Mr. Brown Versus

Tonight, as the seconds tick by until the arrival of 2015 (Or maybe it's already arrived wherever you are reading this), I'd like to share my favorite song that has to deal with, well...the beginning of the new year.  It's by Indie rock group Death Cab for Cutie, and they've been one of my favorite groups since Senior year of high school when I bought Narrow Stairs on iTunes, and I've been a fan since. I love that it's a melancholic song about the biggest non-even of the year and how Ben Gibbard wants to pretend "that we are wealthy, for just this once," on this one night. The song "The New Year" is the opening track off the band's third record, Transantlanticism , which is an incredible record in of itself, including "Sound of Settling," "Title and Registration," and the title track itself, so definitely seek this song out, as well as the rest of the record, because it's worth the listen. I also want...

I was looking forward to watching the James Franco/Seth Rogen comedy The Interview  on Christmas Day, even more so than Angelina Jolie's WWII drama Unbroken , or Rob Marshall's Into the Woods . I like what the writing and directing duo of Rogen and his pal Evan Goldberg have done with comedies like Superbad , Pineapple Express and their debut feature, This Is the End . In light of Sony being hacked (which now appears to be North Korea's doing) and threats of attacking theaters that carry the comedy, three things happened today: 1.) Every major theater chain - AMC, Regal, Cinemark, Arclight, etc, had decided to pull out from showing The Interview  on its scheduled release date. 2.)  This prompted Sony Pictures to basically cancel the release date of the film amid threats of blowing up theaters. 3.)  Both Sony and the theater chains basically caved into the demands of cyber terrorism from North Korea. Are you fucking kidding me? We just caved into terr...

There is a fantastic scene in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies  that has nothing to do with the battle itself. We see Thoirn Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) walking across the halls of Erabor, the halls itself covered in solid gold. He has a vision of himself sinking to the abyss of the halls that have melted down to liquid, screaming and crying out for help, but only sinking faster. The last time we left his company, they had driven the dragon Smaug out from under the Lonley Mountain, but let him loose on the people of Lake Town. The son of Thrain, son of Thorn has his home again, but has gone mad with greed over the treasure. The pissed off former residents of the town, led by Bard (Luke Evans), along with King Thranduil (Lee Pace) demand he honor his promise to share in the wealth of the Mountain, or else they'll reign Elvish arrows down on his ass. Blinded by his greed, his own company begins to turn on him, including Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) who tries to make a d...

It's that time of year again! The time where critics, amateurs and everyone in between start compiling and evaluating the year that was in film and come up with lists that say whether this was a great year at the multiplex, or one we can and should delete from our collective memory banks. For me, the year was when I personally avoided crap that I knew would be dreck, like the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore reunion from The Wedding Singer / 50 First Dates  days romantic flick Blended , or sequels I hated the first time and wanted no part in again with The Purge: Anarchy . That still doesn't mean I could escape bad or uninspired filmmaking, because eventually, when you're a movie junkie like myself, you do eventually run into some really awful crap. Today, I'm taking it to the movies that made me suffer; the ones I only have to re-visit because they're on TV and there's no other option available to me. 10. The Giver  - This half-baked film adaptation based on the...

Every boy growing up in the 80's or 90's has an action hero we latch onto, or action movies we loved. These movies were rated R, of course, because we loved seeing violence, corny one-liners, and bewbies! There's a thrill we all got by watching something we're not supposed to be watching, like John Rambo mowing down dozens of bad guys in the Rambo series, or John McClain taking out terrorists in the Die Hard movies. For me, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Terminator movies. James Cameron's The Terminator  and his sequel, Terminator 2: Judgement Day  are classic sci-fi action pictures in my book, and personal favorites of mine, and anytime they were on TV, my butt was parked on the sofa to watch the future Governator kick ever manner of ass.  Today, Paramount Pictures told me, the fans of the first two movies, and Jim Cameron, that we can go fuck ourselves, in the form of Terminator: Genisys  (due out May 2015). Yes, it is nice to see Schwarzenegger b...

A trailer is tailor made to do a few things: 1. Get the audience excited for the film the studio is marketing. It should give you an idea what the story is about, but give little away as possible, something many trailers seem to forget these days. 2. Get a buzz going about its release. The more people talking about it, via word of mouth or by social media, the better. 3. Get the fanboys and/or fangirls (the built-in audience who read up on movie sites every nugget of information on the movie or film series that they can find) excited about what is coming their way in months or in a year's time. That's the job of a trailer. A teaser, on the other hand, works the same way, but with one big difference: A teaser is like foreplay (for lack of a better word); it's designed to get you excited and whet the appetite for the audience. A teaser is basically something the filmmakers want to show off. The effects aren't completely done yet, the final product is still in the ...

Toward the end of The Hunger Games: Mockingay - Part I , Madam President Alma Coin (played by the wonderful Julianne Moore), she gives a rousing speech to her citizens of District 13 about a great victory they have just won under her direction. The monologue basically tells her comrades in arms that soon they will storm the Capital with the backings of the other Districts, that a new world will be born where they will become one people, once voice, and that all will share in the wealth and prosperity in this new Panem. And then....cut to black. Time to go home, tweet about how awesome this installment was, tell your BFF's to see this movie, and make sure you come back to spend more money on Part II now! The speech about unity and sharing among each other in a new, harmonious community comes off feeling hollow and empty; not because Moore doesn't sell this brave new world well, because she's one of the bright spots in Part I of this two-part finale. The reason this feels hol...