puts it into perspective
when she tells her nephew "I believe there's a hero in all of us,"
part of a mid-film soliloquy delivered by Rosemary Harris with the kind of
eloquence usually reserved for Shakespeare. All of the main characters in

Spider-Man
2

engage in heroism of some form or another, and their actions give the
movie a strong dramatic potency.

Raimi blatantly defies what have become conventions in a genre that, as of
late, has been far too glutted with lycra-suited crusaders. The first

Spider-Man

bore Raimi's markings, but the nervous "Will we recoup our
investment?" breath of the corporate heavies fogged its frames. This one
bears Raimi's full unadulterated stamp and some of its most impressive moments
– including an alarming, horrific scene in a hospital — recall two of the
director's earliest masterpieces,

Darkman

and

Evil Dead 2

. The
action sequences play out with a bloodless but masonry-shattering violence that
rumbles the theater and instills in us a genuine sense of peril.

Raimi understands how to conduct action sequences so that they play out with
clarity, never once devolving into a rushed jumble of seemingly random images.
More importantly, he understands that action isn't everything, and that a slow
dramatic build-up must be employed for the thrills to achieve intensity. The
director takes his sweet time brewing up the movie's central romantic conflict
between Parker and Mary Jane Watson, as well as exploring the young man's
residual guilt over his part in the death of his Uncle Ben.

Spider-Cuff 2

Directed by Sam Raimi

Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and Alfred Molina

Rated PG-13

127 Minutes

There's hardly an off performance in the movie, and a few — Harris's Aunt May
and Alfred Molina's gloriously menacing Doc Ock — are even Oscar-worthy. Tobey
Maguire seems more at ease this time with the title role, playing the character
with a canny mix of self-deprecation, puppy dog pining, and heroic bravado.
James Franco's Harry Osborn (the Green Goblin's son) is a little one-note in
his obsessive need for avenging pop's death, but his inclusion is primarily a
bridge to the next film, where his character will likely play a more
significant role.

Special acclaim to J.K. Simmons's uproariously manic J. Jonah Jameson,
publisher of

The Daily Bugle

. The character has more screen time than in
the first film, and Simmons doesn't waste a second of it, barking orders and
intimidating underlings with a juicy, over-the-top relish. The only weak link
is Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane. The actress possesses a dreamy, droopy look that
is supposed to pass for romantic but comes off more like a commercial for
Sominex. She could put a hypnotist to sleep.

Like a spider's web, there is a magnificent beauty and elaborate intricacy to

Spider-Man
2

. Richly poignant, vigorously thrilling, and abundantly playful, it
swings, it skyrockets, it soars. It's a genuine marvel.

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A numerical look at the 82nd Academy Awards

First off, let me say that Sandra Bullock is my girl. Loved her in "Speed," "Miss Congeniality" and, come to think of it, "Miss Congeniality 2." Meryl Streep, however, hasn't won an Oscar since 1982 ("Sophie's Choice"), and she deserves another for playing Julia Child in "Julie & Julia."

Mar 04, 2010 | 12:00 am

|

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Two Tucson natives in the indie band, now based in Austin

Tucson natives Michael "Coomers" Coomer and Curtis O'Mara recall
the moment they felt the urge to drop everything, pack up and rock
out.

Mar 04, 2010 | 12:00 am

|

Comments

Made since '04, they'll be shown during festival

Eight Mexican films made since 2004 will be shown in Arizona for the first time as part of Tucson Cine Mexico. Now in its fifth year, the festival runs tonight through Sunday at Harkins Spectrum on the south side.

Mar 04, 2010 | 12:00 am

|

Comments

A constitution commons it's not, but as cheesecake meets tongue, you won't introduce a gosh darn

It's a simple dessert - basically cream cheese, eggs, a shot of vanilla - and when done right, cheesecake is a real thing of beauty. And there's a lot of cheesecake to love around these parts.

Mar 04, 2010 | 12:00 am

|

Comments

Confident, older premiere danseuse strays from the card

Working from Linda Woolverton's very Hollywood screenplay adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic tale, Tim Burton shifts the story from a child Alice to a near-adult Alice, viewing her journey through a drearier, more dangerous looking-glass.

Mar 04, 2010 | 12:00 am

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2010 Battle of the Bands


Upcoming concerts

Food Fight

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.

OLD Special Edition

APPROX. 79 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1989 - MPA RATING: NR

"You could query, why climb the highest mountain? Why fly the Atlantic? We choose to go to the moon… We choose to go to the moon… We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are untroubled but because they are strict." Who was the man that said this? Was he a man with a dream, a vision, or was it the importance of beating the Russians so we didn't and get a Communist moon? One opportunity is sure: John F. Kennedy's speech about a voyage to the moon was the start of Apollo and basically set mankind on the moon.

At the time, America had only had a man in space for sixty minutes and now had less than eight years to depart his feet on the surface of the moon. "For All Mankind" is a documentary featuring true NASA footage of the quarter-of-a- million-mile range and the astronauts describing how it felt.

Instead of following one specific duty, Al Reinsert (the director) uses footage from various missions and seventy-nine minutes to tell us how such a journey must contain felt and looked take a shine to, from the powerful liftoff to the space walk on the pave of the moon. I'll allow it, restrict space stuff (which I do) is compulsory to like this film, but if you do, it's a really gigantic experience.

Chéri full movie dvd

Criterion once again have created a great DVD. The picture quality is enthusiastic, or as good as it can be from original NASA footage. Two layers have been used to give us the best possible picture attribute; I checked the BIT meter of my DVD player and it was never under 5MBIT, and for most of the videotape it was between 7 and 10MBIT (which is max). It features a up to date Dolby Digital 5.1 keep company. It sounds great in the front and center speakers but only uses the upraise speakers a only one times. I guess they didn't notation in DD 5.1 in order….

As the houseman who pens funny “ad libs” for all and sundry from Raquel Welch to Steven Segal when they’ve got to “play themselves” at an awards or consideration event, Bruce Vilanch has half the application in his encumbered. More guest-eminent-driven back-scratching exercise than anything else, this lightweight, husk-deep docu feels like an accomplishment at repayment. Under discussion and approach make it natural tube fare.

Nathan Lane says Vilanch has given “more good lines to celebrities than a Hollywood coke dealer” — ka-boom-CHA! — and it’s intriguing (if a little magic-depleting) to glimpse just how methodically he crafts bon mots so stars don’t actually have to think them up themselves. Though he’s written material for regular TV and stage shows (notably for longtime ally Bette Midler), most of Vilanch’s efforts are admittedly “topical … (and) don’t have a shelf life, really.” Academy Awards and other broadcast excerpts here duly bear out that notion.

Beyond the distinctively poodle-haired, bespectacled, plump and campy Vilanch himself — whose personal life is kept pretty much off-limits here — focus lays mostly on his principal ongoing collaborations with Midler, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams. Latter does some typical, inspired off-the-cuff riffing. Otherwise, celebs’ input seldom goes beyond affirming what a character Vilanch is, how talented, etc.

He’s likable enough, but “Get Bruce!” seems less a real behind-the-scenes showbiz docu than a sort of extended “Entertainment Tonight” seg. No hard questions are asked, no personalities allowed an unflattering moment. In the end, it all feels as faux-casual and scripted as the award shows Vilanch helps create.

Download Aliens in the Attic Movie blu ray

Ann-Margret sings a tribute song (”Dorothy Parker’s zaftig clone/Tallulah with testosterone”) penned by Michael Feinstein and Lindy Robbins during credit crawls. Tech package is pro.

Cut pollution is the subject of docu “Water,” hitherto Exxon Valdez merits nary a mention. The wrongdoer here, rather, is “spiritual” be inconsistent pollution, a dubious conception defined by a file of scientists, researchers, clerics and possibility medication specialists of thoroughly varying believability (and speaking diverse languages rendered in English v.o.). Handsomely shot and briskly edited, Russian-produced docu presents a slippery intricate of subject, New Years mysticism and unabridged crap that, if the appetite for “The Secret” and “What the Bleep Do We Know!?” is any data, could notch well niche numbers on homevid after token sensational make available, beginning April 18 in Los Angeles.

Film begins by discussing some of water’s more unique chemical properties: While the formula H2O remains constant, the clusters that individual water molecules form are extremely mutable and responsive to outside stimuli. From this relatively solid footing, the film then argues that water is vulnerable to destructive external influences, including insults, loud music and negative thoughts, that can sap its essence. (Apparently water has both a high surface tension and a remarkably thin skin.) While it never quite reaches Jack T. Ripper levels of absurdity, “Water” nonetheless drowns out its science with hazy spirituality and utterly preposterous claims. In the end, it all smells fishy.

– Andrew Barker

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Jacques Tourneur’s (”Out of the Past”) Berlin Express is an ideological
spy thriller shot in black and white that makes the most of its absurd
plot and the history used as background to its fictional narrative. It
is based on the story by Curt Siodmak and the screenplay is by Harold Medford.
The unflinching camera shots of the ruined cities of Frankfurt and Berlin
by Lucien Ballard realistically depict Germany’s despair in the postwar
occupation period, giving the film an historical documentary look (an official
sounding narrator also gives the film a semidocumentary feel). There are
shots of once booming cities in rubble, showing where once stood the Reichs
chancellery, Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, and the Adlon Hotel. The I. G.
Farben building in Frankfurt, the key manufacturer of Germany’s tools of
war, remains intact. That building is now the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University. 

Though a minor work, it sparkles at times because of its ever hopeful
humanistic viewpoint in the face of ambivalence by the main characters,
the intriguing realistic location shots, the sequences shot on the train
were gripping and the sinister atmosphere it creates over German reunification
and the hints at the coming Cold War. The narrative is less interesting,
as it is grounded in the conventions of the thriller and is more politically
moralizing than it should be for a work of film noir.

On a special train (with US army personnel, displaced persons and
diplomats) from Paris-Frankfurt-Berlin that is controlled by the American
military, four representatives of the Occupying Powers — the British educator
Sterling (Robert Coote), the American agriculture expert Robert Lindley
(Robert Ryan), the Soviet army officer Lt. Maxim (Roman Toporow), and the
French official Perrot (Charles Korvin) — are on their way to Berlin to
help a German humanitarian visionary, a leader in the anti-Hitler underground,
Dr. Bernhardt (Paul Lukas), realize his dream of a peaceful and unified
Germany. 

Warning: spoiler to follow.

An assassination attempt at an unscheduled stop in Sulzbach fails
to kill Dr. Bernhardt, as the Nazi insurgents responsible kill instead
someone hired to be a decoy. But when the train stops at Frankfurt, Bernhardt
is kidnapped by the Nazi group after being betrayed by his old friend Professor
Walther. This results in the four representatives overcoming their differences
and working together to try and find Bernhardt. The army under the command
of Colonel Johns (Charles McGraw) conducts the official search. But the
four are better able to search undercover and are aided by Bernhardt’s
French secretary, Lucienne (Merle Oberon), who is familiar with her boss’s
reunification plan and his contacts in Germany. Lucienne goes on the search
through the nightmarish rubble of Frankfurt dressed to the hilt in evening
gowns, which looked ludicrous. In any case, she and Lindley eventually
find clues of where Bernhardt is by attending a nightclub that is off-limits
to American service men. After a shootout with the Nazi gang holding the
victim in a bombed out building, the American army rescues the humanitarian.
But on the train ride to Berlin one of the four  representatives turns
out to be a Nazi agent and is stopped from killing Bernhardt only by the
alertness of Lindley. 

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Barbara Kopple was asked by Woody to do a cinema verite documentary
on his 18-city European New Orleans Jazz tour he will be on with his demonized-in-print
girlfriend and soon-to be-wife, Soon-Yi Previn, with Woody promising to
let her film without any interference. It is a most relaxed and enjoyable
look at the neurotic comic, who appears to be no different in this documentary
from the way he is in his films. But what is vividly shown is how exhilarated
Woody gets from playing the clarinet and how wonderfully morbid he is about
everything else he does, from eating a vulcanized Spanish omelet in Spain
to getting seasick on a gondola in Venice. Woody’s trek from one luxury
hotel to another, lets us hear the comedian’s constant wisecracks and tune
into his idiosyncrasies. When sending out his laundry in Milan he says,
“I hope it doesn’t come back breaded.” He looks into the unintrusive camera
and tells us that he always must have his own bathroom when travelling,
this way he can have room for all his ointments, which is the reason he
always looks so good.

Woody seems to be acting natural as he interacts with his sister
Letty Aronson and the motherly Soon-Yi. She relates to the aging comic’s
foibles and crankiness and need to be treated with kid gloves by voicing
her opinion on what he should do, which he either ignores or childishly
follows or comes up with a good one-liner for. This seems to be the real
Woody and not a put on, and you either love him or shy away.

The relationship between the couple is what the film turns out to
be mainly about. Therefore since Kopple films Woody and his bride as they
act natural together, there is no need to look for gossip columnists to
know more about the star and the tabloid headline relationship he has with
his step-daughter and now lover. There seems to be nothing seedy going
on between them, except a relationship based on need and affection; their
relationship does not appear to be fraught with overt sexuality.

Woody’s happiest playing the clarinet with the band, as his head
bobs up and down and he keeps time with the music by tapping his feet.
Some of the snippets from the numbers he played included the joyous songs
like “Down by the Riverside” and “Home Sweet Home.” If there is any criticism
for the film, it could be noted that we didn’t hear enough of the band
playing.

Woody seemed to be comfortably aloof from the band — relating mostly
to the smiling banjo player, Eddie Davis, the one who put the group together.
There are good vibes, as they all seem to be on the same page. What might
be surprising to a lot of people, is how good the band actually is and
how much fun they seem to have playing together. After the concert Woody
and the band go their separate ways. So this documentary covers Woody fully,
giving us a fly-in-the wall look at the claustrophobic star as he is mobbed
by admiring fans and wends his way through the autograph seekers and those
who want to take photos of him and his ardent wealthy admirers who flatter
him. But as Woody duly notes, these rich admirers won’t pay a dime to see
my films.

Woody and the band show their mettle in one Italian city, as there
is a power failure and they continue playing. That he receives an engraved
plaque for this, encourages Woody to joke about how it comes easy for him
to be a hero. After awhile, seeing one luxurious hotel after another becomes
a déjà vu experience. The trip took him to Paris, where he
was excited about going into a music store that had an historic clarinet
that suited him. In London he quipped that he can fail at last in a country
that speaks his language. Woody comments that he always wants to be somewhere
he isn’t — if he is in Milan, he wants to be in New York.

The travelogue ends on his arrival in New York and the high-rise
apartment of his 96-year-old father and 90+  mother, who treat him
to a neurotic scene that could be right out of a shrink’s office or one
of his films. The father would have preferred that Woody had been a pharmacist.
The mother would have preferred if he married a nice Jewish girl. Woody
and Soon-Yi sit there in the kitchen and take in all the put downs without
fighting back. This scene ices the cake on Barbara Kopple’s splendid work;
it couldn’t get more absurd than this for the serious maker of documentaries
(Harlan County, USA), as Allen is reduced to being a child
again in front of his overbearing Jewish parents.

Trey Parker, designer of TV’s South Deposit, knocked out this cheap ‘n’ cheerful comedy while his spirited delinquents were inadequate more than a gleam across his cherubic front on. The plot is pure silliness: pretty Mormon boy Joe Babyish (Parker) comes to the town and winds up starring in a porn flick under the dastardly direction of Maxxx Orbison (Jacobs), meets with national acclaim, but subsequently turns the tables on his intriguing Svengali with the aid of his screen sidekick Ben, aka ‘Choda Boy’ (Bachar), and the Orgazmatron, a peaceful-invented ray gun which induces instant orgasm. Parker’s cosset is essentially malefic, but inventive as well as ostensible: the South Parking-lot sensibility is easily discernible, though far from perfected. What’s missing is the animation’s young irony: a substitute alternatively of ten-year-olds’ artwork and humour produced to an adult standard, this is just boy’s food produced by boys - the presentation values don’t even be entitled to evaluation. Easily scorned, just as easily forgotten, but not without a certain immature charm.

Download Chéri Full Movie dvd

It’s a new year, and what better harbinger of the season than the movie industry’s annual dumps, those movies too marginal, mushy or just plain bad to be released the rest of the year?

From the number of walkouts at a recent screening,”Happily N’Ever After,”a slick piece of computer animation that can be described as a family film only in the sense that it’s a film the whole family will want to avoid, will open quietly, do no business and be quickly forgotten. That is as it should be.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince movie hd

Sarah Michelle Gellar voices a gamine scullery maid named Ella in this fractured fairy tale that uses sarcasm and snarky asides to subvert the conventional Cinderella narrative. The handsome prince here is a vain, vapid pretty boy; the real hero is a kitchen servant named Rick (Freddie Prinze Jr.), who resembles a cross between Jeff Tweedy and a bit player from “Shrek.”

Indeed, “Happily N’Ever After,” which co-stars the voice talent of Sigourney Weaver (reprising her baddie persona from “Holes”) and George Carlin, winds up answering the question of what “Shrek” hath wrought, and between its plastic-looking visuals and cynical attitude, the news isn’t good. Lacking the genuine wit and humanism of that film and any number of forebears, this one deserves its dumpin’.