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July 28, 2006
The Ant Bully
(out of four)
OK, I cheated. I saw The Ant Bully in IMAX 3-D, and now I wouldn't want to watch it any other way. Critics do this all the time: They review video "screeners" at home for movies you pay to see on the big screen, writing them up as if it's the same experience.
But this is different. I saw The Ant Bully on an even bigger screen, with blades of grass popping out into the audience and giant 3-D wasp battles that make even Star Wars seem lo-tech — so my enthusiasm for the movie stretches beyond what the average moviegoer is likely to experience.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2006
Monster House
(out of four)
Anybody who's ever been 10 years old can tell you how the most ominous house on the block takes on a certain notoriety among the neighborhood kids. Even though no one's ever seen the old guy who lives behind the sagging porch and cobwebbed windows, rumor has it he murdered his wife and eats little kids.
Most of us have forgotten those years, the way our pace would quicken when crossing in front of said house, lest whatever grim force lurking within has a chance to snatch us from the sidewalk and gobble us up for dinner. But not the makers of Monster House. They know just the dynamic that drives boys' imaginations wild, and they push it -- a little too far maybe, but the stunt works until just about the point when the movie must commit to whether there's really anything out of the ordinary about old man Nebbercracker's place.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2006
Star Trek Fan Films
The front rooms haven't changed much since 28-year-old "Star Trek" fan Rob Caves inherited his grandmother's house in Altadena, Calif. Curio cabinets and '70s-style furniture give the impression that an old lady lives here.
But in the back, it's the 24th century.
There Caves has assembled a makeshift studio for his "Star Trek" Web-only spinoff series "Hidden Frontier." A hand-painted greenscreen covers one wall, against which two actors dressed in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" uniforms discuss their same-sex relationship.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2006
Color Cards
When Maysoon Zayid walks out onstage, she always opens with the same line: "I'm a Palestinian Muslim virgin with cerebral palsy from New Jersey."
She wants to get the fact that she has cerebral palsy out of the way — otherwise, auds would mistake her shaking for nervousness — and she does it by burying the detail among other hot-button elements of her identity.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 09:59 AM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2006
The Films of Michael Haneke
Expect spoilers. It’s pointless to discuss the films of Michael Haneke without addressing the ruthless twists he includes in each of his movies. Like that final shot in Caché, in which Haneke reveals the film’s two sons conversing on the front steps of the school (in such a way that only the most observant viewers will even detect the characters in the scene), certain moments have the capacity to unravel all that has come before and suggest the director’s true intentions.
Caché, of course, was the film that put Haneke on the radar of American audiences. And yet the 64-year-old director has been systematically provoking viewers for more than three decades, first in Austrian television and only later in features no doubt dismissed as too austere and depressing to support a commercial release in the United States — until now. Thanks to Kino, audiences now have access to the full range of the director’s career (the only feature since 1989 not yet available on DVD is an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Castle, and yet the very choice of material is telling of the director’s ongoing preoccupations: the impersonality of modern society, the impact of media on our daily lives, and the deconstruction of storytelling itself).
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 05:08 PM | Comments (0)