Seeing Cormac McCarthy’s The Road at the top of the list for Entertainment Weekly’s The New Classics: The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008 fascinates me. The 2006 book deserves all of the praise and attention it’s received since publication. Even Oprah Winfrey got it right for once when she ordered her minions to read The Road for her book club.
The Road tells the story of a father and son as they wander through an ash covered, post-apocalyptic America. McCarthy’s 2005 book No Country for Old Men – known better as a Coen brothers movie than a McCarthy novel – reads in hindsight like an appetizer for The Road. In the former book, McCarthy slowly dissects the American Dream and reveals the unpleasant possibility that it’s coming to an end, whereas in the latter book, he destroys America and shows us the possibility of what comes next. And what does come next? Well, a lot of despair, darkness and pain. Make no mistake about it, The Road is bleak; which is just fine for McCarthy, a writer who is notorious for never quite giving readers what they expect and want. For instance, outside of a “long shear of light and then a series of low concussions”, it is not clear in the book what caused the devastation. But really, it isn’t important what really happened – this is a journey story, one of survival.
More importantly, The Road is part of an interesting 21st century trend towards end of the world stories. (more…)
Well I’ve had my fun the past few weeks watching more well known films, so now it is time to get back to brass tachyons and rummage up some harder to find films. This week’s film is one of the first ecological doomsday films evah made. Though rather then focusing on the science fiction aspect of the plot, it chooses to follow the newspaper men covering the story. Sounds like The Day the Earth Caught Fire is positively dripping with excitement, no?
It’s been a tough week for writing reviews for me. Coupled with watching some atrocious movies that suck my will to go on, I’ve had to deal with a nasty little cold that makes me want to fall asleep every time I sit down. So as you might see watching a movie hasn’t been the easiest of tasks this week. It has been such a struggle that I didn’t finish the film that I was going to write on this week until late last night, leaving me with little time to write anything worthwhile to post up on the site. So if this week’s review is a little short or bland I am apologizing now for sucking.
I was hoping that this week’s choice would be impervious to my week long doldrums, due to the fact it is an Australian cult film, and there are few things I love more then Australian cult films. Granted this small obsession has only matriculated in the past five years or so, ignoring the first seeds planted by the Mad Max films a good twenty years earlier, but there is just something about them that always catches my attention.
But the choice for this week’s entry was brought about a week earlier after watching Doomsday. After spending 100 minutes enjoying the hell out of that movie I was suffering from a serious craving for genre films from the 80’s. And since Doomsday director Neil Marshall had caused the itch that now needed to be scratched, I thought that t would be a good idea to finally watch a film that he regarded as one of his earlier influences, Russell Mulcahy’s insane vision of the Australian outback, Razorback.
Most of you probably don’t know what an Old Maid is in the theater business. It is an industry term used for the inevitable few popcorn seeds that do not pop while the batch is cooking. Because most people do not like to chew on popcorn seeds, in the popcorn bin their is a small grate designed to run the popcorn over so the Old Maids may fall below and not disturb their more perfectly popped brethren, soon to be forgotten.
I must admit the newest contest is a bit of a sham. Not in that you won’t win April Fool’s Day, which you will. Or that the movie is terrible, which it is. But in that I pretty much already have a title for this Friday feature I am starting up. Old Maids seems like the perfect term to apply to the films that I recommend each Friday, as they tend to be lesser known films that simply haven’t had quite enough time to “pop” in the public eye. So what do I spy in the bin this week?
Well the new releases this week are particularly bleak, in that their is only one major release, and the independent releases are relatively bleak films. Gus Van Sant returns to the big screen with Paranoid Park, a film about a kid who accidentally gets involved in the death of a security guard at his local skating park, and then must try and find a way to cover it up.
Finding a way to slide even deeper along the depression scale is Snow Angels, the new film by acclaimed Indie director David Gordon Green starring Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale. It is a melodramatic slice of life film that centers around the destructive home life’s of two separate families.
On the DVD release side this Tuesday once again isn’t exactly populated with winners. The Mist is the only major studio release, but there are a couple of interesting Indie releases. First is the suicide love story Wristcutters: A Love Story. Starring Patrick Fugit, Shannyn Sossamon, Tom Waits, Will Arnett and a host of others it is an odd romantic comedy set in Purgatory. I wrote a review on it earlier in the year and enjoyed it quite a bit, though it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
The other film that interests me is the French horror film Ils, retitled Them for the English DVD release. If you were one of the lucky few who saw Doomsday last weekend you were treated to the trailer of the inevitable crappy remake entitled The Strangers, so please go pick up the original and don’t watch some flaccid American version in theaters later this summer.
Seeing Cormac McCarthy’s The Road at the top of the list for Entertainment Weekly’s The New Classics: The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008 fascinates me. The 2006 book deserves all of the praise and attention it’s received since publication. Even Oprah Winfrey got it right for once when she ordered her minions to read The Road for her book club. 
It’s been a tough week for writing reviews for me. Coupled with watching some atrocious movies that suck my will to go on, I’ve had to deal with a nasty little cold that makes me want to fall asleep every time I sit down. So as you might see watching a movie hasn’t been the easiest of tasks this week. It has been such a struggle that I didn’t finish the film that I was going to write on this week until late last night, leaving me with little time to write anything worthwhile to post up on the site. So if this week’s review is a little short or bland I am apologizing now for sucking.
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