(Note: as with my vicious, no-holds-barred takedown of the appallingly bad Showdown in Little Tokyo, this Off the Shelf entry is extra special. That’s because it’s also part of the Cinematic Katzenjammer’s Not-So-Secret Santa Swap blogathon, which this time around is a bit more seasonally appropriate. For my swap, I was given the chance to talk about Starter For 10, a movie which did not make me want to pour boiling gravy into my eyes; it’s charming and fun, plus it has all the British people in it. Thanks to the illustrious Nick Powell for setting this whole thing up.) You’ve probably seen Starter For 10 before. By that I…
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G-S-T Quick 5 – 2013’s Underseen Gems
Well, well – we’re back here again, are we? The biggest difference between that post and the one you’re about to read, though, is that 2013 has been nothing but gravy through and through, boasting an absolutely absurd number of high quality films of all makes and models; if the early going was slow, things picked up in a big way in late Spring, and that momentum stuck for pretty much the rest of the year following that. Whether you were hitting the big multiplexes or your local arthouse establishment, 2013 had a slew of wonderful movies worth your patronage. Inevitably that means some of them fell through the cracks;…
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G-S-T Review…Lone Survivor
Director Peter Berg sure does fancy his modern day war themed films. And why wouldn’t he? Barring Battleship, he has a knack for these heart-felt but hard-hitting and gritty stories. His true talent seems to be in these dense fish-out-of-water narratives focusing on a few key players set in a world they struggle to comprehend. With many parallels to his 2007 film The Kingdom, Lone Survivor, whether or not it was a true story (which it is), is a passion project for Berg and can almost be viewed as a companion piece. Lone Survivor, adapted from a novel of the same name (keeping the name of the book is a…
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G-S-T Review…The Wolf of Wall Street
After sitting through three hours of unrelenting, unrepentant debauchery, your first query regarding The Wolf of Wall Street might be one of genesis. How in the blue hell did this thing get made? Yes, yes, there’s a realistic and tangible answer to that burning question, and it’s only five words long: Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese. (Credit should go to Red Granite Pictures, too.) But none of that makes for satisfactory explanation as to how a mainstream Hollywood movie could be this explicit, this over the line, and this unapologetic all at the same time; most shamefully of all, it’s also a total blast, though you’ll probably want to take a…
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G-S-T Review…Her
Stop me if you’ve heard the one about Leonard Hofstadter falling in love with Siri; sometimes, reaching for low-hanging fruit proves too much of a temptation, though by now that joke has already passed its expiration date. In fact, you may be more familiar with Her, the latest film from Spike Jonze, through overuse of the aforementioned wisecrack than actual studio promotion. But punchlines about pop culture and technology don’t do full justice to Jonze’s picture, a wholly unique work that’s peppered with humor but is more meaningfully shaped through its examination of human relationships in a culture grown overly reliant on precious gadgetry. That’s the most surface level of…
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Of Horn & Ivory: The Odyssey Of ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’
For an ostensible, totally loose biopic about Dave Van Ronk, Inside Llewyn Davis leans rather heavily on an incredibly serendipitous allusion to The Odyssey, and more than a decade after releasing O Brother, Where Art Thou?, to boot. A story about one man’s navigations through the choppy waters of New York’s 1960’s folk music scene might be the last place anybody would expect to find references to Homer’s ancient epic; leave it to Joel and Ethan Coen to subvert expectations, then, because their film practically hinges on a synchronized collision between hoary fiction and the more recent, very real history of Van Ronk and the folk revival movement he contributed to – at least as far…
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Interview…Film Composer Alex Heffes on ‘Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom’
The world lost Nelson Mandela in December of this year and so it’s bittersweet that this Winter we are given a powerful film that chronicles the life of such an important man. The film Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom is directed by Justin Chadwick, stars Idris Elba and Naomie Harris and features a moving and emotional score from award-winning British composer Alex Heffes. Alex composed over 90 minutes of original music for the film. Traveling to South Africa he recorded choir vocals and South African singing legend Caiphus Semenya’s own voice to depict Mandela’s passing into Manhood as a young boy and ultimately reprising this theme for his inauguration as South Africa’s…
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G-S-T Review…Saving Mr. Banks
A spoonful of sugar, as they say, helps the medicine go down. In the case of Saving Mr. Banks, John Lee Hancock needn’t any help coaxing people to eat up his charming quasi-biopic. But still, that idea of needing something to sort of grease the rails to get a job done really captures the spirit and the idea of the entire film itself and does make the film so much more palatable. On the surface it’s fun to see the crotchety British writer thumb her nose at Disney’s candy-coated empire, but there’s so much more to it than that. Now Saving Mr. Banks, despite the appeal and allure of one Walt…
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Sweet Trailer…’How To Train Your Dragon 2′
One of the biggest (and unexpected) hits in the DreamWorks Animation catalog is their medieval adventure story How To Train Your Dragon. Delightful, fanciful, funny and heartwarming that story, about a boy and his dragon, just keeps giving and giving and now, best of all, DreamWorks Animation is giving us a sequel. The trailer for this follow-up to the 2010 film just hit and it looks like more high-flying fun. It features the return of the original cast as well as that patented DreamWorks charm. Enjoy! It’s been five years since Hiccup and Toothless successfully united dragons and vikings on the island of Berk. While Astrid, Snoutlout and the rest…
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Sweet Trailer…’Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’
Good news everyone! For those of you interested in all things Apes, the time spent waiting for the continuing saga of one of the most famous cinematic simians has not been in vain; the dawn of that particular story draws closer. Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) has taken the reins from Rupert Wyatt in this new Planet of the Apes series and from the look of the trailer that dropped today it seems to be in good hands. In this next installment, titled Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, we find Caesar has risen to effectively become king of the apes. Now that the simian flu has crippled humanity he and…
