13 Movies I'm Looking Forward To This Fall
But first, on The Fake Life: this week's What's Left? column examines the lost Tony Danza classic Going Ape!, and I also debut a new column: The Big Screen, your guide to what revival theaters are screening in your city!
So far, not much of a year for movies, right? The two best films of the year so far, for me, have been hip hop concert movies: Dave Chappelle's Block Party and Awesome: I Fuckin' Shot That! are, in my opinion, two of the best concert films ever made. V for Vendetta was pretty solid, and Brick was cool, and Lady Vengeance, and I've got a few more to catch up with, but over all, pretty uneventful.
But then the Entertainment Weekly Fall Movie Preview Issue lands in my mailbox, and goes and gets me all excited. It seems the final four months of '06 are going to be crammed with more goodness than I could possibly find time to watch. My top 13:
1. Pan's Labyrinth (12/29). Guillermo Del Toro's companion piece to The Devil's Backbone is getting rave reviews from the few who've seen it, and it looks great. I have a strong feeling that this is gonna blow everyone's socks off.
2. This Film is Not Yet Rated (9/1). Kirby (Chain Camera) Dick's documentary exposing the MPAA as a cabal of idiots.
3. The Black Dahlia (9/15). DePalma adapts Ellroy, promises "This is noir to the nth degree. It's just as dark as it gets."
4. Shortbus (10/4). John Cameron Mitchell finally follows Hedwig and the Angry Inch (the best movie of the 21st century, if you ask me) with a "post-9/11 New York relationship dramedy" featuring "actors engaging in real sex, hetero-, homo-, and solo." Could be a good double feature with This Film is not yet Rated.
5, 6, 7, 8. The Science of Sleep (9/22), Children of Men (9/29), The Fountain (11/22), Southland Tales (no release date yet). Weird scifi from (respectively) Michael (Eternal Sunshine) Gondry, Alfonso (Y tu Mama, Prisoner of Azkaban) Cuaron, Darren (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) Aranofsky, and Richard (Donnie Darko) Kelly. Doesn't look like we'll be seeing Kelly's film any time soon, but I included it just because it seems to fit in with the others.
9. Tideland (10/13). A new Terry Gilliam film. Even though most people who've seen it have called it irritating and unpleasent, I'm still obligated to see it. And it might make a good double feature with Pan's Labyrinth, after spending the afternoon reading Alan Moore's Lost Girls.
10. Casino Royale (11/17). This one snuck up on me. I hadn't cared about it at all until I started reading about it in EW, but now I suddenly find myself looking forward to it, like pavlov's dog, trained to salivate at the prospect of sitting in a theater watching the new Bond film.
11. Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny (11/17). The same day as Bond? Why???
12. The Departed (10/6). Scorsese remakes the fine Hong Kong cops and mobsters flick Infernal Affairs. It's a great premise, following a young cop who goes undercover to infiltrate the mob, and a young mobster who joins the police force as a mole, and it's got a great cast (DiCapprio as the cop, Damon as the mole, good ol' Jack Nicholson as the mob boss, Martin Sheen as the police chief). This could be really good.
13. The Wicker Man (9/1). Normally, a remake of this fine horror flick wouldn't interest me, but Neil (In the Company of Men, Nurse Betty) LaBute will probably come up with a good take on the material.
Also new films from Clint Eastwood, Sophia Coppola, Steven Soderbergh, the Amores Peros (sp?) guy, and probably plenty of other stuff, but those are the ones that stand out for me.
Let's see how that shakes out. 8 movies opening in 7 weeks. Well, Wicker Man and The Departed get shoved out by the competition, so 6 in 7 weeks, which is probably more than I'll get to. I can choose between Children of Men and Science of Sleep depending on which looks better. Then 4 weeks off, then the Sophie's choice of James Bond or Tenacious D, followed by The Fountain. But then there's another 4 weeks to catch up, and then Pan's Labyrinth at the end of the year.
**************
And a smidgen of randomness:
For when you're ready to start living your life again, there's Prozetene. From the folks who brought you Space Squad 21.
Moistworks has been posting some great stuff. Here they have the original version of "Mbube," the African song that evolved into "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," along with a later (1960) version of the song by Miriam Makeba that's just awe-inspiring. Seriously, listen to it, it reminds me of the most ecstatic moments on the first two Patti Smith albums.
A cartoon I'd like to see.
So far, not much of a year for movies, right? The two best films of the year so far, for me, have been hip hop concert movies: Dave Chappelle's Block Party and Awesome: I Fuckin' Shot That! are, in my opinion, two of the best concert films ever made. V for Vendetta was pretty solid, and Brick was cool, and Lady Vengeance, and I've got a few more to catch up with, but over all, pretty uneventful.
But then the Entertainment Weekly Fall Movie Preview Issue lands in my mailbox, and goes and gets me all excited. It seems the final four months of '06 are going to be crammed with more goodness than I could possibly find time to watch. My top 13:
1. Pan's Labyrinth (12/29). Guillermo Del Toro's companion piece to The Devil's Backbone is getting rave reviews from the few who've seen it, and it looks great. I have a strong feeling that this is gonna blow everyone's socks off.
2. This Film is Not Yet Rated (9/1). Kirby (Chain Camera) Dick's documentary exposing the MPAA as a cabal of idiots.
3. The Black Dahlia (9/15). DePalma adapts Ellroy, promises "This is noir to the nth degree. It's just as dark as it gets."
4. Shortbus (10/4). John Cameron Mitchell finally follows Hedwig and the Angry Inch (the best movie of the 21st century, if you ask me) with a "post-9/11 New York relationship dramedy" featuring "actors engaging in real sex, hetero-, homo-, and solo." Could be a good double feature with This Film is not yet Rated.
5, 6, 7, 8. The Science of Sleep (9/22), Children of Men (9/29), The Fountain (11/22), Southland Tales (no release date yet). Weird scifi from (respectively) Michael (Eternal Sunshine) Gondry, Alfonso (Y tu Mama, Prisoner of Azkaban) Cuaron, Darren (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) Aranofsky, and Richard (Donnie Darko) Kelly. Doesn't look like we'll be seeing Kelly's film any time soon, but I included it just because it seems to fit in with the others.
9. Tideland (10/13). A new Terry Gilliam film. Even though most people who've seen it have called it irritating and unpleasent, I'm still obligated to see it. And it might make a good double feature with Pan's Labyrinth, after spending the afternoon reading Alan Moore's Lost Girls.
10. Casino Royale (11/17). This one snuck up on me. I hadn't cared about it at all until I started reading about it in EW, but now I suddenly find myself looking forward to it, like pavlov's dog, trained to salivate at the prospect of sitting in a theater watching the new Bond film.
11. Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny (11/17). The same day as Bond? Why???
12. The Departed (10/6). Scorsese remakes the fine Hong Kong cops and mobsters flick Infernal Affairs. It's a great premise, following a young cop who goes undercover to infiltrate the mob, and a young mobster who joins the police force as a mole, and it's got a great cast (DiCapprio as the cop, Damon as the mole, good ol' Jack Nicholson as the mob boss, Martin Sheen as the police chief). This could be really good.
13. The Wicker Man (9/1). Normally, a remake of this fine horror flick wouldn't interest me, but Neil (In the Company of Men, Nurse Betty) LaBute will probably come up with a good take on the material.
Also new films from Clint Eastwood, Sophia Coppola, Steven Soderbergh, the Amores Peros (sp?) guy, and probably plenty of other stuff, but those are the ones that stand out for me.
Let's see how that shakes out. 8 movies opening in 7 weeks. Well, Wicker Man and The Departed get shoved out by the competition, so 6 in 7 weeks, which is probably more than I'll get to. I can choose between Children of Men and Science of Sleep depending on which looks better. Then 4 weeks off, then the Sophie's choice of James Bond or Tenacious D, followed by The Fountain. But then there's another 4 weeks to catch up, and then Pan's Labyrinth at the end of the year.
**************
And a smidgen of randomness:
For when you're ready to start living your life again, there's Prozetene. From the folks who brought you Space Squad 21.
Moistworks has been posting some great stuff. Here they have the original version of "Mbube," the African song that evolved into "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," along with a later (1960) version of the song by Miriam Makeba that's just awe-inspiring. Seriously, listen to it, it reminds me of the most ecstatic moments on the first two Patti Smith albums.
A cartoon I'd like to see.
posted by Chris Oliver at 3:25 PM
1 Comments:
Fall just might be enough to save this fairly wretched year, but I kind of doubt it .. I've seen Sofia's Marie Antoinette, and it was oddly disappointing .. The movies I'm most looking forward to for the rest of this year are Pan's Labyrinth and The Departed
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