Archive for April 2009
Stars on Ice @ BOk Center
Cross-posted at: Tulsa Today
Figure skating is an unusual beast: it’s sort of dance, sort of athletics, and sort of – um – skating. It’s something of an artistic endeavor, but it’s always hard to watch a competition without feeling that in some sense, the “artist” – the skater – is somehow holding their vision back in order to ensure the highest marks. For this reason alone, it’s always nice to see skaters let loose and do some truly fun, crowd-pleasing stuff – as was the main event Sunday afternoon when the Smuckers-sponsored “Stars on Ice” tour came to the BOk Center.
[review]: Valkyrie
United States, 2008
Directed By: Bryan Singer
Written By: Christopher McQuarrie, Nathan Alexander
Starring: Tom Cruise, Tom Wilkinson, Kenneth Branagh, Christian Berkel
Running Time: 120 minutes
Rated PG-13 for violence and brief strong language
3.5 out of 5 stars
Every year, December rolls around, and every year, we get the usual glut of movies that really, really, really, want to win Oscars. It’s simply a foregone conclusion, and that little statuette has been around long enough that people know by now what the Academy likes. And one of the things that it likes is, of course, World War II. Read the rest of this entry »
[review]: Ghost Town
United States, 2008
Directed By: David Koepp
Written By: David Koepp, John Kamps
Starring: Ricky Gervais, Téa Leoni, Greg Kinnear
Running Time: 102 minutes
Rated PG-13 for some strong language, sexual humor, and drug references
4 out of 5 stars
Ghost Town is a film that’s somewhat obviously inspired by M. Night Shyamalan’s hit 90’s horror film The Sixth Sense, and it makes no bones about that — going so far as to use the tagline “He sees dead people…and they annoy him.” As the second half of the line suggests, however, Ghost Town is about as far from a horror film as this sort of story gets. The ghosts here bear no gruesome marks to indicate how they died (although they do wear whatever they died in — making things a bit awkward for those that died in the shower or while engaged in coitus), and you won’t hear a single bloodcurdling scream. No, Ghost Town is a simple romantic comedy — and a very good one, at that.
Buddy Guy & The Rev. Horton Heat @ Cain’s Ballroom
Cross-posted at: Tulsa Today
It’s easy to take rock and roll for granted. It’s been the dominant musical form in the western world for more than half a century now and there isn’t a genre whose modern form doesn’t owe something to that surprisingly potent blend of country and blues. For anyone who’s forgotten what we owe to our musical forebears, however, Cain’s brought a couple of messengers for rock’s roots to their main stage in the last week: living blues legend Buddy Guy on the night of December 10th, and “psychobilly” veterans The Reverend Horton Heat on the 12th. Both acts played sets that acted as retrospectives of the last 50 years of music history, and both had crowds begging for encores. Read the rest of this entry »
[review]: The Day the Earth Stood Still
United States, 2008
Directed By: Scott Derrickson
Written By: David Scarpa
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Jaden Smith
Running Time: 103 minutes
Rated PG-13 for some sci-fi disaster images and violence
2.5 out of 5 stars
Three years ago, I made the acquaintance of a little horror picture called The Exorcism of Emily Rose. I didn’t walk in with anything resembling high expectations – history told me that horror films about demon possession were, as a rule, terrible (thanks to the fact that genre-definer The Exorcist couldn’t possibly be improved upon, of course), and director Scott Derrickson’s only previous credit was that direct-to-video classic Hellraiser V: Inferno – but I walked out pleasantly surprised. The film was a funky little exercise in eclecticism – combining courtroom drama with spooky atmosphere and jump scares – plus, it spoke somewhat directly to the times, and while it might not have reached Bergman levels of profundity, it surprised me with its depth of emotion and it even made me reexamine bits of my worldview. It wasn’t a particularly well-reviewed film (though it did make the Chicago Film Critics Association’s list of the “Hundred Scariest Movies of All Time”), but it did manage to change the way I thought about horror movies, and – most importantly – it got me interested in Derrickson.
Well, perhaps that interest was a bit misguided. Or perhaps he’s hit a sophomore slump (this being his second theatrical release). Or maybe he’s simply not at his most comfortable working with a script he didn’t write. Or (most likely) he simply can’t make a great film when he’s not working with great talent. But for whatever reason, his latest – a remake of the 1951 science fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still – just doesn’t make it over the bar he’s set for himself. Read the rest of this entry »
