Tag Archives: Philip Seymour Hoffman

“Mockingjay Part 2”: Girl on Fire Burns Out, Fades Away

November 24, 2015 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Mockingjay 2!

Even in dystopia, there’s always time for handheld gaming.

At long last, the 1853 book series that was turned into a beloved but unfinished 1970s film series has reached its long-forgotten conclusion! That’s how long it’s felt since this franchise started, anyway.

It began with The Hunger Games, which brought Battle Royale to the West, adding shaky-cam and subtracting sex. It escalated in Catching Fire, in which the adult characters had to bring their A-game because the Games themselves no longer mattered. In Mockingjay Part 1 it paid homage to Wag the Dog, went behind the scenes at a post-apocalyptic marketing firm, and basically felt like one of those all-talk episodes of The Walking Dead where the stunt crew takes a week off while the characters sit around exchanging feelings so their eventual, horrible deaths will mean something.

And now, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 is here to wrap up the character arcs for anyone who didn’t read the books, to finish adapting the remaining 213 pages of the 390-page novel that concluded the original trilogy. Closure is here for one and all, especially for DVD fans waiting to buy the eventual Hunger Games Quadrilogy set for cheap on some future Black Friday.

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Yes, There’s a Small Thing After the “Mockingjay Part 1” End Credits

December 14, 2014 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Mockingjay Part 1!

From the Hollywood adaptation trend that brought you all the Part Ones of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Hobbit, and Twilight, it’s split-sequel time once again with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part One. Its lean running time of 123 minutes, which includes roughly 15-60 minutes of visual-effects end credits, would suggest the complete finale to Suzanne Collins’ world-famous trilogy could’ve been translated into a single, epic-length film if dozens of pages’ worth of thinking, feeling moments had been deleted from the screenplay. Sure, why not whittle it all down to a more economical 154 minutes, the average run time of Michael Bay’s four Transformers movies? Less talk, more rock!

Meanwhile, the two-hour Fargo is adapted into a ten-episode TV season, and no one reacts with a facepalm. Critics find it in their heart to forgive and bestow glowing approval upon it.

Making extra movies doesn’t have to be a sin in and of itself. The question is, can they make the extra space worth our time and money? Or would you like to be the fussy producer who tells director Francis Lawrence, “I’m sorry, but we only want one film, so you’ll need to give us less Phillip Seymour Hoffman”?

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“Catching Fire”: And They All Lived Fearfully Ever After

December 9, 2013 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Katniss and Peeta practice their strained banter for their next gig hosting the PanEm Oscars.

In the more engrossing and less shaky-looking sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, we’re told “The Games mean nothing.” In fact they’re not even the central plot; they’re the extended climax appended to a more interesting, feature-length coda in which the quote-unquote “victors” of PanEm’s 74th Hunger Games receive their “rewards”, learn about their new responsibilities, and figure out for themselves that sometimes victory is only as meaningful as your handlers allow.

Continue here as The MAN tries to extinguish the Girl on Fire…

2nd Teaser for PT Anderson’s “The Master” Stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as Bell Bon Bubbard

June 20, 2012 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

In the first teaser trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s next film, The Master, we saw Joaquin Phoenix as an uneasy rapscallion on the verge of doing something different with his life. In the new teaser, Philip Seymour Hoffman is a jack of several trades probing Phoenix with questions and strange reassurances. While the Internet is firmly convinced The Master chronicles the secret origin of Scientology with all the names changed, let it be known Hoffman here distances himself from the late L. Ron Hubbard in a very concrete way: he disguises himself with a mustache.

Not only do we finally see and hear costar Amy Adams, we also hear her hint at Hoffman’s character working on his most important text, a revolutionary self-help tome possibly to be titled Ianetics-Day.

Meanwhile at home, the most optimistic Scientologists hope this film will be, best-case scenario, their version of The Last Temptation of Christ. If it’s not, Anderson may look forward to being banned from working in their half of Hollywood in the future, and resigned to working in the Jewish half instead. If all else fails, there’s always work to be done in the malnourished field of Christian direct-to-DVD.