Question: the person(s) who create Cinema Sins are not the same person(s) who create Honest Trailers, correct? Obviously they're different YT channels, but these are two wholly different content creators, right?

If people watch CS videos and conclude that the presence of small imperfections = a movie being shit, then yeah, that's unfortunate. I don't know that it's destabilizing to the enterprise of film criticism at large, but it is unfortunate.

A lot of what I see getting called out in CS are just weird little inconsistencies of the kind one is likely to find in both great films and shit films. (The cigarette was in Nicholson's mouth in one shot, then it disappeared--that means Thelma Schoonmaker's a hack! Or, The bullet holes were already behind Jules and Vince before the guy shot! Please.)

Part of what Polley's doing is putting the audience in something like the position she'd been in most of her life. You're getting all these different narratives from people, often very vivid and emphatic that this is the truth, and what do you do? All facts are skewed necessarily by the storyteller, including the documentary itself, and the reveal is her way of saying to us "See how that works?"

I don't know whether or not Ep VII will crack the top of the all-time worldwide gross list, but it'll definitely open big, bigger than Batman/Superman, I would think.

For all the goodwill the prequels eroded with people like me, it's easy to forget (or block out of one's mind) that there was that whole other population of people, much younger than I, who loved them some Jar-Jar. Those kiddies who liked the prequels and grew up with only the prequels--they buy movie tickets too.

The Annenberg people briefly revived it a few years ago. Some of the same people were on. Six more hours of Socratic hypotheticals streaming free here:

http://www.learner.org/resources/series … ;pid=2245#

I love GBH so much.

I'm in love with Mamet the director and Mamet the philosopher of storytelling. (His politics are another matter, but I love lots of people whose politics I don't agree with--like my own father.) His books on theatre, moviemaking, and storytelling are great. He's like a polemicist on storytelling.

I adore his whole perspective on movie directing that Trey described. On the Criterion audio commentary for Homicide, he goes into it. He says that as a director you should never want to hear someone describe a shot you've composed as "interesting." "Interesting" is the worst word, he says. "Direct,"clear," "honest," those are the words you want to hear.

(IIRC, he illustrates the point by telling a funny story about Roger Deakins, who was the DP on Homicide. He makes it clear that he thinks RD is a genius before describing how Deakins wanted to ruin one of the best shots in the movie by making it more "interesting." In the finished film, there's a fantastic visual reveal that the audience doesn't see coming because it isn't being telegraphed with the camera in the way normal film grammar would telegraph it. Basically, Deakins wanted to telegraph it. And Mamet's like, Uh, no, the idea here is that I want the audience to be surprised, not feel the reveal coming. That story is Mamet's POV, obviously, but when you see how the reveal comes off in the finished film, it does look like something a seasoned DP would not be keen on--which is why the reveal works. It's such a badass little reveal that Mamet plagiarizes himself and does it the exact same way in Oleanna.)

It was. It's appearance elsewhere -- DO THE RIGHT THING, The Simpsons -- are homages to NoTH, which is one of the best movies I've ever seen.

It's an emotionally potent movie. The performances are big, but also very good.

Ruffalo impressed me. He seems to sleepwalk through most of his roles, even the good ones (e.g., The Kids Are Alright--he's good in it, but you almost want to check him for a pulse in some scenes). But god damn is he good here, whole other level good. All the actors are. (Taylor Kitsch is in this film. I was shocked at how great he is. It's like, hey who's this guy?)

It's one of the better films about the AIDS crisis I've seen, up there with Angels in America and How to Survive a Plague.

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

Bought the blu-ray. I hadn't seen it in years. I enjoyed the fuck out of it.

It's quintessentially 80s--Lundgren, James Tolkan, and a couple of other familiar faces, plus conspicuous Burger King product placement (as in MONSTER SQUAD). The character design for Skelator is badass. Langella's performance is remarkable given that he's emoting from behind a brick of makeup.

I love it despite how brazenly derivative it is. The opening titles sequence is just plain stolen from SUPERMAN. Conti's score sounds like STAR WARS mixed with SUPERMAN plus sprinkles of Jerry Goldsmith's STAR TREK music. Not to mention the fact that the music that plays when Gwildor uses the Cosmic Key is extremely BACK TO THE FUTURE-ish. Even the final battle is ganked right from JEDI.

Lundgren is ostensibly the star. He barely speaks! And when he does, it's one sentence, never two or three strung together. Jimmy pointed out to me that Gwildor--this little disposable character who was not in the toy line or cartoons and was created just so he could engineer the film's MacGuffin--has way more lines than Dolph, the star. So funny.

The making-of is interesting, too. Low-budget, lots of problems with money, didn't know whether they'd be able to finish the film.

Good call.