I was really surprised with Silent Hill. As a big fan of the games I was worried that the film adaptation would turn it into one crappy jump moment after the next (ala Paul W.S. Anderson’s rendition of Resident Evil). However, the film is far from it. If anything, it’s a really good adaptation of the series, taking the story of the first game and tweaking some things here and there.

The effects help to create the same creepy atmosphere prevalent in the games, and they’re not as far-fetched as they are in other movies. I must say the creature effects in particular are pretty top notch.

The casting was decent enough, though sometimes the delivery seemed a bit off. Otherwise, there isn’t much I disliked about the film. I would’ve liked it to be a bit longer and explore more of the backstory of Silent Hill – without having to resort to a flashback complete with a voiceover narrative – but ah well. There’s already a sequel in the works, so that should do the trick.

Definitely a must-see for horror fans as well as fans of the original series.

Don’t be fooled. This is not a real Bruce Lee film. Lee died before finishing the real Game of Death, but the producers of the film decided to finish it five years later, changing the story and adding a bunch of stuff around the few scenes that were actually completed by Lee before his death. The result? A horrid film that tries too hard to hide the faces of the actors who double for Bruce Lee simply because they didn’t pick people who actually looked anything like him.

There aren’t really any redeeming qualities as far as I can see. It represents nothing of what Bruce Lee intended it to be. If you want to see the actual footage that Bruce Lee shot, go check out the excellent documentary, Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey, which features the footage.

I don’t know why people are saying Shaun of the Dead is to zombie flicks like Scary Movie is to horror films. Shaun of the Dead is actually a brilliantly executed homage to films like Night of the Living Dead and Zombie, chock-full of references to those who are fans of the genre, as opposed to being a straight-up spoof that makes fun of its subject material.

At the same time the film manages to be original and hilarious, though towards the end it does start to get a bit serious, deviating heavily from a lot of the general hilarity of the first half. Also, it felt a bit short (at only an hour and a half), but that’s forgivable really. Altogether Shaun of the Dead is quite an excellent film, for people who both love and hate zombie movies.

As it says in the title.

Obviously since this is written by Laura Mulvey, author of the “Visual Pleasure” essay, the entire book is essentially recasting Citizen Kane in a light made up of psychoanalysis and feminist theory. She does mix in historical context and the whole Kane-Hearst debate, but most of the book is spent talking about Kane’s Oedipal complex and his fetishes (in her words).

It’s an interesting reading if you like Citizen Kane, but it may be a little heavy for most readers, especially if they’re not familiar with Mulvey’s other theoretical works. Still, if you dig theory, this is a nice, quick read.

It’s better than the original, so depending on how much you liked Whisper you’ll either (still) dislike the trademark “spacey”, anthem-like songs or you’ll absolutely adore I-Empire. The songs are much more lengthy, with better writing and effects, but at the same time many of them sound so similar to each other, or to the songs from We Don’t Need To Whisper, that you’ll swear you’re listening to the same song on loop.

Personally I love the album, but some songs do start to get tiring after you’ve heard them a dozen times.

This film is one of the more important films to come out of the Taiwanese New Cinema movement of the 1980s-1990s. Set between the end of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan and the Nationalist takeover in 1949, City of Sadness focuses on the lives and suffering of a single family over the course of the aforementioned time, which includes the infamous February 28th Incident. Along with The Puppetmaster and Good Men, Good Women, this is the first film in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s “Taiwan Trilogy” which deals with Taiwanese history.

Although the film is somewhat lengthy and contains a ton of long shots and long takes (one of Hou’s trademarks), the story is quite engaging albeit a bit depressing. Despite the film starting with a birth and ending with a wedding, in between there is much death and loss, which presents a kind of dual effect in the end – is it suppose to be a happy ending or a sad one? Hopeful or hopeless? The ambiguity of the film leaves it open to interpretation slightly.

The only unfortunate thing is that the film isn’t widely distributed, and to my knowledge there aren’t any high quality copies with English subtitles. I was fortunate that a professor of mine screened the film with subtitles, but the picture quality was far from perfect, and didn’t do Hou’s sweeping cinematography justice. If you’re familiar with Chinese subtitles and can read them easily enough, there are tons of copies with them available. If you’re seeking an English subbed version, you’re in for a long search.

An all-around well executed film that highlights the tensions, moral ambiguity, and horror of the Japanese occupation of China during WWII. But unlike most war films, Jiang Wen manages to mix elements of satire and black comedy into an otherwise serious and dramatic story.

Set in a small Chinese village during the last years of the occupation, the film revolves around two captives – a Japanese soldier and a Chinese translator – and the villagers who are meant to interrogate them. There’s a lot of play between language and politics in the film, and much of the hilarity comes from the misunderstandings and mistranslations in the dialogue.

The acting is superb, with director Jiang Wen casting himself in the lead role. The film also has the benefit of terrific cinematography, a great soundtrack, and an intriguing plot. It’s hard to find any fault with this film – though the mainland Chinese government did, given that the film was banned in China and Jiang Wen was barred from directing for seven years (2000-2007).

What’s great is that this film is available here in the US as a Region 1 DVD release (thank you, Steven Soderbergh!), which is supposedly the only version of it that exists for worldwide release (though I think I saw a Japanese version on Yes-Asia). I’d definitely recommend picking up a copy of this spectacular film.

Maybe I just don’t get a lot of the theoretical stuff in this book, but I didn’t find it interesting at all. The writers of Close Up include a novelist and poet, among others, so the writing’s very different from something you’d normally find in a film theory anthology. Given that it’s from the late 1920s/early 1930s, the writing’s incredibly dry and dense, though the subject is interesting (film as an art form).

If you’ve got time to read and re-read this, you might be able to pull something good out of its pages, but if you’re just planning to gloss over a few essays for a class you’ll probably find yourself scratching your head afterwards.

This book really makes you appreciate the film a lot more. I’m not normally a fan of musicals, but after reading the book and seeing Singin’ in the Rain a second time I really liked it; the first time I saw the film I marked it as “Not Worth Consuming”, but I’ve since changed that.

The BFI Classics are really neat little books that you can read in an hour or so. They’re really tiny and you can find them cheap on sites like Amazon (at least if you buy them from other sellers), not to mention they have a variety of films to choose from, written by reputable film scholars. A great addition to have alongside a classical-oriented DVD collection.

I tried this out this past week since it was one of the “signature” blends down at my local Peet’s Coffee. It’s alright. There’s a much more “earthy” scent and taste to it, but it’s not as sweet and rich as Major Dickason’s blend. Aging actually made it taste better, but by the time I got down to the last few spoonfuls of ground it was getting bitter.

I’d probably get this again, but that’s a big maybe.