tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005Mon, 14 Jul 2008 08:07:15 +0000http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/noreply@blogger.com (Thomas)Blogger238125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-4180855591438966218Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:56:00 +00002008-07-14T16:07:15.155+08:00ReviewsChina-Asia CinemaPo, the son of a great noodle chef (which must have been a true amour fou - but we are not told what the mother looks like) daydreams about his future career as sword-fighting, iron-willed Kung Fu warrior, fighting his fiercest enemies with the speed of light and without so much as a flinch in the face of danger. More than surprising, when real life danger comes about and the Kung Fu Grandmaster http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/07/kung-fu-panda-osbornstevenson-2008.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-565180920761769884Tue, 08 Jul 2008 04:47:00 +00002008-07-08T12:50:47.258+08:00ReviewsWill Smith is Hancock, a superhero with superpowers, ability to fly and shave with his fingernails. Unfortunately he is a smelly bum, permanently drunk, disappointed by his own life, wondering why everybody calls him an asshole despite the fact that he keeps destroying half the city of Los Angeles and everybody's front yard and Mercedes just to stop a car chase. When he saves the life of a PR http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/07/hancock-berg-2008.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-5969933908494753351Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:51:00 +00002008-07-01T21:20:20.675+08:00ReviewsIn order to take posession of some incriminating pictures of a royal family member, an institution that has probably a fancy acronym, but that I call "Royal Family Reputation Maintenance Task Force" initiates a bank robbery through which those pictures can be withdrawn from the control of a politically inconvenient character. While being used for higher purposes, the group of bank robbers does http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/07/bank-job-donaldson-2008.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-451578696775532897Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:46:00 +00002008-07-01T20:50:43.750+08:00ReviewsChina-Asia Cinema Two coal miners float from one occupation to the next, trying to find a victim who pretends to be a relative in order also to get a job. The they kill him in an "accident" and cash in the compensation from the mine. The scheme works fine for them until they meet a young boy who they start liking just a bit too much. While the film has the neorealistic touch to it that is typical of 6th http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/07/mang-jing-blind-shaft-li-yang-2001.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-8402879692230171539Sat, 28 Jun 2008 08:28:00 +00002008-06-28T16:29:24.694+08:00ReviewsA young girl and her father live on a beautiful island, him studying nature, her hanging out with cute animals and reading adventure books. When the father goes missing with his boat after a storm, Nim - the girl - calls for help from the hero of her favourite books. Turns out this Alex hero is only a whimpish Jodie Foster author in real life, almost too scare to leave her Manhattan apartment. http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/06/nims-island-mark-and-levin-2008.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-3332299576891935594Sat, 28 Jun 2008 08:25:00 +00002008-06-28T16:27:23.062+08:00ReviewsThe plot is … er … some stone age or something people hunt mammoths, and then … er … some of them get kidnapped and one of them follows them and then there or Kenian warriors and more mammoths, only now they are working on an Egyptianal pyramid. In the end, they kill the Egyptian Prime Minister with a white spear. The most horrible dialogues, and a narration that sheds light in the fact that at http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/06/10000-bc-emmerich-2008.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-3595066907350718656Sat, 21 Jun 2008 09:08:00 +00002008-06-21T17:09:24.756+08:00ReviewsAndrew Lau is representative of the very strange breed of Hongkong filmmakers who got a certain fame for being rather ruthlessly stylish and brutal in their films, and by influencing European and American directors with their overtly visual style. To me, these guys are notorious for hiding their lack of stringent story-telling behind recurring episodes with leg-cringing brutality, and usually http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/06/flock-andrew-lau-2007.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-6495982341789649923Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:54:00 +00002008-06-18T16:04:59.258+08:00etcteteraI have hardly ever been expecting a tv show as eagerly as I was expecting the 4th Season of Battlestar Galactica over the last nine or so months (now how is that about being auspicious?). In the last two years, I have been catching up with quite a bit of tv show material that I could never be bothered to watch before, or where the sheer format - the weekly installments putting their cruel dictatehttp://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/06/tv-shows-and-other-reflections.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-3263357452185578197Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:02:00 +00002008-06-04T16:11:17.664+08:00Reviews After the kids of South Park get exposed to the barbaric humour of the latest Terence & Phillip movie, all hell breaks loose in South Park and they sing some brilliant songs. Kyle's mother (the "Big old bitch" of the song of the same name, probably the best musical song in 60 years - in good company with 14 others in the film, including the ear worm "what would Brian Boytano do?") seeks to ban http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/06/south-park-bigger-longer-uncut-parker.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-851950814174456243Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:32:00 +00002008-06-04T15:37:56.815+08:00ReviewsChina-Asia Cinema The life of Wang Chia Chi, who shifts her life in Shanghai from being an normal student to cecoming an assassinating actress, trying to help the resistance movement to eliminate the collaborator Yee. Ang Lee films are always a bit strange for me: the little Americal bourgeois drama of Ice Storm qualities, the melancholy of Brokeback Mountain, the standard Hollywood ware of the Hulk … there are http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/06/se-jie-lust-caution-ang-lee-2007.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-6656660701994079701Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:12:00 +00002008-06-04T15:18:01.526+08:00Reviews Donnie Darko learns in a dream or vision that the world will end in 28 days, unless he and the giant rabbit who told him … emmm … do something I do not remember. There's the president of the Colonies as his mother and the gay cowboy from Brokeback Mountain as Donnie, and the chubby girl from Charly's Angels, and the ... There is a book on time travel written by an old woman with white hair and http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/06/donnie-darko-kelly-2001.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-4089513329756879945Wed, 04 Jun 2008 06:52:00 +00002008-06-04T15:01:15.275+08:00 The story of a young boy who discovers his ability to leap though space at will, allowing him a life in style by withdrawing cash directly from the bank vaults (of which he makes generous use) and allowing him to safe people trapped in floods and take them out safely (of which he abstains). Trouble hits his calm life between breakfast on top of the Gize pyramids and taking a ride on a London http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/06/jumper-liman-2008.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-6698395369298788154Wed, 14 May 2008 06:44:00 +00002008-05-14T14:45:32.144+08:00ReviewsWeapons producer Tony Stark gets hijacked in Afghanistan, and develops scuples about his trade as well as an armed and armoured suit while in captivity. This does is not taken up friendly by hus business companion, who also wants a flying suit (and not such a "conservative one") and Stark out of the way. Stark discovers he wants to be a hero, and now he can. As predicted, the girls are in love http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/05/iron-man-favreau-2008.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-6372050413931299260Sun, 11 May 2008 13:06:00 +00002008-05-11T21:09:43.230+08:00Part 1: National Treasure Ben Gates is Nichoals Cages is the son of John Voight, and like a scaled-down version of Doctor Indy he is being chased around the world by the quest after a giant treasure, hidden by Freemasions and Templers and all the usual suspects of hiding things and conspiring about it. Digging up a ship in the Arctic ice, stealing the American decleration of indepedence, http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/05/national-treasure-double-feature-2004.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-8767661679779210967Wed, 07 May 2008 04:30:00 +00002008-05-07T12:39:49.628+08:00Reviews During the shooting of a mummy horror C movie, a crew of film students is being confronted with the world falling apart around them: dead bodies stand up again, the world turns into a zombie madhouse, and they have to find some refuge with their trailer. They do, at last, take cover in one of the crew members' huge mansion, where they take their last stand. George Romero is some kind of routinehttp://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/05/diary-of-dead-george-romero-2007.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-1703205046831438956Wed, 07 May 2008 01:50:00 +00002008-05-07T09:49:12.482+08:00<!-- Converted from text/rtf format --> An elephant stumbles across a speck of dust in which apparently a whole world is hidden. He goes at great lengths in order to protect the speck and the world from being boiled by a nasty kangaroo sceptic. I think it is difficult to assess what this film means to an American audience who grew up with Dr Seuss books and knows the story with nostalgic http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/05/horton-hears-who-2008.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-4273467292022118609Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:26:00 +00002008-04-24T10:31:35.171+08:00etcteteraThis is too good to be true. I am a late Ebert-explorer, having grown up in parts of the world where he was not known as writer or tv host. So after a couple of months of diving through the regular archives (pleasant enough), but being annoyed at the lack of subscribing in one way or the other to the website, now here comes the Ebert-Blog, opening with the most appropriate things you can expect, http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/04/roger-ebert-weblog.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-413694550959496618Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:11:00 +00002008-04-24T10:12:47.980+08:00etcteteraChina-Asia CinemaStill maybe my favourite contemporary Chinese filmmaker (auteur? If you please!), Jia ZhangKe's films are, in his own words, but also quite visibly, about ordinary people in typical Chinese settings. This means the people are usually neither rich nor do they live in the prosperous Eastern cities. If they do (as in Shi Jie - The World), then they are caught in a desolate wasteland from where they http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/04/interview-jia-zhangke.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-93321182840157911Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:57:00 +00002008-04-24T10:11:18.571+08:00ReviewsThese days, it is relatively easy to hype a film to the Internet geeks, make it the talk of the days on the Blogs. Snakes on a Plane, Hulk, Cloverfield - all Internet phenomena that will usually not reflect the internet hype in a real life setting. Cloverfield is, actually, a nice little crappy B movie, with uninspired actors, a lot of helicopters, even more military personnel to shoot the crap http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/04/cloverfield-matt-reeves-2008.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-8494963764592314740Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:09:00 +00002008-04-09T13:06:34.775+08:00etcteteraChina-Asia CinemaEven though the guys at "Slate" have a more sober attitude towards Wong's latest films in particular than I have (Mood for Love, 2046 being repetitive efforts - yes, we knew that, but that was somehow the point, was it not?), they still have the fair point that currently it looks as if this without doubt visionary and visually inspiring director is somehow stalled. Even though I have not seen it http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/04/wong-kar-wai-in-slate-magazine.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-2659529536627007661Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:40:00 +00002008-04-24T10:11:18.573+08:00Reviews4:52 min into the film, the scriptwriters had the nerve to actually write the infamous German line "das wird ein Nachspiel haben" (this will not be the end of it!" or something tacky like that). At this moment, I lost all hope that a film with one of the most virile German actors Heiner Lauterbach may be interesting despite the fact that it was produced as a tv movie for RTL. German private tv http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/03/das-papst-attentat-somebody-2008.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-1808978907303747728Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:07:00 +00002008-03-22T22:34:21.585+08:00ReviewsSo the earlier film by Guillermo del Toro I see after I watched Laberinto del Fauno for the second time, which may be important to mention, because had I seen Devil's Backbone first, I am pretty sure my assessment might have been considerably different. Devil's Backbone (of 2001) also takes war into the lives of children, this time the children in some kind of orphanage. The mansion they inhabit http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/03/el-espinazo-del-diablo-devils-backbone.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-3306962817927075547Sat, 22 Mar 2008 13:54:00 +00002008-03-22T22:02:06.446+08:00ReviewsSometimes it is worth listening to the elderly, and in this case it was the surprisingly Malcom McDowell of Clockwork Orange fame who mentioned in a radio interview that he enjoyed playing in this US tv show of the title "Entourage". Simon Mayo confirmed it was good fun, so I checked it out and enjoyed four seasons of perfect-length HBO cable format (24 minutes) that gets you addicted or annoyed http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/03/entourage-season-1-4.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-8129941280786571398Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:36:00 +00002008-03-22T22:40:07.071+08:00ReviewsMust be a pretty fascinating life when the whole set of media forms on offer, including stage plays and musicals, take care of your life after it ended. So happended to Edith Piaf, the French Chansonnier who partly grew up in a brothel, had a life long history of sickness, became the symbol of her art form, and broke down under the fame and glory to go down in drugs. Not knowing how authentic it http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/03/film-la-mome-la-vie-en-rose-olivier.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21852005.post-8727287287526716287Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:20:00 +00002008-03-17T16:34:12.000+08:00Reviews I can imagine why so many people refer to this film as an absolutely enchanting fairy tale, of a magic that can hardly be found in the cinema. With supervillain kings and superhero pirates, with giants of gigantic heart and witches and warlocks to bring you back from the dead if necessary. In order to imagine the fascination emenating from this tale all you need to do is to imagine that you've http://www.information-society.de/Cine-Blog/2008/03/princess-bride-rob-reiner-1987.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Thomas)