40. Beauty and the Beast (1991) Lost to: Silence of the Lambs 1991 was the first time an animated film ever grabbed a nomination for Best Picture with Disney’s version of “Beauty and the Beast.” The film also picked up nominations for sound, Original Score (for which it won) and three – count ’em THREE – …
Viral marketing for Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World has begun with a very cool new website that sheds a little light on some new elements in the world of Jurassic Park. It is a very in depth site for Masrani Global, a fictitious company that seems to be responsible for saving InGen and bringing the infamous park back to life. …
Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Spielberg has taken movie audiences on extravagant adventures of a lifetime during his lengthy course behind the camera when impacting the film industry with his captivating on-screen imagination. Spielberg has shown an amazing range of vision and scope when tackling various movie genres that tap in the collective consciousness of moviegoers. Science …
Joe Versus the Volcano Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley USA, 1990 Once upon a time, Tom Hanks was a comedic actor. From the early 1980s until about the early 1990s, Hanks made a name for himself as a goofy, fun-loving everyman. This streak continued until about 1993 when he won his first Academy Award …
On April 29th, 2014, the entertainment community lost a truly gifted and likable performer. Robert William “Bob” Hoskins was an English actor, director, and comedian who had a wonderful and diverse career spanning more than 4 decades. Known mainly for his film roles, Hoskins’ on-screen personas were often that of gruff, down-to-Earth individuals who would …
“May we live without destruction May we look to tomorrow with hope May peace and light return to us” Thus is the prayer the Japanese around the country sing in harmony to befell a giant lizard. Before the giant, reptillian explanation for seven mysteriously vanished ships lumbers over Odo Island in 1954’s Godzilla, the mysterious, …
Godzilla Written by Max Borenstein Directed by Gareth Edwards USA, 2014 It’s been almost 16 years to the day since Roland Emmerich attempted and failed to bring Godzilla to a wider American audience, a mistake almost as gargantuan as the monster itself was an accident of nuclear radiation and mutation. Surprisingly, the concept of making …
It’s rare that a film is unanimously considered one of the worst of all time, but almost every bottom ten list manages to find room for the fourth entry in the Jaws franchise. Be it the ambiguous nature of the title (who, exactly, is taking revenge?), the wooden performances or the rubber monster haunting the cast on …
The summer of 2001 was especially tense. Having just been through an unending presidential election, the U.S. seemed especially on edge. Even before the towers fell in September, the media was already pushing a large, unknown insurgency, it’s face gracing the cover of Time just a month before. The infamous “Summer of the Shark” cover is …
There is a sense in watching Kingdom of the Crystal Skull play out that Spielberg’s lack of enthusiasm carried on into pre-production and then filming itself. One final, brutal visit to the editing suite before the film’s release would have fixed much of the damage and created a final product that, while hardly a classic, would not have infuriated to such a degree.
The opening and closing images in the Toy Story trilogy are one and the same: a picture-perfect blue sky with a couple of carefully placed, nonthreatening fluffy clouds in the middle. While both are computer-generated facsimiles, the former is a facsimile of a facsimile: the comforting wallpaper in the bedroom of a little boy named …
Labor Day Written and directed by Jason Reitman USA, 2013 It’s all too fitting that, at one point midway through Labor Day, two of the lead characters are sitting in front of a TV, watching a network broadcast of Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This film’s writer-director, Jason Reitman, no …
Writer Lee Gambin calls them Natural Horror films, other writers call them Revenge of Nature or Nature Run Amok films and writer Charles Derry considers them a type of Apocalyptic Cinema. Of course we’re speaking of one of the great horror subgenres for which we’ll employ writer Kim Newman’s tag: The Revolt of Nature. Since …
Somehow, I survived my six-movie day yesterday at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. My mind was amazed to have held firm throughout the day, but my body was basically operating on fumes if today was any indication. I stayed alert and awake through the four films I watched, but there were a couple of moments …
Hero Complex Gallery in Los Angeles will host a special three-day art event called Smile You Son Of A Bitch, An Art Tribute To Jaws. Proceeds raised from purchases at the PangeaSeed Emporium go directly towards supporting PangeaSeed’s efforts to help save sharks and other marine species in peril. Here is some more information via …
A week after James Gandolfini died, we lost another Jersey boy: novelist, short story writer, film and TV screenwriter Richard Matheson. His was not as well-known a name to the general public as Gandolfini’s, certainly, and perhaps only familiar to sci fi and fantasy fans, the genres within which he scored some of his most …
Last week I read an article where George Lucas and Steven Spielberg gave their predictions of where videogames will be within the next five years, give or take. Spielberg believes videogames will not be completely immersive until they are a three-dimensional experience. Microsoft is allegedly working on that. Lucas thinks videogames will soon be revolutionised …
Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) was a commercial hit. Upon its release in theatres during the summer of 1975, it broke box-office records. The film was put together by studios and agencies; essentially it was a product specifically made to make money- a lot of it. It is regarded as being the first ever “blockbuster” …
One of the best action movies of all time (if not just the 1980s) has returned to theaters, and if you missed your chance over the weekend, tonight’s all you have left. As part of their Classics Series, Cinemark is showing Steven Spielberg’s adventure classic Raiders of the Lost Ark at its chains tonight, as the …
Artist Trevor Dunt is a self taught artist that lives in Milton, Delaware. You can see more of Trevor’s work at his site www.trevordunt.com. These prints are available at his store along with other great horror, sci-fi, comic book, TV and movie related pieces.
Jurassic Park, like many of Spielberg’s best films, allows us to be children again, even if this is, ironically, a film most kids would be scared to death by. It’s a movie that indulges in horror-movie tropes while making them feel fresh, layering a patina of intelligence over the intense, earth-rattling action. Though the human-dinosaur face-offs are the stuff of movie legend, the early sections where Drs. Alan Grant, Ian Malcolm, and Ellie Sattler debate the ethics of a theme park full of the living, breathing extinct are strangely fascinating and entertaining, at least to 28-year old me.
E. B. White once wrote, “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.” Analyzing trilogies seems to the same. The entire point is to enjoy them. Still, given the many sins to be found in film, there are worse things than movie trilogies but few have …
