So, my post about The Tree of Life yesterday was cranky, and worse, inarticulate. I ended up sounding silly, and Simon, justifiably, slapped back at me for it. As an apology and explanation, I wanted to lay out a couple of things to do a better job of explaining both my preexisting assumptions and prejudices and what I find obnoxious about this particular trailer.1. I tend to think of mass-market... 

Perhaps I need film school training, or a finer sensitivity, but Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life just looks horridly pretentious to me: Life is a miraculous, transcendent thing, for sure. And I assume that all of us, at some point, feel the world open up around us. But there’s something a little precious and sensitive about a movie that’s entirely about a perpetual sense... 

I think the integrated approach Marvel’s taken to the big film cycle it has underway is fascinating, and this video of Jon Favreau talking about working with the studio’s very interesting: Movie Trailers – Movies Blog It seems to me like one of the biggest challenges the directors involved must face is how to preserve continuity and a sense of coherence in the universe they’re... 

Now this is how you make a very sexy video utilizing super-funky clothes: Robyn ‘Indestructible’ Official VideoRobyn | Myspace Music Videos I wrote a little bit back about the challenges of writing sex scenes if only because all sexual experiences are different, and so writing one effectively doesn’t mean you’ve figured out how to write another. The same’s true for... 

I wish many good things for John Cena, but as far as his mainstream film career goes, I was thinking more buddy comedies, less overly-serious-family-and-local-sports dramas with Patricia Clarkson and Danny Glover: More broadly, I think this movie reflects an unfortunate trend in sports movies, where every final contest has to be a matter of life and death, or at least major societal change. For a... 

But I was watching the Sex and the City movie the other night (make fun of me and you die!), and it struck me that one of the reasons I like it so much is that Carrie goes through a genuine moral chastisement in the course of the film. This is not a movie about her needing to recover her self-esteem, or find love, or reconnect with her mother, or get a makeover, or whatever other staple of women’s... 

I finally caught Up In The Air on my Dulles-to-Dallas flight on the way to Anchorage, and while it’s not a bad little film, it seems to me like the buzz around it during Oscar season must mostly have been because it gave some attention to the emotional impact of the economic downturn. George Clooney is quite good, though he doesn’t have to show much range. Ditto with Vera Farmiga.... 

Last night I finally got around to watching Drag Me to Hell. I was excited to finally watch Sam Raimi’s return to horror since I’m a big fan of the Evil Dead series. The film had great tension and made me jump quite a few times. (My boyfriend, who had seen the film already, turned to me and said, “You look really nervous.”) While some people might have trouble falling asleep... 

io9 ran an interview yesterday with Matt Reeves, director of the American remake of Let the Right One In, a supremely creepy Norwegian vampire film. The interview delved into the differences of Let Me In from its source material — since many have said the trailer so far looks nearly like a shot-by-shot remake. It seems there will be differences with the new film, like a change in the perspective... 

I’m reading the Song of Fire and Ice series right now, so for those of you in the know, I sort of thought I’d seen it all in terms of awful parent-child dynamics. But reading about Goro Miyazaki’s film adaptation of Tales from Earthsea, that sounds worse. Can you imagine being the son of an animator with a deity-like reputation who declares that he doesn’t think you should...