My guide to all of the great films that are coming out this summer. Download the PDF, or read it online here.
Two of the worst Alice adaptations I've ever seen!
A 3-Dimensional World, Flattened: 'Alice Through the Looking Glass' & 'Alice in Wonderland'
...Alice Through the Looking Glass is hardly a joy to watch. The scenes mostly take place with the actors standing in front of painted, storybook backgrounds, a halo of green-screen surrounding them. In each scene, Alice comes upon another character, they stand almost stock-still and have some kind of loopy conversation, a poem is recited (reenacted by different actors in front of a different storybook background), and Alice is on her way again. It’s hardly cinematic and barely even dramatic. It’s one step beyond having someone read the book aloud at the local library.With all of its limitations, somehow Alice in Wonderland manages to be worse. The cheap sets and poor effects are still present despite the 13 year gap. Kate Dorning, who’s taken over the role of Alice, seems much too old for the part—with someone as old as she is demonstrating a basic lack of understand about how the world works, she comes across as just plain simple (and with a squeakily high voice). Sometimes she argues with herself aloud, other times her inner monologue is presented as a voiceover, and it’s impossible to tell why one is used over the other...
... With the low-budget production values and bad special effects, Alice Through the Looking Glass and Alice in Wonderland combine the worst of public-access television with the worst of community theater. Take, for instance, the caucus race in Alice in Wonderland. There’s a crowd of extras, but the stage is so small there isn’t room for any running. Instead, the characters just shuffle about, remarking at how chaotic it all seems. It’s so ineffective, it can’t even be appreciated as camp.
Click through to read the full review on PopMatters.
I'm in the process of migrating my clips archive from Posterous to PostHaven. As with any big move, there are some snags here and there--namely, the PDFs in my "Recent Work" page have not yet migrated over, something I've been told is a known issue--but I'm hoping to clean it up as soon as I can. Until then, bear with me.
And, since the stage version of Les Misérables is performed mostly on black-box stage with few big sets, you can feel Hooper reaching for the other extreme. He breaks away with massive setpieces. This involves shots of Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) helping tow a larger-than-life warship into an enormous dry dock, walking over expansive mountains, and mingling with poor masses so gritty their dirt seems almost to smear on the screen. Hooper says his goal was to hit audiences with a “shocking level of realism” that you wouldn’t find in a stage performance.
Going for “realism” is where Les Misérables is less successful. The authenticity Hooper strives for when capturing the live singing doesn’t carry through the rest of the production. Those huge sets are actually on a sound stage (a famous one, Pinewood Studios). They don’t necessarily look fake, but they do, despite Hooper’s best efforts, look stagey. In the end, the movie is still a musical, entirely sung through with little or no spoken dialogue scenes, filmed on a big theatrical set. The production hasn’t strayed all that far from its West End roots.Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.
It's not quite beach weather, but we can pretend, can't we? For the website of the Condé Nast Traveler, I asked beauty bloggers for their must-have beach essentials. Read it at the Condé Nast Traveler, or download the PDF.
Here's a tip from the article:
"A few of my must-have beauty items for the beach are definitely Bumble & Bumble Surf Spray (let's be honest, no one has Baywatch sexy hair straight out of the ocean without it); Jack Black Intense Therapy Lip Balm SPF 25 Shea Butter & Vitamin E (for the SPF and also its gel-like texture, which won't melt); and, of course, an SPF for the skin of at least 50, normally higher. Banana Boat Sport is good because it stands up a little better against water and sweat."
—Brooke Pakulski, Blushing Noir
Here's a tip from the article:
"A few of my must-have beauty items for the beach are definitely Bumble & Bumble Surf Spray (let's be honest, no one has Baywatch sexy hair straight out of the ocean without it); Jack Black Intense Therapy Lip Balm SPF 25 Shea Butter & Vitamin E (for the SPF and also its gel-like texture, which won't melt); and, of course, an SPF for the skin of at least 50, normally higher. Banana Boat Sport is good because it stands up a little better against water and sweat."
—Brooke Pakulski, Blushing Noir
Not only did I enjoy researching this article—and all the delicious dinners that accompanied it—but I turned it around in less than a week.
Lunar New Year: Cool Hotel Perks and Special Events Around the World
Start off the Year of the Snake at one of these festive destinations—then venture out for citywide celebrations.
Las Vegas
THE HOTEL: Bellagio Las Vegas
THE PACKAGE: From February 14 to February 17, you're invited to the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse—China's equivalent to Camp David (and formerly the hotel's Tuscan Kitchen)—to dine on cuisine normally reserved for royalty, presidents, and prime ministers. Bellagio chef Hao Baoli—known for modernizing ancient menus from the library of the Forbidden City—leads a ten-course tasting menu, paired with wine and cognac, cooked and served by staff direct from the real Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, and presented on dishware from China. (Tickets are $500 per person and can be purchased via Bellagio’s concierge at 866-906-7171). For something a little more casual, the Bellagio's Conservatory and Botanical Gardens are also decked out in a New Year theme through March 3.
VENTURE OUT: Las Vegas holds its CNY in the Desert Festival from February 8 to February 10, with cultural performances, a fun run, a lantern festival, and other events taking place throughout the area all weekend. The Chinese American Chamber of Commerce follows suit with the Chinese New Year Celebration and Asian Food Festival on February 17, with dragon and lion dances, martial arts demonstrations, Japanese taiko drummers, acrobats, and traditional dances from China, Japan, Polynesia, Vietnam, and Korea.
Click through to read the rest of the article at the Condé Nast Traveler.
Photograph courtesy of The Bellagio
If you enjoyed my other article about the strangest travel gear, here is the addendum.
Even More Wacky Travel Accessories
The Walker's Path Illuminating Belt
When stumbling around in the near-dark, for obvious reasons it's best to be as unencumbered as possible. Flashlights tie up your hands, and headlamps mess up your hair (not to mention blind anyone you talk to). This LED belt provides 100 lumens of unhindered, crotch-level illumination, the angle of which can be adjusted from floodlight to spotlight. You do run the risk, however, of looking like a Care Bear in the midst of a Care Bear Stare. Available at Hammacher Schlemmer, $60.
Click through to see the rest of the slideshow at the Condé Nast Traveler.
My contribution to PopMatters' year-end wrap-up.
The Best Films of 2012 No. 4: LincolnIn tackling one of the United States’ most iconic figures, a man who looms largest in American history, Steven Spielberg’s success is in matching Abraham Lincoln’s grandiosity with his film’s smallness. Instead of an all-encompassing biopic, Spielberg chose to focus on the final months of Lincoln’s life and his most important political success: the passage of the 13th amendment. And, while there is certainly much political theater surrounding the amendment, with flamboyant characters on both sides of the debate, Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner choose to keep the showiest scenes away from the president. He has a couple of emphatic, passionate monologues, but mostly you get a sense of the man through the tiniest moments: a rambling story, a bawdy joke, a wordless and restless afternoon pacing the White House with his son while Congress debates, a sullen glance. As the 16th president, Daniel Day-Lewis is in full control of this remarkable restraint—though he’s buoyed by a supporting cast rising to meet his greatness. Like the characters in the film, with Lincoln you get the sense that everyone is striving to quietly accomplish their most important work.Click through to read the rest of the list at PopMatters.My contributions to PopMatters' 2012 film recap.
The Worst Films of 2012
No. 6: Dark Tide
It’s not just the fact that the theatrical version of The Devil Inside ended with a title card directing viewers to the film’s website for more information that made audiences howl with disgust. It’s bad form, to be sure, especially considering that the website hosted videos that none-too-subtly revealed further twists that would’ve been obvious had they been in the movie to begin with (and, with a running time of a mere 83 minutes, it’s not clear why those scenes weren’t included in the first place). No, it’s the very idea that The Devil Inside—an obvious and uninspired exorcism tale that treads on the same themes about faith that have been explored since The Exorcist—merited any further investigation into its surface-level plot that’s the true insult.
Click through to see the rest of the list at PopMatters.