Beatle fans will have a blast watching THE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK – THE TOURING YEARS, director Ron Howard’s 2016 rock doc covering the Fab Four’s career from their earliest club days through the height of Beatlemania, until they stopped touring for good in 1966. The film features rare and classic footage of The Beatles live in concert around the globe, juxtaposing their rise with news events of the day and interviews with all four members.
Howard conducted brand-new interviews with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, and included archival interviews with the late John Lennon and George Harrison. Through these and behind the scenes clips and press conferences, we get a sense of what it was like to be at the center of all the Beatlemania madness. Ringo says it best: “We just wanted to play… playing was the only thing” far as these talented musicians were concerned, but…
Remember when the Da Vinci Code came out and every toadsucker in the world suddenly thought they were an expert on both art history and Catholic theology?
“The Magdalene was actually the beloved disciple and, by having Jesus’s children, she gave birth the French royal family blah blah blah blah blah..”
Yeah, everyone wants to deny it now and pretend like they were too smart to fall for Dan Brown’s BS but, just ten years ago, Da Vinci Code was a big deal. I never had much use for it because, as an art history major, it was obvious to me that Dan Brown didn’t know a damn thing about Leonardo Da Vinci or The Last Supper.
Anyway, Ron Howard, Dan Brown, and Tom Hanks are all back with Inferno! Inferno is going to suck but here’s the trailer anyway:
My advise is that you skip Ron Howard’s Inferno and instead, watch Dario Argento’s!
Dario Argento’s Inferno — now, that’s a good movie!
I just finished watching the TCM premiere of the 1995 Best Picture nominee, Apollo 13. Of course, it wasn’t the first time I had seen it. Apollo 13 is one of those films that always seems to be playing somewhere and why not? It’s a good movie, telling a story that is all the more remarkable and inspiring for being true. In 1970, the Apollo 13 flight to the moon was interrupted by a sudden explosion, stranding three astronauts in space. Fighting a desperate battle against, NASA had to figure out how to bring them home. Apollo 13 tells the story of that accident and that rescue.
There’s a scene that happens about halfway through Apollo 13. The heavily damaged Apollo 13 spacecraft is orbiting the moon. Originally the plan was for Apollo 13 to land on the moon but, following that explosion on the craft, those plans have been cancelled. Inside the spacecraft, three astronauts can only stare down at the lunar surface below them.
As Commander Jim Lovell stares out the craft’s window, we suddenly see him fantasizing about what it would be like if the explosion hadn’t happened and if he actually could fulfill his dream of walking on the moon. We watch as Lovell (and, while we know the character is Jim Lovell, we are also very much aware that he’s being played by beloved cinematic icon Tom Hanks) leaves his foot print on the lunar surface. Lovell opens up his visor and, for a few seconds, stands there and takes in the with the vastness of space before him and making the scene all the more poignant is knowing that Tom Hanks, before he became an award-winning actor, wanted to be a astronaut just like Jim Lovell. Then, suddenly, we snap back to the film’s reality. Back inside the spacecraft, Lovell takes one final look at the moon and accepts that he will never get to walk upon its surface. “I’d like to go home,” he announces.
It’s a totally earnest and unabashedly sentimental moment, one that epitomizes the film as a whole. There is not a hint of cynicism to be found in Apollo 13. Instead, it’s a big, old-fashioned epic, a story about a crisis and how a bunch of determined, no-nonsense professionals came together to save the day. “Houston,” Lovell famously says at one point, “we have a problem.” It’s a celebrated line but Apollo 13 is less about the problem and more about celebrating the men who, through their own ingenuity, solved that problem.
That Apollo 13 is a crowd-pleaser should come as no surprise. It was directed by Ron Howard and I don’t know that Howard has ever directed a film that wasn’t designed to make audiences break into applause during the end credits. When Howard fails, the results can be maudlin and heavy-handed. But when he succeeds, as he does with Apollo 13, he proves that there’s nothing wrong with old-fashioned, inspirational entertainment.
Of course, since Apollo 13 is a Ron Howard film, that means that Clint Howard gets a small role. In Apollo 13, Clint shows up as a bespectacled flight engineer. When astronaut Jack Swiggert (Kevin Bacon) mentions having forgotten to pay his taxes before going into space, Clint says, “He shouldn’t joke about that, they’ll get him.” It’s a great line and Clint does a great job delivering it.
Apollo 13 is usually thought of as being a Tom Hanks film but actually, it’s an ensemble piece. Every role, from the smallest to the biggest, is perfectly cast. Not surprisingly, Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Kathleen Quinlan, and Ed Harris all turn in excellent performances. But, even beyond the marquee names, Apollo 13 is full of memorable performances. Watching it tonight, I especially noticed an actor named Loren Dean, who played a NASA engineer named John Aaron. Dean didn’t get many lines but he was totally believable in his role. You looked at him and you thought, “If I’m ever trapped in space, this is the guy who I want working to bring me home.”
Apollo 13 was nominated for best picture but it lost to Mel Gibson’s film Braveheart. Personally, out of the nominees, I probably would have picked Sense and Sensibility but Apollo 13 more than deserved the nomination.
THE SHOOTIST is John Wayne’s valedictory statement, a final love letter to his many fans. The Duke was now 69 years old and not in the best of health. He’d had a cancerous lung removed back in 1964, and though the cancer was in remission, Wayne must’ve knew his days were numbered when he made this film. Three years later, he died from cancer of the stomach, intestines, and spine. There were worries about his ability to make this movie, but Wayne loved the script and was determined to do it. The result is an elegy to not only the aging actor, but to the Western genre as a whole.
The movie begins with footage of older Wayne westerns (EL DORADO, HONDO, RED RIVER, RIO BRAVO) narrated by Ron Howard (Gillom). “His name was J.B. Books…he wasn’t an outlaw. Fact is, for a while he was a lawman…He had a credo that…
It’s shaping up to be a strange Oscar race. Here we are halfway through the year and, yet, there are no front-runners. Some very acclaimed films have been released this year and yet, few of them seem to be getting the type of buzz that usually accompanies a surprise Oscar nomination. Last year at this time, there was cautious buzz for Grand Budapest Hotel while almost everyone felt pretty safe assuming that Sundance favorites like Boyhoodand Whiplash would be players in the Oscar race and many of us were highly anticipating the release of films like Birdman and The Imitation Game. (For that matter, a lot of people were also still convinced that Unbroken would win best picture. The buzz is not always correct but still, the buzz was still there.)
This year, some people are hoping that Mad Max: Fury Road will somehow break through the Academy’s aversion to “genre” filmmaking. (And seriously, the Doof Warrior deserves some sort of award, don’t you think?) Quite a few are hoping that Ex Machina will not be forgotten. Personally, I have high hopes for Inside Out.The buzz around Bridge of Spies is respectful, largely because it seems like the type of film that usually would be be nominated. (That said, this film also seems like it could bring out the worst impulses of both Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, leading to a movie that will have more in common with The Terminal than with War Horse.) Carol was beloved at Cannes.
So there are definitely possibilities out there. When I made my Oscar predictions for this month, I didn’t quite have to blindly guess as much as I did way back in January. But still, it cannot be denied that — as of right now — this race is wide open and there’s a lot of room for surprise.
Below, you’ll find my Oscar predictions for July. You can also check out my previous Oscar predictions for January, February, March,April, May, and June!
It’s time for our monthly edition of Lisa’s Too Early Oscar predictions!
This is our first entry since the Cannes Film Festival. As a result of Cannes, former contenders like The Sea of Trees have been dropped from the predictions. Meanwhile, new contenders like Michael Caine and Sicario have emerged. I have also added Pixar’s Inside Out to my list of predictions because a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes demands the consideration.
(Unfortunately, adding Inside Out meant dropping The Good Dinosaur. Though it could happen, I find it hard to imagine two animated films receiving best picture nominations.)
If you want to see how my feelings on the race have developed, be sure to check out my predictions for January, February, March, April, and May!
And without further ado, here are Lisa’s Too Early Oscar Predictions for June!
Well, here we are! The year is nearly halfway over and the Oscar picture … well, it’s really not that clear yet. The Cannes Film Festival just opened and maybe that will help clear up the picture a bit. Or maybe not.
Anyway, here are my early Oscar for predictions for May. (In previous months, my Oscar predictions were “way too early.” But now that we’re 5 months into 2015, the “way” can be dropped. They’re just “too early” now.) As is usual for any predictions made at this time of the year, these are mostly guesses, some random and some educated. Be sure to check my predictions for January, February, March, and April as well!
(I know that rumor has it that the Academy is going to go back to only nominating five films this year. However, I’m going to continue to make ten predictions because that’s more fun for an obsessive list maker like me.)
Well, tonight’s the night! Soon, we will know which 2014 films have won Oscars.
And, as soon as the ceremony ends, it will be time to start speculating about which 2015 films will be nominated next year! I am sharing and updating my predictions on a monthly basis and below you’ll find my latest predictions. You can read my predictions for January by clicking here.
Some of these films and performers — like End of the Tour and Grandma — were acclaimed at Sundance. (The recently concluded Berlin Film Festival, on the other hand, mostly just served to confirm that Knight of Cups and Queen of the Desert will probably not be contenders.) Kristen Stewart recently won a Cesar Award for Clouds of Sils Maria. Otherwise, the majority of predictions below are the results of my own wild guesses.
A year from now, we’ll probably look back at these predictions and laugh.
Through the Shattered Lens 