Films: Watched in 2003

Why, thanks, Jim, for both the format and the "knack" comments. I want to have comments for all of my movies, it's just that I am so busy and regardless of how decent my finished comments seem it's like pulling teeth for me to get the thoughts out of my brain. But I'm going to try (as I've said many times before but hopefully I can stick to it) to do better.

Yes, AJ. I quite enjoyed Old School. It plays in the "grand" tradition of other classic comedies of questionable taste.

I'll second that request. That film still has yet to poke its head in Tulsa. It looks great to me. Many are still scratching their heads as to how it evaded an Oscar nom.

I hear The Man Without a Past is interesting also, and as for Hero, gee, I haven't heard a thing about that one yet. ;)

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

I posted some thoughts about it.

I think DePalma has another great film in him. Maybe even two. But I don't think this is the way to go about it.

I watched the original a few weeks ago in anticipation of this one and I couldn't believe how slow some parts were. It almost bordered on boring at points. I think I'm going to have to adjust my rating for it down to a 5.

To my mind X2 is easily better than the first. I don't see how anyone could say that it isn't better. But even the 2nd one still isn't matching the potential that I think X-Men movies have. I've been (slowly) working on some comments about the film which I hope to post before the end of the weekend.

I'll see what I can do, Jim! :-) Although I sort of feel a 2nd viewing is in order before I can really do it justice. Do you plan on seeing it theatrically?

As long as I'm making respectful requests, can I ping you again with a Hero review request?

Yep! And it's also probably one of my least favorite places to see movies in Columbus. Only used if I'm in the neighborhood and starving for entertainment. They have 30 screens but right now they're only showing 19 films because they have 2 screen showing the same film.

Actually, "The Rundown" got surprisingly good reviews. Especially for a movie starring a man whose first name is "The."

Saturday was the 24 Hour Horror Marathon at Studio 35 here in Columbus, Ohio. Here's the schedule of festivities. There was a "Special Quarantine Training Film" (in the spirit of the Zombie theme) shown after George Romero did his Q+A, and before the feature was shown the whole audience had to stand up and take a pledge that if anyone asked what the mystery special feature was we had to tell them "Don't Look Now II: I'm Still Not Looking". But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be easy to figure out. The film that we watched before George was Night of the Living Dead. So the film that we watched after George was...? This mystery film played while he signed autographs in the lobby. He stayed until well after midnight signing autographs.

With Bruce Campbell last year and George Romero this year, I'm starting to realize how many genuinely nice people there are in the movie industry. George Romero was completely approachable. I think he would've spoken to anybody concerning just about anything. He lives in Pittsburgh and drove in to town with his wife Chris. I overheard one of the organizers say that they had offered to fly them in but he wanted to drive. Pittsburgh is about 3 hours from Columbus.

During his Q+A he mentioned that after leaving the marathon he and his wife were going to drive down to Memphis to see Asia Argento and the new film she was making there. George has worked with Dario Argento, acclaimed Italian horror director and father of Asia, before. He also good things to say about Stephen King. He's supposed to be working on a film version of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon with "Steve" as he called him.

Unfortunately I only had the stamina to do the first 12 hours of the marathon. Somebody who was at the marathon sent a news item into AICN which you can read here.