December 2010
17 posts
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My Favorite Albums of 2010
If someone had told me a year ago that my favorite album of 2010 would be Beach House, I wouldn’t have believed them. Until this year they were a band I could only listen to for a few songs at a time before getting bored and switching to something else. That all changed on the band’s third album, Teen Dream, which leaked around this time last year and went into heavy rotation soon...
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True Grit
This is not the western I would have expected from The Coen Bros. Who would have predicted such an earnest film from filmmakers known for their arch irony? Most of this is due to 2 factors: they’ve adapted the story from a book and the lead character is a precocious headstrong 14 year old girl in search of her fathers killer. The cast includes Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon as a US...
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WatchWatching the horrible It’s A Wonderful Life sketch on SNL this weekend reminded me of this much funnier version from the Carvey/Hartman era.
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Olly Moss
I first came across illustrator Olly Moss through his Minimalist Movie Poster series. They’re kind of everywhere at this point but I think he was the first to do it (or at least he was the first I’d seen). I loved his Evil Dead print, as well as his recent Rolling Roadshow series, but this recent series of Star Wars prints for MondoTees has got to be my favorite thing he’s...
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Tron: Legacy
Visually impressive but dramatically inert. I’ve never seen the original Tron, but I’ve heard it fares about the same. I knew from the first trailer I saw for Tron: Legacy that I was going to see it, whatever the reviews, just because it looks so cool. And as a strictly audio/visual experience, it delivers. There are a handful of moments when the Daft Punk score kicks in that are...
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“I despise that show. This is the opposite.”
– Sofia Coppola on Entourage (and her new movie Somewhere) to LA Weekly
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Blue Valentine
The last film from my Sundance picks to be released this year, Blue Valentine is also one of the year’s best. The film stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams as a couple at the beginning and end of their relationship. There are two timelines in the film, 6 years apart, and the film cuts back and forth between these moments creating a heartbreaking contrast between the two. At a...
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Somewhere
Somewhere is a film of sparseness and excess. Stephen Dorff plays Johnny Marco, an actor drifting through life at the Chateau Marmont, whose self centered existence is interrupted when confronted with having to take care of his 11 year old daughter. The first thing that may strike you watching the trailer, (other than it being unmistakably a Sofia Coppola film), is that there is almost no...
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The Fighter
After a 6 year hiatus, (during which he directed and abandoned the political satire Nailed), David O. Russell is back. During the 90’s, Russell was part of a crew of “Hollywood outsiders” who seemed to have snuck into the studio system to make big budget movies. (See also: David Fincher’s Fight Club, etc.) My hope was that if these guys did get swallowed up by the...
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The King's Speech
The King’s Speech is one of those movies that I never would have seen if it weren’t coming out in the middle of awards season on a minor tidal wave of “Best Picture” hype. There are a few of these every year that I’ll see, despite minimal interest, just because I just want to make sure. It’s Oscar bait through and through, but this one is actually pretty...
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WatchShe & Him (& Conan) - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
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Black Swan
It’s crazy to think that I’ve been a Darren Aronofsky fan for a decade now. I saw Requiem For A Dream in Philadelphia on opening night in 2000 and was blown away. In 2006 I caught a CMJ advance screening of The Fountain and 2 years later attended the NYFF premiere of The Wrestler. After the perceived failure of The Fountain, (a film I love), I see the need for him to hit reset on...
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