Steve Wiebe: one of the greatest heroes in cinema.
Spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen The King of Kong (what is wrong with you?) see it before reading.
I saw The King of Kong five times in the theater, which is a record for me (I only saw Jurassic Park four times). I saw it the night it opened at the AMC in Times Square, and the theater was about half full, which is pretty impressive for a limited release documentary.
Continue reading In Defense of ‘Save The Cat’
I’ve told this story a billion times so this time I’m going to try to include some more details. When my late grandpa, Tom Easton, was ten years old, he saw Fantasia in the theater. He always wanted to be a cartoonist but his dad was cold and distant and thought cartoons were for kids and no way to make a living. But despite that lack of encouragement, Tom did some cool things. He avoided combat in the Korean War by teaching art on base and drawing army posters.
Continue reading My First Feature Film Is Almost Done
Future generations won’t know the joy of driving to a Blockbuster and picking out a rental (or rentals) for the weekend. It was an inconvenient life, but nostalgia erases that. Waxing romantic on it now makes me exhale in deep wistful wonder, my heart full of bliss. Video stores fostered my burgeoning cinephilia in the late nineties, and provided some of the best memories of my life.
But Netflix has changed all that, and I say good riddance. All Netflix really does is add convenience to the already established video store mechanism. Now you don’t even have to leave the house. You can snuggle on the couch with your lover and your Roku box and browse what’s currently streaming (and I suspect, in a decade or so, everything will be).
Continue reading Nights On Netflix: A Journey Through The Aisles Of Our Friendly Neighborhood Internet Video Store
Let me preface this by saying that Michael Bay has not only never made a good movie, he’s basically a bad director. And yet, I have a real affection for him. Probably more than I do for any other crappy director. And here’s why.
Continue reading Michael Bay is Andy Warhol
When I was in junior high school, Scarface was the most talked about movie in the hallways. It was 2000, and those hallways were a reflection of the culture at large. One time a kid asked me, “Who directed Scarface, Scorsese?” He had never heard of Brian De Palma.
There’s a popular book called Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. It’s a gossipy, oral history of 60s and 70s American movies. In the back of the book, they summarize the directors integral to the movement and give a filmography for each. Spielberg, Coppola, Scorsese, Lucas, and Malick are featured, but not Brian De Palma—despite being mentioned heavily in the book. You’d think the guy that gave Robert De Niro his first on-screen appearance (The Wedding Party, 1969) and gave him steady work way before Scorsese ever did, would be important enough to mention.
Continue reading Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Brian De Palma (But Didn’t Care Enough to Ask)