THE HUNGER GAMES:  Worth A Ticket – The Odds Are Mostly In Its Favor   Now that virtually every blockbuster movie opens in IMAX, going to an IMAX theatre at this time of year provides a de facto trailer festival for an entire summer of (seemingly) more or less mindless spectacle.  As The Avengers […]

> 21 JUMP STREET:  Watch It At Home – High School Meta-Bromance The meta-ization of contemporary comedy marches on:  Community, of course, is a virtual meta-kingdom, but Happy Endings makes Friends jokes, this week’s 30 Rock undercut what appeared to be its own sentimental ending with jokes poking at viewers who might like sentimental endings, […]

  21 JUMP STREET:  Watch It At Home – High School Meta-Bromance   The meta-ization of contemporary comedy marches on:  Community, of course, is a virtual meta-kingdom, but Happy Endings makes Friends jokes, this week’s 30 Rock undercut what appeared to be its own sentimental ending with jokes poking at viewers who might like sentimental […]

> FRIENDS WITH KIDS:  Worth A Ticket – Sitcom, In A Good Way We live in a pop culture where the recent Emmy Award nominees are so clearly superior to the films up for this past year’s Oscar that it’s not even worth arguing about. (Mad Men vs The Artist?  Game of Thrones vs The […]

> JOHN CARTER:  Watch It At Home – Never Goes Into Orbit All signs suggest that JOHN CARTER will be a financial failure of historic proportions, mostly because of its colossal cost (Disney admits to $250M, which almost certainly means close to $300M when reshoots and last-minute CG are included–and that doesn’t count the $100-150M […]

    FRIENDS WITH KIDS:  Worth A Ticket – Sitcom, In A Good Way   We live in a pop culture where the recent Emmy Award nominees are so clearly superior to the films up for this past year’s Oscar that it’s not even worth arguing about. (Mad Men vs The Artist?  Game of Thrones […]

      JOHN CARTER:  Watch It At Home – Never Goes Into Orbit   All signs suggest that JOHN CARTER will be a financial failure of historic proportions, mostly because of its colossal cost (Disney admits to $250M, which almost certainly means close to $300M when reshoots and last-minute CG are included–and that doesn’t […]

> SILENT HOUSE:  Watch It At Home – A Curiosity SILENT HOUSE isn’t the first feature-length film to provide the illusion that it’s all been shot in a single continuous take.  The most famous was Hitchcock’s Rope, but in his era, it was technologically impossible to actually shoot for 90 minutes straight, because rolls of […]