Cruise, "Sin City"; Leary and Loy on Eastwood and "Closer"
So, here are a few pieces I stumbled across today...
A mind-boggling update on director Todd Haynes' spectacularly weird concept for a movie about Bob Dylan. I cannot wait to see this.
I'm Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan
Congratulations, Peter Jackson! King Kong filming has wrapped. How do you throw a King Kong party?Lots and lots of bananas.
Tom Cruise - Scientology evangelist!
Founded in 1954 by the science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology has long had a close connection with celebrity. Contending that artists "are a cut above man" - according to a church Web site, www.celebritycentre.org - Hubbard said, "He who can truly communicate to others is a higher being who builds new worlds." The church has celebrity centers in several cities where actors and other famous figures come to study and meet. (John Travolta and Kirstie Alley are among the best-known Hollywood adherents.) At the centers, according to the Web site, they are promised "the best in service and care, for those are the people who are sculpting the present into the future." (And Mr. Travolta in 2000 starred in a widely ridiculed pet project, "Battlefield Earth," a space-invasion story based on a novel of the same title by Hubbard.)
ZZZZING!
Since there are no more challenges left for him as an actor, Ben Affleck is moving on to directing.
You can learn a lot about a man from what he writes. Here's Harry Knowles on why he likes Sin City. Remember that. This is why he likes it.:
"SIN CITY is a cinematic blowtorch to the senses, burning, exposing and finally annihilating each new noir drenched nerve-ending into another thrilling, ecstatic sensation. From the second Marley Shelton starts to quiver in Josh Hartnett’s arms till the closing of the elevator doors – this movie is a vice holding your head in place – daring you to watch it through the gaps of your fingers – leaving you laughing the naughty laugh at each new delicious sin, like a box of chocolate strawberries shared between lovers – you in your seat and Robert, Frank and the actors and artists on the screen – each celebrating the unmitigated joy of getting away with it, honoring it and bringing it to life. SIN CITY throbs to life with the roar of engines, gunfire, rage, women and men. It’s primal – it’s murderous and it’s vital."
Vital for what?
Referring to the movie and its filmmakers, Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez ...
It’s ... every woman that made them lust, every sin they ever thought. This is the culmination of dreaming the big dirty dreams about dicks and dames with all the dead dorks they leave pushing posies in their destructive wake.
Why am I thinking this will not end up on CT Movies' 10 Most Redeeming Films of 2005? For some reason, I'm hearing Gandalf: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
And now, at The Matthews House Project...
The ever-eloquent Michael Leary on Million Dollar Baby
Million Dollar Baby
and
the ever-electrifying Stef Loy on Closer.
The Secret Lives of Dentists CloserCloser
Meanwhile, Peter Chattaway's pondering a question that has kept all of us awake nights... Do Candadians watch the same movies as Americans?