Trey Parker and Matt Stone are clever filmmakers and inspired comedians, but I can’t help despising where they’re coming from politically in Team America: World Police (Paramount, 10.15), their R-rated puppet flick. I’d love to fall in line with my journo friends and call them the cat’s meow in all respects, but man, I can’t. … Read more
I’m all over the place this morning (researching, ad concerns, re-designing) and running late with Wednesday’s (10.6) column. It probably won’t be up until 3 pm Pacific time. If only there two of me…or three of me, for that matter. One could sleep on the couch and the other on a cot in the dining … Read more
Who can think about movies at a time like this? The bad guys are probably going to be running things for another four years and I’m supposed to shrug this off and bang out some kind of riff on this weekend’s openers — Wimbledon or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow or Head in … Read more
Digital Choo-Choo I’m kind of an undistilled-reality type guy, visually speaking, so don’t expect me to cream over the latest animation technique. I can take or leave Japanese anime (and Japanese anime snobs tick me off). I was never a fool for Disney-style paint-cell animation. I’ve always liked but never quite loved those bursting colors … Read more
There’s a vaguely bothersome echo in Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries (Focus Features, 9.24) that nobody in Hollywood journalist circles seems to want to talk about…but it’s there. It doesn’t trouble me to any great degree, although it’s grown into a slight roadblock in terms of my core feelings about the lead character, Ernesto “Che” … Read more