I've been thinking about movies a lot lately. From making a couple short films recently, writing out ideas for more and the rash of good looking films coming out these past few weeks I got movies on the brain. Plus the wonderful and highly recommended UB film seminar series starts on Tuesday nights just 2 weeks from tonight. I'll break that down a little later but first let talk about movies.
I was really discouraged by what had been coming out this summer. There were a lot of sequels, prequels, remakes, and adaptations but not a lot of original films and more than that not a lot of good ones. The ones I saw didn't impress me and many of the summer films had trailers that were so bad that I couldn't even justify a matinee price for them. It was disappointing because I want to believe every summer there will be a whole lot of great movies.
I remember starting off the season with Ironman 2 and while it was a solid film, it doesn't even come close to the original. Then I remember Sex and City 2, which looked so awful in the trailer I won't even watch it when it hits the Superstation sometime next year. FYI, I used to watch the series on HBO back in the day. I thought it was good writing. There was Tom Cruise in Knight & Day, where he's doing the Cruise face throughout the commercial and those big white teeth get bigger and creepier every time I see them.
Then there were some bad casting choices: Russell Crowe as Robin Hood, Ashton Kutcher as a Spy, and of course Cruise. Plus I was even wrong about something. I know right, me wrong? I was sooo looking forward to the Last Airbender because I was a fan of the story from the cartoons but that movie was trashed by everyone I know. I couldn't summon up the courage to go see it but unlike Sex and the City 2, I will watch it when it comes on FX or TNT next year.
What else turned me off... oh don't even get me started on the crap that was stolen from my childhood and repackaged for this generation like The A Team, The Karate Kid (with no karate in it), Predators, Nightmare on Elm Street and the soon to be released Piranha movie. Boy is that gonna suck. Some of these ideas that they are bringing back weren't even that good in the first place. I guess it's far easier to take an established idea and redo it than come up with something from scratch. It's also far easier for me to buy an independent film DVD for the same price I'd spend to one of those remakes.
I didn't have a lot of hope for this summer after those first few months and then Inception came along. It's a movie that I haven't watched yet but from what I've heard, read and seen, I know I'll like it. That seemed to turn the tide. Then I thought; well maybe the summer movie season can be salvaged. With Scott Pilgrim, Eat Pray Love, and The American either just coming out or a week or two away I'm starting to think that will be the case and then the UB Film seminar will begin and I'll be awash in classic films for a while and not in need of newer films to entice and thrill me.
For those of you who don't know about the film seminar, it's a class at UB where a husband and wife team of professors teach a class on film and the lab, so to speak, is at the Market Arcade each Tuesday night and is open to the general public. Half the crowd will be students with notepads out and their pens going throughout the film and the other half of the crowd will be people like me, who've never seen most of these amazing films, or maybe seeing them again, but this time on a big screen. The professors set the movie up before it is played and then there is an often informative question and answer period right after it ends. It's a very cool movie series. For more information (including the schedule) go to their site: http://csac.buffalo.edu/bfs.html I'm going to go to pretty much all of them so if you want to combine forces, let me know.
Well, that's all the movie talk I have in me for one evening. Keep in mind I am full of it and I don't know what I am talking about so if I insulted a movie you liked, no worries. To each their own, but since it's my blog, I'm right. Cut and print.
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