The resolution, such as it is, involves the complexities of time travel — wormholes, tangent universes and so forth — in a way that asks larger questions about free will.

[ Worth seeing if it comes out in your area... i'll be interested to catch it for sure. -k]

The Resurrection of 'Donnie Darko'

[ I think this movie is gonna totally kick ass. -k]

Miramax | Hero

Oh fuck yes!!!

Ghost in the Shell 2 - In theaters Summer 2004

] It's not that "Troy" is a bad movie. It's a good movie --
] if you don't care about Homer. It could have been a great
] movie if the people who created it cared about the power
] of this fantastic tale.
]
] But they decided to make a movie like every other movie.
] And that's what they got.

[ Not a ringing endorsement. I'm a lot more likely to accept generic movies if they came straight from a screenwriters head, or from the mass-market fiction that pervades bookstores, which is itself already generic (by which I don't claim to deny it's entertainment value).

I'm a little sensitive to ruination of classic stories, for the very reasons outlined in this article. I support modernizations (a glut of which were made a few years ago, with somewhat varied results) and even reinterpretations, but something about purporting to tell one story, and then changing it with no warning strikes me as unsavory. Movies are so popular, and so widely viewed, I worry about them becoming the definitive version of a story. Am I just being an academic elitist here, or is this a shared concern (beyond the author of this review, who i'd guess agrees with me)?

Followup: Does it matter if the derivative work isn't obviously connected with the original source? Does the sin still occur if only the experts can see the connection? -k]

Beware of flicks bearing myths

] Monty Python's film The Life of Brian is to return to US
] cinemas next month following the success of The Passion
] of the Christ.
]
] The Biblical satire will be re-released in Los Angeles,
] New York and other US cities to mark its 25th
] anniversary.
]
] ...
]
] Distributor Rainbow said it hoped the film would "serve
] as an antidote to all the hysteria about Mel's movie".

[ HA! Perfect. -k]

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Python film to challenge Passion

] Minghella, a former university professor, saw influences
] in Frazier's book as disparate as medieval English
] literature and 12th-century Chinese poetry.

This article hints at a lot more depth to Cold Mountain than i'd have imagined...

Mercury News | 12/23/2003 | Filmmaker found tale he simply had to tell

You may recognize Osbornes work from the Kenna video for Hell Bent (one of the best ever, IMHO).

This is his site, where you can buy the full length short (6 mins) from which the video was cut, as well as prints, shirts and another short film...

(He shot his films in IMAX format!)

Are You Ready to Get Happy?

] What NOT to do while in the theatre when watching "LOTR:
] Return of the King":

some of these are pretty funny.

What NOT to do...

] Here's what he said: "If you are a 12-year-old girl or
] boy, you must go and see 'Kill Bill,' and you will have a
] damn good time. Boys will have a great time, girls will
] have a dose of girl power. If you are a cool parent out
] there, go take your kids to the movie."
]
] Now, Tarantino has an impish sense of humor -- he's a
] funny guy, a fairly likable guy, actually -- and I
] imagine he probably said this with a smile, relishing the
] audacity of his statement and the fact that it would make
] some people crazy. The truth, which Tarantino must know,
] is that "Kill Bill" had no business even being rated R.
] It should have been rated NC-17 and made inaccessible to
] children. Period.

thoughts on this commentary? at what age are you old enough to handle the subtleties of a violent presentation? should this have been NC-17? Would that keep kids from seeing it? *ARE* kids seeing it?

I have little love for the MPAA rating scheme. It's imprecise and misleading, even before you add the cultural stigmas built up around it (such as NC-17 being virtually equivalent to porn for most people). The theater's don't really police their patrons very strictly, or at least, they never did when i was a kid... i once bought a ticket for an R movie at the under-14 discount price. I'm not sure it should be up to the theaters to do this at all really.

Other people wanna weigh in? I don't think i'd take my 12 year old to this, but i guess that would depend a lot on how mature my 12 year old is and if i thought they could sort out (with parental guidance) and safely absorb the artistic and stylistic aspects of the movie without being injured by the violence. It's not likely, I'll admit, but possible.

COMMENTARY / Tarantino clears it up -- 'Kill Bill' is great for kids

Uma Thurman stars in Quentin Tarantino's fourth film venture, Kill Bill. Thurman plays a character known as the Bride, a pregnant assassin who is shot by her boss, Bill (David Carradine), on her wedding day, leaving herself and the wedding guests lying for dead. She survives and after being in a coma for five years, she wakes to seek revenge on her co-workers and boss who had attacked her. She sets out to strike down her once fellow assassins, leaving Bill for last.

i'm looking forward to this a lot... style over substance is what i've heard, but so much of the former that you don't much care about the latter. i imagine i'll be there tomorrow or tonight...

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)