If RSS feeds, Creative Commons, Reddit, Tor, or Wikipedia are part of your everyday internet life, or if you cheered when SOPA was put to sleep, you can thank Aaron Swartz for helping make those possible. The deeply affecting new documentary The Internet’s Own Boy: the Story of Aaron Swartz retraces the path of one young man whose lifelong passion for freedom of Information — not pirating HBO shows or sharing porn, but for useful, scholarly, scientific, potentially world-changing, capital-I Information — took him through countless revolutionary contributions, creations, and crusades until his sudden, unforeseen, tragic end.
Tag Archives: movies
“Transformers: Age of Extinction”: Public Enemy #1?
An inventive man of action, a young woman he’s sworn to protect, an amazing traveling machine, lots and lots of running, and they keep reusing the same old robot villains. So it’s like an American remake of Doctor Who.
So. Transformers: Age of Extinction, then. Last weekend the internet gave Michael Bay’s new endurance test an F-minus-minus-minus. I’m not sure if they sat through it or assumed as much based on the available evidence and testimonies. I have no idea how many critics were fans of the cartoons or other related products. I owned several toys and bought the first year’s worth of the original Marvel Comics series, but lost interest in both around age 14 and forfeited knowledge of any subsequent characters or continuity. I thought the first film was the Greatest Michael Bay Film of All Time For What That’s Worth, the second one was the complete opposite of art, and the third was somewhere in between, improved by use of real-life Chicago as a setting for the last four hours of its running time.
If it hadn’t been for the sake of father/son quality time while he’s home visiting for the weekend, I might not have seen Age of Extinction. But here he was, here the weekend was, and there the movie was.
Top 10 Exhibits We Won’t See at George Lucas’ Chicago Museum
One of many unreleased pics from our 8/31/2013 visit to the Indiana State Museum to see the “Star Wars: Where Science Meets the Imagination” traveling exhibit. It belongs in a museum!
Lucas is scheduled to present preliminary architectural plans to the proper committees in the fall, so we may have a long wait until we can storm the gates and take in the sights. Whenever it’s ready for us, we’re prepared for a certain lack of objectivity. Considering the media have refrained from calling it a “Star Wars Museum” it’s reasonable to assume we’ll see cameos from Lucas’ other works in addition to that one galactic-sized phenomenon. But we have to wonder: how much of his own history will Lucas leave out? Will we be allowed to see any flaws or signs of the stresses he’s endured in his forty-year career, or will his biography be subject to a selective “Special Edition” treatment?
“How to Train Your Dragon 2”: Training Day is Over
My son and I were part of the Dragon Training 101 graduating class that considers How to Train Your Dragon the Greatest DreamWorks Animated Film of All Time. In those basic studies we learned that dragons respond well to a combination of generosity and teamwork, that even the scrawniest Viking can surprise you, that Scottish Viking fathers are stubborn but negotiable, that Old World prosthetics were surprisingly advanced, and that cinematic dragons have come a long way since Dragonslayer, Dragonheart, Dungeons & Dragons, Eragon, Dragon Wars, and even Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where those mighty beasts received fifty-eighth billing, ranking well below CG mermen, nameless wizard henchmen, and a guy who turns into a rat. So How to Train Your Dragon was a tremendous PR boost to a once-honored race of monsters that deserve better than Hollywood usually gives them.
The How to Train Your Dragon 2 intermediate course had much to live up to in our minds, both as a sequel and as the next rung on the ladder of dragon-training success. We feared whether this would be a worthwhile study or one of those unaccredited, fly-by-night scams that hopes you won’t be able to tell their “dragons” are just really ugly dogs with paper wings taped to their fur.
“Edge of Tomorrow” and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
We live in a society where a movie can rake in twenty-nine million dollars on its opening weekend in American theaters and still be declared an immediate failure. The new Tom Cruise vehicle Edge of Tomorrow was expensively constructed even by summer blockbuster standards, but it was bumped back to third place this past weekend by both the young-adult juggernaut that is The Fault in Our Stars and the ongoing smash Maleficent. Audiences are sticking to their standard demographic preferences and don’t much care that Tomorrow has the highest Tomatometer rating of the three.
The over-50 action/sci-fi veteran meets his match (or better!) in Emily Blunt, last seen being overlooked in Looper, but their pairing plus alien warfare weren’t enough of a draw in a slightly crowded field in theaters. I’m not feeling drawn to Disney’s Angelina Jolie Fairy Tale Masquerade, but when I was faced with choosing between the other two on Tuesday night, I decided to give the pricy-looking underdog some attention. (To be honest, I think I’d rather read the novel first before seeing Stars.)
Right this way for more details! Unless you’ve already read this entry several hundred times…
If Godzilla Won’t Rush to Appear in His Own Film, Why Rush to Write About It?
Elizabeth Olsen plays the obligatory Concerned Wife role and has more screen time than the King of the Monsters. Her agent must be one tough negotiator.
I saw the new Godzilla reboot over Memorial Day weekend, but we’ve had so much going on here at Midlife Crisis Crossover over the past few weeks, from my birthday road trip to the Indy 500 Festival Parade to Indy PopCon 2014, that its writeup remained relegated to the MCC reserve-topic list until those events were past. (Mostly, anyway. Officially I’m not done with one of them.) Four weeks into its American theatrical run, I figure why not get on with it.
So, monsters, then. Eventually.
Yes, There’s a Scene After the “X-Men: Days of Future Past” End Credits
James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender return for another Game of Genes.
From the same line of thought as The Avengers, Fast & Furious 6, and The Expendables comes another supermovie in which characters from other movies join forces in hopes of tripling their box office grosses while settling for a fraction of their normal screen time.
X-Men: Days of Future Past, the seventh film set in Fox’s version of Marvel’s mutantverse, may invite comparisons to the Back to the Future trilogy, but it’s based on an Uncanny X-Men two-parter cover-dated January and February 1981, four years before Marty McFly’s first trip, back in my day when the all-star creative team of Chris Claremont, John Byrne, and Terry Austin were on a roll (though Byrne and Austin exited after the next issue). Some plot elements have been added or reworked to mesh with the previous films (well, with some of them, anyway), but this adaptation doesn’t stray as far from the framework as I expected, throws in a couple of new surprises, and tries to give its award-winners reasons to return to a crowded ensemble.
Top 10 Greatest “Star Wars Episode VII” Leaked Set Photos
The filmmaking process for every Star Wars movie in the modern era has its traditions, and none refuse to die more irritatingly than the part where professional paparazzi, busybody neighbors, and travel-happy geeks pool together their collective talents and impatience, set up base camps all around the official closed sets, take pictures of everything that moves, and hope they catch a glimpse of something that’ll ruin the entire movie for everyone.
These photos are usually out of focus, distantly shot, wildly off-center, totally out of context, filled with restless inaction, and/or bereft of the CG work and color timing that’ll make the up-close, unadorned reality look watchable and actually interesting on the big screen a year later. Many movie sites treat such unauthorized, amateurish, slapdash, eminently deletable results as useful content. Every time without fail, enough fans and enough clicks reinforce their theory. Goody.
Now that Star Wars Episode VII finally hired a cast to act out its hopefully finished script and has allegedly begun shooting, it’s only a matter of minutes before we begin seeing photos of stunt doubles in Jedi robes, puppeteers catching a cigarette break outside a rear entrance, or empty yogurt cups that some muckraking blogger scavenged from Carrie Fisher’s trash. We, the public, will be expected to treat these offerings as Movie News.
So why not go with the flow? We here at Midlife Crisis Crossover gave in to peer pressure, did some digging without due diligence, and came across a stash of photos that we’re 30% certain were recently, surreptitiously snapped on location in London while J.J. Abrams and his spoiler sentries weren’t looking. Seems like a reasonable ploy. They have to sleep sometime, right? So we’re kinda sure these are legit. By the time we’re all done overanalyzing them, we can skip watching Episode VII altogether and move on to overanalyzing blurry set pics from The Justice League Movie instead.
From the Home Office in Indianapolis, IN: Top 10 Greatest Star Wars Episode VII Leaked Set Photos:
10. Peter Mayhew, a.k.a. Chewbacca, hanging out between takes with his manager. Or the head of his entourage. Or the guy who’s playing his son Lumpy, which would mean Abrams’ team has decided The Star Wars Holiday Special should be canonized by unpopular demand. Maybe now it’ll see a long-overdue Blu-ray release that will include much-needed extras such as a commentary by all the actors taking turns explaining exactly what the heck.
Yes, There’s a Commercial During the “Amazing Spider-Man 2” End Credits
The avatars of Andrew Garfield and Jamie Foxx duel for CG supremacy in this cutscene from the new Amazing Spider-Man 2 video game. Wait, no, my fault, this is from the movie.
At long last, the sequel to the reboot of the film series based on the comics is here! In the jam-packed Amazing Spider-Man 2 director Marc Webb’s trilogy continues with more villains, more angst, more money for special effects, more merchandising tie-ins, more credited screenwriters, less closure, and much lower expectations because of all of the above elements that have made many a super-hero sequel unwatchable.
Will “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” Be the Best Even-Numbered Film in the Series?
Anyone wanna tell them “No”?
Today marked the premiere of the first full-length trailer for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the next entry in the apocalyptic series that’s so far been rebooted twice for theaters, this time with a bit more success. The new one comes from director Matt Reeves, who previously tinkered with disaster in Cloverfield; features MOCAP king Andy Serkis once again as Caesar, lord of the apes and probably their best public speaker; and includes human roles for the likes of The Gary Oldman, Fringe‘s Kirk Acevedo, and Jason Clarke, who was Zero Dark Thirty‘s friendly interrogator but seems much more stressed out here in this trailer than he was on the war front.
This way for the trailer and my pet theory about the numbering…
MCC Request Line: Live-Tweeting “Batman & Robin”
That time when Batman, Robin, and Batgirl started wearing black…black like the studio executives’ hearts.
Fish in a barrel? Sure. But sometimes it’s nice to relax for one evening with some frivolous writing that breaks no new ground, fails to expand the creative boundaries of the internet, but relieves the typical tensions that dogpile on you in adulthood.
Wednesdays are one-man movie nights for me, a chance to spend time watching whatever while my wife busies herself with her own pursuits. This week I decided on an unusual direction. Anyone who follows me on Twitter (@RandallGolden) was given a short window of opportunity to stage an intervention:
Batman and Robin has been on my shelf for months. It was part of a four-pack, and geek completism forbade me from giving it to Goodwill and leaving the set 25% incomplete. I haven’t relived it in its entirety since the original, degrading theatrical experience. My plan was merely to see if I could watch it a second time without suffering a breakdown. Then a longtime friend asked me to live-tweet it, and a different kind of survival game was afoot.
Special thanks goes to the instigator, Nanci over at Tosche Station, a highly commendable site for anyone who’s a fan of Star Wars in general and the SW Expanded Universe in particular, and they’re your new best friends if you think JJ Abrams’ Star Wars Episode VII should star Mara Jade as the main character. (For the record, I would not oppose this.)
And then it began. Right this way…
“The Raid 2”: Another Rendezvous with Rama
An imprisoned Rama (Iko Uwais) prepares for the most creative use of a broomstick since the Harry Potter series.
Midlife Crisis Crossover calls The Raid 2 the Bloodiest Film of the Year!
A safe bet, considering I stopped going out of my way for horror movies years ago and I’m not part of the macho-demographic target for Schwarzenegger’s post-political film career. But one of my guilty pleasures is an infrequent indulgence in films that I can best describe as tough-guy ballet. For me the Indonesian martial-arts flick The Raid: Redemption — which I watched a few months ago, a former Redbox disc I bought for a buck at a Family Dollar store — had been on my radar after reading online recommendations that piqued my curiosity. Between its straightforward obstacle-course premise and slickly shot martial-arts choreography, it was ideal Saturday afternoon programming for any discerning fight-scene fan who’s cool with subtitles and appreciates how the (comparatively) small screen trapped and shrank all that violence to minimize the ick factor.
After Redemption pulled in a modest $4 million in its 2012 art-house run, I was surprised that the sequel opened in quite a few screens ’round town this weekend, albeit without its original overseas title, The Raid 2: Berendal, which I suppose for us simple Americans might read too confusingly as a subtitle that needs its own subtitle.
“American Blogger” Trailer Spells Doom for Future Tomatometer Rating
Two weekends ago saw the low-key, zero-promotion release of a professionally polished trailer for a new documentary called American Blogger, in which a young filmmaker chronicles his forty-state road trip to visit forty of his blogger wife’s blogger associates. After receiving single-digit daily traffic in its first week of release, last weekend it soared to the kind of near-viral status that every blogger dreams of attaining. I wish I could say this sudden fame was due to the trailer’s proud, heart-swelling representation of an entire internet culture. Unfortunately, it was the other kind of fame.
In a world where millions vie for the attention of billions and the most innocent art projects can veer radically out of control when we least expect it, one young filmmaker would experience an apocalyptic shift that would thrust him into the burning limelight, shatter his innocent perceptions, pulverize his foundations, and transform his life retroactively from birth onward for all eternity. Along the way he would solidify old friendships, make new enemies, suffer hard choices at one crossroad after another, hold his ground against the forces of evil, stand on the bleeding edge between order and chaos, find himself the last repository of hope in a world gone mad, and scream “Vendetta!” at the infinite blood-streaked skies as the rage of a million exploding suns threatened to consume him from within.
Or something like that, the way his trailer narrator tells it.
This way for an entry that will change the way you see an entire industry!
Yes, There’s a Scene After the “Captain America: the Winter Soldier” End Credits
The Winter Soldier meets his worst enemy: springtime.
That’s why Midlife Crisis Crossover includes end-credits coverage in its consumer-reporting movie coverage. If we see a movie, we’re there till the bitter end whether there’s a treat waiting for us or not. My wife and I are sticklers for getting our money’s worth for the ticket price, even if it means skimming past listings for quasi-participants such as Production Babies, legal counsel, and caterers’ gofers. Imagine the pride they’ll feel, knowing there’s a remote chance that someone besides their parents spotted their names at the end.
…what were we talking about? Oh, yeah — Captain America: the Winter Soldier, my new favorite 2014 movie so far.
MCC Request Line #7: “Take Shelter”
Hey, wow, it’s a supposedly recurring feature everyone forgot because it stopped recurring!
Dormant but far from nonexistent, the Midlife Crisis Crossover Request Line is always open and accepting recommendations from MCC fans for stuff I can or should read, watch, or experience and then relay the results here, whether it’s high art or deep hurting. Today’s suggestion was offered a while back by British film reviewer Natalie Stendall, whose current home is at Writer Loves Movies.
Our feature presentation: the 2011 indie drama Take Shelter, starring Man of Steel‘s Michael Shannon and Academy Award Nominee Jessica Chastain. Writer/director Jeff Nichols would later go on to greater acclaim with 2013’s Mud, which signaled the beginning of Best Year Ever for its star Matthew McConaughey.
But before Mud…there was General Zod going mad in a quiet little town.
Yes, There’s a Scene After the “Muppets Most Wanted” End Credits
Once again Ricky Gervais works at upsetting a crowd of stars more beloved than he is.
Muppets Most Wanted knows it’s a sequel and its chances are impaired. The first of its many musical numbers is all about what it means to be a sequel and whether or not that has to be a fate worse than death. Instead of succumbing to the easy temptation of making a “normal” Muppets film, director James Bobin returns us to the exact moment and state of mind where the reboot left off, with America’s favorite variety-show veterans reunited, recharged, ready to put on the big show…but left asking each other: now what do we do?
(Courtesy mild spoiler alert: This entry covers both the contents of the end credits and all the cameos I could catch. If you like to be surprised by the cameos, an integral part of every Muppets film, you might want to slide right past that section without skimming.)
Top 10 Worst Additions to “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” Extended Edition
Even Bilbo sleeps through his bonus scenic tour of Rivendell.
With NBC’s Revolution skipping this week and my Wednesdays otherwise free, I spent tonight wading through the extended edition of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey, which was released last November for enthusiasts who wanted to make sure none of the deleted scenes were from the best obscure nooks of Tolkien canon. Although the Extended Edition only includes 7.7% more footage than the theatrical version, the resulting saga feels twice as long.
Other websites have annotated the bonus moments to exhaustion, but I’m pretty sure they missed a few things. I can’t blame them for napping, letting their phones distract them, or immediately forgetting what they just saw. That’s why little guys like me exist: just in case the pros are slacking.
“Mr. Peabody & Sherman”: Wibbly Wobbly Timey-Wimey Ruff
Midlife Crisis Crossover calls Mr. Peabody & Sherman the greatest adaptation of a Jay Ward Productions cartoon in cinematic history!
Seriously, consider the competition: 2000’s live-action The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, which had precisely one (1) funny joke that I recall with traumatized clarity to this day; Brendan Fraser as Disney’s George of the Jungle, which was a merchandising showcase disguised as kiddie slapstick farce; and Brendan Fraser again in Dudley Do-Right, which had no reason to live. Thankfully Hollywood came to its senses and refrained from giving us Brendan Fraser as Tom Slick, Aesop’s annoying son, and Super-Chicken’s sidekick Fred.
DreamWorks neatly sidestepped any more Fraser pain by taking the CG-animation route and barring him from participation. In another risky deviation from the formula of the other three films, director Rob Minkoff (The Lion King, Stuart Little) and his crew also chose to make their film funny. I applaud this bold, non-conformist stratagem.
Yes, There’s a Scene (and an Easter Egg) During the “Veronica Mars” End Credits
Just think: those poor, carefully cultivated flowers would’ve had no screen time at all if this had been shot as a made-for-TV movie.
My wife and I were impressed by the first two seasons of Veronica Mars and jilted into a mutual depression spiral by season three. When creator/writer/director Rob Thomas launched the famous Kickstarter project to bring back the infamous detective for an unlikely feature film, I had mixed emotions. Surprise that yet another well-written but mercilessly treated series was taking the Firefly route to a post-cancellation revival. Disappointment that the campaign occurred during my still-in-effect Kickstarter moratorium and would therefore receive no pre-production dollars from me, through no fault of its own. Good cheer when the campaign succeeded without me. Skepticism at some of the clunky lines in the trailer. A tinge of geek entitlement because someone still owed me reparations for season three.
Unlike five other Kickstarter campaigns that have yet to keep their promises to me, the Veronica Mars project has borne fruit within a month of its original stated deadline, resulting in a finished product that opened in nearly 300 theaters this past weekend and is simultaneously available for rental via Google Play. At last the lingering question was answered: did anything positive ever happen in Veronica’s life again after that dreary series finale?
Oscars 2014: Three Big Winners and Not Enough Pizza to Go Around
“Possibility #1: 12 Years a Slave wins Best Picture. Possibility #2: you’re all racists.”
Thus did host Ellen DeGeneres conclude her ten-minute opening monologue for the 86th Academy Awards — possibly not as safe and innocuous as the producers might’ve hoped, but not likely to inspire internet firestorms on Monday morning, either. Of all the nominees, three films walked away with the most awards, most of them unsurprising to anyone who kept up with the discussions to any degree. I’d guess Best Original Screenplay probably ruined the most Oscar pools this time around.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 