Deathmatch: Film Trilogies

In Deathmatch, I’ll be comparing a few related things to each other in a full out death match (get it?) to see which one is victorious.  They’ll compete in a contest of opinion, with me as the judge! Answers will be scored in the inverse list format (In that 1st place is worth 4 points and 4th place is worth one point) and crown the winner!  Today, I’ll try out this with film trilogies.

Citizen Kane Would Have Been Great in 3D

Last night I went to go see The Hobbit at midnight with my mom and sister in 3D.   Because I like money and don’t want to waste it, I’ve only been to four 3D movies since the current boom has begun.  One of them was, obviously, Avatar, and another as said before was The Hobbit.  The other two were the awesome Nicholas Cage vehicle Drive Angry and the pretty decent The Green Hornet[1].  However watching The Hobbit last night gave me a new insight into what 3D might be used for, and what modern filmmakers are doing wrong when they use it.

 

But first, Citizen Kane and Stagecoach:

Wikipedia-less: Sweethearts of the U.S.A. (1944)

I watch a lot of Turner Classic Movies at my house.  In fact, if I’m watching TV late at night, its a pretty good bet that I’m watching an foreign classic movie. Turner Classic Movies is my go-to TV channel, the way people tune into TBS or TNT, because there’s a good chance Family Guy or Law and Order are on at any given time.  Sometimes I’ll tune in and they’ll be playing Days of Heaven or Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, and sometimes they play these little oddities that don’t even have as much as a Wikipedia page, maybe they have a single mention on the page of their stars. Anyway, this is one of them I saw today, and it was so insane that I just had to write about it. So: Sweethearts of the U.S.A.

This is the only relevant picture that comes up when you search “Sweethearts of the USA movie.”

Artify This: Dear Santa

What Is It?

Dear Santa is a Made for TV movie produced for Lifetime network in 2011.  It stars Amy Acker of Dollhouse fame and David Haydn-Jones of nothing fame. The basic story is a typical schmaltzy Christmas Lifetime thing about a kid’s letter to Santa asking for a new wife for her widower father being read by this klutzy yet relatable fashion school dropout who somehow lives in this great apartment despite never seeming to go to work and maybe they explain this but cards on the table I wasn’t paying a whole bunch of attention. I think her parents were supporting her. As a subplot this guy that Crystal (that’s the heroine) falls in love with runs this soup kitchen that’s about to go under because, like a moron, he hasn’t secured any funding for it and somehow he’s fallen behind on the rent by $10,000. Crystal adopts the “become the child’s favorite” style of flirting, which I’m sure has never worked ever. Will they find love? Will the dad decide that his current bitchy girlfriend is wrong for him? Will the shelter say open? Who knows?

The Essential Anime World Order

I’ve always batted around the idea of doing an “essential list” for various podcasts that I follow, and if Extra Hot Great ever becomes available in any form again you can bet I’ll be doing one.  Today I’ll be doing the essential Anime World Order.

Allegiance or Death!

Hair of the Dog: 30 Rock

What Caused the Hangover?: 30 Rock

I’m sad that 30 Rock is ending.  I mean that’s probably a foregone conclusion, seeing as I am a human being who lives of a college campus, but I’m sadder for reasons that go beyond “What will I do without any more Tracy Jordan lines to parrot?” or “Will Alec Baldwin do something stupid like run for mayor if he isn’t sufficiently occupied?”  30 Rock nails a particular tone that hasn’t been effectively done on American television since the heyday of the Muppet Show.  Indeed the most effective description for the tone I can think of is something that has been famously used to describe Jim Henson’s production, “affectionate anarchy.”  Everything is going wrong at once, and no one is (that) angry with each other so much as annoyed that there’s something more that needs to be done right now.  That said, I didn’t expect this French movie from 1973 to exactly nail that tone.