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Movie 666

 Feature Articles

Does Disney Now Own God?

Disney Mickey Mouse ThorDisney plans to buy Marvel, home of the Mighty Thor. What does this mean to Norse mythology, and world religion in general?

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Farewell Patrick Swayze

Patrick SwayzeHonky tonk sexpot, redneck avenger, and king of cheese, Patrick Swayze will be missed

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Half Blood Prince is Empire Strikes Back of Potter Movies

Half Blood Prince PotterMorris endures dark and scary spellfest, latest chapter in series that will not end.

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Hurt Locker Fails to Capture World War II Experience

The Hurt LockerSo-called action movie wastes time tinkering with timebombs while Nazis run amok in the desert

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Martyrs Tortures Audience Along With Characters

MartyrsThis work of French shock cinema is so effectively unsettling you might find yourself reaching for the remote.

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Morris Up for “Up”?

Up movieUp is proving irresistible to audiences and critics alike. But what does Morris Pevensey, the Movie Critic Who Hates Everything, have to say…

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This Borg Needs Blood… and a Brain

Terminator SalvationIn what seems tailored for the lower end of the PG-13 spectrum, Terminator Salvation lacks the guts and smarts of the original

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Starfleet Babies

Devil Evil SpockIs this new movie a Klingon plot to make us forget about glories of Khan, Tribbles, and the Kirk-Spock duel on Vulcan?

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Where is Captain America When You Need Him?

watchmenZack Snyder deserves to have his film equipment taken away for thoughtless muddling of “Watch Men”

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Fashion Nazis Should Love Valkyrie Movie

nazi fashion movieHollywood gives the jack boots a double polish for this old school nailbiter. Why?

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We Need a Blue Guy to Keep an Eye on the Warheads

watchmen movieThe Watchmen reminds us that nuclear weapons and nuclear war are still urgent issues today

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Slashing for Sport at Camp Crystal Lake

friday the 13th movieStupid teens killed by the cabinful… it’s the same old stuff in the new Friday the 13th movie

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Hollywood Trends Change Faster Than a Werewolf at Midnight

Six months ago, the horror genre was colder than the winters at Camp Crystal Lake. But with Friday the 13th opening big, is blood now back in style?

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Terminator Salvation Battlefield Etiquette by John “Christian Bale” Connor

Listen up. The killer robots are on their way, and John Connor wants to get a few things straight…

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Let the Right One In

What’s amazing about this vampire film is how loyal to convention it stays while still presenting us with something refreshingly unique.

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Milking the Milk Movie

Outdated fashions and strangely effete lead character compromise otherwise fine portrayal of rough and tumble San Fran politico.

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Every Boring Second of Brad Pitt’s Life Filmed Backwards in Benjamin Button Baloney

Morris T. Pevensey, The Movie Critic Who Hates Everything, wants three hours of his terrible life back.

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Beverly Hills Chihuahua

Unleash the hounds of hell… new talking dog movie the perfect cure for America’s economic and military woes

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Burn After Reading Puts Unlikely Heroes in Spy Game

A pair of earnest but bumbling fitness instructors try their hand at the spy game in another genre twister from the Cohen Brothers.

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Quantum of Solace

Why is the new Bond so pissed off?

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Simulation, Sublimation, and Cinema on Halloween

Celebrate puritanical America’s sexiest, most dangerous, and most enjoyable holiday

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Defend Yourself Against Goblins, Witches, and Crazies

This Halloween don’t anger the children. Your life depends on it.

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Softcore Eurotrash Neutered in Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Woody Allen’s neuroses sabotage what would otherwise be a splendid homage to Emmanuelle and the softcore Eurotrash of the 70s

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Beautiful Losers Inspires Others to Be Losers Too

Colorful documentary about graffiti, skateboard, and punk rock artists shows value of creative community

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Did Sarah Palin Shoot Liberty Valance?

Hollywood has primed us for Sarah Palin

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Horror Genre Takes the Midnight Meat Train to Its Final Demise

When a Clive Barker horror movie can’t get a decent theatrical release, you know the genre is in trouble

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The Actor Directs: Marlon Brando and One-Eyed Jacks

After scrapping Stanley Kubrick as director, Marlon Brando applied his method techniques behind the camera as well as in front.

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Epic Subject Gets Epic Treatment in Mongol

Great big Mongol movie balances bloody battles with kinder, gentler side of Genghis Khan

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Wall-E, Coming Soon to a Landfill Near You

Creative and visually stunning new Disney/Pixar film can’t help but send mixed environmental messages.

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Brutal Massacre: A Comedy

Hilarious mockumentary about the making of a low-budget horror film hits target audience straight in the heart — with a well-oiled machete.

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Indy Horror Watchlist

Support indy horror by hunting down these low budget gems before they hunt you down.

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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Hollywood Blockbuster

Indiana Jones and the Kingdon of the Crystal Skull is so unbelievably cheesy, wheezy and queasy that, on leaving the cinema, I felt like simultaneously chugging a bottle of Pepto Bismol and four double-espressos just to restore my body’s equilibrium.

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Iron Man Crunches Terrorists While I Crunch Popcorn

Comic book movies are becoming as plentiful as the comics in a 15-year-old boy’s bedroom.

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Day of the Dead Wastes No Time Wasting Zombies

Break out the machetes, the zombies are attacking Colorado!

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Doomsday Revisits Dystopia

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a good mohawk biker flick, and Doomsday delivers

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The New Lowest Form of Cinematic Life?

Movies based on classic board games like Monopoly, Candy Land, and Battleship may be coming to bore you soon.

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Tales of Highway Doc Takes Viewer on Holland Road Trip

Julian H. Scaff’s “Tales of a Highway” explores Holland’s multi-layered landscape.

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Trapped Between Monsters and Military in Cloverfield

Brilliant Cloverfield uses giant monster genre to address politics of terror

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Read Keep Heed Follow These Instructions

Exploration of new experimental sound and video work by Julian Scaff and Felix Kubin

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No Country For Old Genres

Coen Brothers shoot apart the traditional crime thriller to show deadly scope of drug world and fate itself

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Top 666 Movie List

By popular demand, the top 666 movies in cinema and more. If you’ve been looking for proof that Hollywood is infatuated with the Devil if not downright evil, you’ve come to the right place.

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Uwe Boll Goes Postal

A politically irreverent masterpiece from the larger-than-life filmmaker who literally beats his critics.

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Creepy Little Girl Movies (CLG’s)

This disturbing subgenre examined in detail.

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The Great Debators

What makes a movie great and not just good? I asked myself that question after seeing this film. Because I was swept away if not exactly blown away.

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Captivating Losers: Before the Devil Knows Your Dead

Sidney Lumet continues his recent fascination with characters beyond redemption.

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Piles of Dirt

Review of strange new movie by estranged American filmmaker (he lives in the Netherlands) Julian Scaff

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Anticlimax: Fema on Film

Henry Fonda would have handled New Orleans much better than Bush.

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Return of the Jedi Loses Status in Star Wars Sextet

With six films of Star Wars finally complete, the question arises: Does the Jar Jar Binks of Episode I give the Han Solo of Episode VI a run for his money?

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Corporate AmeriKKKa Gets Two Weeks Notice

Dr. Mangrove exposes the radical message hidden within this bromidic romcom.

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The Hulk Versus the Military

Do movie-watching crowds in this time of unrelenting jingoism, military opportunism, and peer pressure patriotism really want to see a negative portrait of our men and women in uniform?

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Equilibrium: A Bush Like Vision of the Future

By Dr. Theodore Mangrove
Equilibrium is a film which escaped my attention during it’s short stint in the theaters, so I didn’t see it until it came out on DVD. It was pleasantly surprising in some respects, disappointing in others, and disturbing in how it reminded me of the message and tone of the […]

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Sports Viewing is Now Mandatory

By Demon
“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
- Noam Chomsky, Media Control
Athleticism and good health are hallmarks of meaningful human existence. Unfortunately, commercial society perverts both to secure profit and control. Therefore it should not be suprising when the Department of Fatherland Security comes out […]

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Deridda Da Da Da… Man Ironing?

By D’Aporia

What is really known about Derrida?
White hair, for starters…

I finally got to see Derrida the movie and can now confirm the not so favorable responses. Here is what I think.
1.
Granted that the filmmakers spent some effort following Derrida around, filming him talking in what are mostly celebratory […]

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Psychos in the Muck: The Hunted

By Demon

Cutting to the chase
Knifefighting in The Hunted

For better or for worse, there is a time when every SUV driving denizen of Hollywood feels obligated to actually drive his vehicle out of the city and into the mountains for which it was ostensibly made.
Perhaps one of these trips inspired […]

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Michael Moore Is Turning Up the Heat

By Dr. Theodore Mangrove

What does it all mean?

If you think Michael Moore was unabashedly outspoken in his last documentary Bowling for Columbine and in his Oscar acceptance speech at the 2003 Academy Awards Show , you ain’t seen nothing yet! Moore’s next documentary, titled Fahrenheit 911 […]

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The Animatrix: Nine New Visions

Nine episode anime expands on the concept of the original Matrix movie. The films are bound by the same vision of a post-apocalypse caused by human actions — a world in which only hackers and misfits living on the fringe can see the truth.

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Entertaining the Crew of the Death Star

By Demon
“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
- Noam Chomsky, Media Control
Operation Iraqi Freedom - a military operation, a film title, or both? It sounds like a film title, right next to Operation Condor with Jackie Chan and

Gulf Wars: Clone of […]

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Outlining Hegemony While Bowling For Columbine

Bowling for Columbine is opinionated, rambling, rough edged, and carries a tasteless title. It is also quite remarkable. For in his own stream of consciousness and highly personalized way, documentarian Michael Moore has connected the dots of American hegemony in ways that social theorists with copious volumes cannot.

[…]

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Uncooling the SUV

By Dr. Theodore Mangrove
If you were a space alien visiting Earth, you might think that during a time of war when America’s dependence upon petroleum from the most politically unstable parts of the world threatens our national security, not to mention the health and well-being of the whole planet, that the political leaders of our […]

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Are Trees Ecoterrorists? Defending the Forst in the Two Towers

By Demon
We live in it, we breath it, we drink it, and we destroy it, but where is it cinema? It fair to say that movies dealing with the natural environment are rare in today’s theaters.
Movies, almost universally, deal with interpersonal relationships and the struggles of goal seeking humans. Rarely do these goals involve the […]

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Kubrick’s Imaginary Western: One-Eyed Jacks

By Demon
Once upon a time in Hollywood, director Stanley Kubrick was slated to direct a Western. One can only imagine what the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey , A Clockwork Orange and so many other monumental works would have done with the horse and gun genre. Documents from the time, however, provide us some […]

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If There’s a Problem Just Nuke It

By Dr. Theodore Mangrove
I was recently perusing the movie trailers at http://www.apple.com/trailers/ when I came across a new sci-fi movie called The Core. The premise of this film is that the Earth’s core is going to stop spinning, thus removing the protective magnetic field around the planet and leaving us exposed to the […]

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Summer Not at the Movies

By Demon
Ah, summer movies: space aliens, sequels, secret agents. Where was Movie 666 this summer? Answer: not at the movies.
Forgive this first person digression. It is less than scholarly. This online zine started as a monthly publication some two years ago, now it appears quarterly - assuming the editor has even been to the […]

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Not Our CIA: The Bourne Identity

By T. Fotherington Hexagram
The CIA: All-powerful, all knowing Gestapo of the world. A lurking shadow fires a silent bullet in Zimbabwe - an Afghan dictator dies of mysterious causes - smoke rings blown from a cigarette in a Zurich café are noted and decrypted - and the CIA, the eyes of America sees all, […]

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Chevrolets of the Apocalypse

By Dr. Theodore Mangrove
Mad Max Comes to Mayberry
There is a scene of mountains devoid of vegetation, except for a few scroungy pine trees clinging precariously to the dusty earth. Hard-hatted men standing several stories tall put the finishing touches on an petroleum pipeline as we spy oil wells and other dirty machinery in the […]

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Black Hawk Down at the Multiplex

By Alicia Frobisher
So I went to the movies AGAIN last weekend. I know, you’re all like “Ally, what, like don’t you have cable or something?” Right, and two parents parked in front of it. I mean, my god, what with Daddy and his pay-per-view wrestling and Mom bein a major horndog an shizit for […]

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After the Rewrite the Mind is Now Beautiful

By Demon
Yeah, let’s get this straight.
According to President Bush, America is a country at war. We rain bombs on Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest countries, to get rid of religious fundamentalists who want to kill us. We send military advisors to Columbia and the Phillipines to take care of other problems before they start. […]

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The Clones that Should Have Been

The buzz on Star Wars has always been that it’s an homage to the old Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers movie serials, only better. The new series reverses this - it’s incoherently silly like the old serials, but flashier and duller. At least Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones isn’t as […]

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The Future a Long Time Ago: Attack of the Clones

Early in this movie, the eponymous Yoda announces that “the Dark Side, clouds everything; the future, impossible to tell.”
While this statement might hold true for the characters living within Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, the audience knows better.

Plotting the fate of the universe:
Attack of the Clones

In fact, much of […]

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Madonna Attacks the American Life, Sort Of

Madonna flirts with the idea of making a radical political statement with her American Life video, but ultimately keeps it tame. Nevermind the sexy dominatrix suit.

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The Worst Comedy Ever Made: Freddy Got Fingered or Say It Isn’t So?

By Dr. Theodore Mangrove
Last year, two films emerged as contenders for the worst comedies ever made. The first of these was Freddy Got Fingered written and directed by MTV wacko Tom Green. Michael Rechtshaffen of the Hollywood Reporter wrote that it “has the dubious distinction of being quite possibly the worst comedy ever […]

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Secret War: Will the Public Ever See Kubrick’s Fear and Desire?

A one-man conspiracy named Stanley Kubrick does not want you to see his first feature film, Fear and Desire. Here’s why…

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Safe Return Doubtful - Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition

In 1914, explorer Ernest Shackleton set out with 27 men to attempt the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent. Many of the crew had joined the expedition after reading the following notice:
Men wanted for hazardous journey.
Small wages. Bitter cold.
Long months of complete darkness.
Constant danger. Safe return doubtful.
Honour and recognition in […]

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Focus on the Fight: Black Hawk Down

There is a scene in Black Hawk Down - Ridley Scott’s cinematic rendering of the bloody 1993 street battle that took place between elite U.S. solidiers and Somalia street fighters and militia - where inexperienced yet capable Sergeant Eversman is given some philosophical advice from Sergeant Sanderson, a battle-seasoned […]

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Special Delivery for Robinson Crusoe: Dreamworks Sells out Cinema with FedEx Corporate Love Song

Best Supporting Corporation:
Federal Express.

Is objecting to advertising in Hollywood films in the new millennium akin to objecting to the blueness of the sky or the brightness of the sun?
Has advertising in cinema truly become so commonplace that the paying audience is expected to somehow enjoy corporate love songs loosely disguised as […]

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80s Flashback: Water

The ubiquitous Michael Caine:
Water

In 1985, a movie called Water hit the theaters for about a week and then was gone. Unfortunately, this was probably the best satire of American and European politics of that decade, and most people have probably never heard of it.
The movie is a comedy of errors set […]

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Oh, Brother, This Film is Violent

The penultimate scene in Beat Takeshi’s Brother takes place in a lonely desert café where Yamamoto, the ostensible hero of the film played by Takeshi, sips away the seconds while waiting for a gang of mafioso to show up and issue him death.

Badfellas:
Takeshi’s L.A. Yakuza

Yamamoto leaves a wad of dough on […]

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Film and the Future: Media After September 11

This is not the essay I planned on writing this month. My original article was about the contemporary “crisis in film criticism.” But in light of September 11, what I originally called a “crisis” seems like, well, not that big of a deal anymore, especially now that bombs are dropping overseas and the terrorist scare […]

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Does the Matrix Already Have Us?

I was recently rereading Culture Jam, the cultural revolutionary handbook by my good friend Kalle Lasn. I also recently watching The Matrix for the umpteenth time, mostly just to enjoy the bullet-time kung-fu sequences while I did yoga. As I was watching the film I suddenly started interpreting the subtext from the […]

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Amblin Intelligence: Spielberg’s AI and the Ghost in the Machine

Robots learn their place in
AI’s Flesh Fair

There are sections of A.I. Artificial Intelligence when director Steven Spielberg seems to be working hard to transcend the commercial imperatives of his earlier work and create a serious film with a new level of sophistication. Some of these sections are quite indebted to Stanley Kubrick, who spent […]

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European Artsos with an Edge: With a Friend Like Harry and Sexy Beast

Ray Winstone is
the Sexy Beas

A recent poll asked a random sampling of Americans to vote for the best foreign films of all time. Those Americans that had actually seen a foreign film and were therefore eligible to particiate in the survey produced a somewhat predictable slate of movies. Life is […]

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Red Planet Versus Blue Planet

Mars needs trees:
Red Planet

Every year there are a pair of science fiction movies on the same subject heading. In the year 2000, the subject was a journey to the planet Mars. The first film, Mission to Mars, was so embarrassingly bad that it is not even worth writing […]

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Drugged Out Hollywood Gets Rehabilitated in Traffic

Traffic is a remarkable movie about the drug war, fascinating not for its gunfights (appreciably underplayed), but the real world conditions and situations it illuminates

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Losing Money on Lord of the Rings

I lost money on this film. I bet four dollars against someone’s back issue of Teen Beat that it was going to flop. How did Peter Jackson do it?

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It’s Nothing Personal: You’ve Got Mail

Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan reunite in yet another bubble gum romantic comedy for the masses.

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Blood and Circus Maximus: The Audience Appeal of Gladiator

By Demon

Film buzz Hollywood types line up around the block at the Hollywood Cineramadome, eager as Romans to see the Gladiator spectacle unfold. The cheers of the cinema audience mirror the cheers of the screen audience watching the bloody fights. Maximus wields two swords, separating head from body to furied spectator approval (suburbanites rejoice […]

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An Epic of iMac Proportions: Gladiator

By Demon

Maximus (Russell Crowe) goes nuts in Gladiator

The almost forgotten genre of the Roman epic has been recalled with Gladiator (2000), an ancient world tale of swords and survival loosely based on the historical reign of an eccentric Caesar, Commodus, who enjoyed gladiatorial spectacle and went as far as performing himself […]

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Beyond the Hollywood Domain: the Cinema of the Web

Hollywood has embraced digital technology and the signs of the “new cinema” are everywhere — from special effects in theatrical films to streaming trailers on the web. Much more is promised: soon all movies will be shot on digital video and theaters will swap film projectors for digital ones. Film itself will vanish for […]

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Self Destruction and Self-Promotion: Corporate Branding in Recent Cinema

Product placement and branding strategies in recent movies.

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Blood and Animation: Princess Mononoke

Princess Mononoke finally arrived in the United States with the promise that her ink and paint action and epic-length story would transcend not only your average animated movie, but your average live action feature. This coupled with progressive notions of man and nature, Mononoke is not your average toon.
Furthermore, the Princess is […]

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The Rules of Fight Club

Hollywood movies are not subversive. That is the first rule of Fight Club.
Sometimes a Hollywood movie seems too good to be true. For instance, well into the film, the main characters of Fight Club have abandoned their jobs, rejected fancy clothes and other symbols of consumerism, urinated in the soup of the […]

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SUV Smashes Subcompact then Tips Over Killing Mom and Thirteen Children: Final Thoughts on Cronenberg’s Crash

Although Crash does not moralize about the environmental effects of the automobile so much as examine the depth of the automobile’s social penetration, the movie can still be looked at as an indictment of car culture.
Crash implies a dull acceptance on the part of culture regarding the destructive nature of the automobile. In Crash, […]

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Softcore Porn and Fossil Fuels: Cronenberg’s Crash

David Cronenberg’s Crash is currently a late night staple of the Independent Film Channel. While cable channels like Showtime and Cinemax lull viewers with softcore dramas based on sleazy private detectives and women’s fantasies, IFC has the after hours market cornered for sex involving car crashes.
IFC goes so far as to precede Crash with […]

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Lost in the Woods: The Blair Witch Project

Usually the victims in horror movies fight back against their attackers, but this is not the case in the Blair Witch Project where the victims are overwhelmed by nature itself

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Thighs Wide Shut: Kubrick’s Final Film

Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut, is an enigmatic, puzzling finale that is not so much climax as encore.

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Space Junk: Star Wars the Experience

EPISODE I: BEN KENOBI BLEACHES HIS BEARD
Some time late in 1998 I read that George Lucas was once again going to make Star Wars movies. These movies would step back in time from the original series and cover the early adventures of its greying heroes, folks like Ben Kenobi and Darth Vader. (article continues […]

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Canooing the Matrix

Welcome to the Matrix, where computers rule and humans are grown in vats to be used as batteries; take the red pill and let your notions of reality, identity, and what constitutes an action movie slip away.

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Spielberg’s Lilly Pond

Spielberg needs to separate filmic fantasy from physical reality and place his Dreamworks studio in an area that could benefit from a large commercial development instead of endangered wetlands.

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Titanic: Judging a Film by its Context

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get escape this movie.

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Stanley Kubrick and the Death of Cinema

Stanley Kubrick died in his sleep early last month. His death as a filmmaker comes at a time when filmaking itself is dying at the hands of digital technology.

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