A Gilded Planet

Howl 2010. 84 minutes. USA. Directed by Rob Epstein and Friedman Watchdate: 10/9/2010 A terrible disappointment. I haven't seen many movies that squander so much potential in every possible way. Apart from excellent performances by James Franco, David Straithern and Jeff Daniels among others, and the poem itself which is as brilliant is ever, almost nothing worked about this movie. And there were so many good ideas that were so poorly executed! Combining animation with documentary and live action dramatization? Right on, I'm with you. But don't get cheap, generic animation. Don't drop using the documentary footage inserts halfway through the movie. Don't shoot dramatizations devoid of all drama. What a waste of time, especially considering what could have been. Throne of Blood  1957. 109 minutes. Japan. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Watchdate: 10/9/2010 Having designed lights for a stage production of Macbeth, I have seen the play and its component scenes dozens of t...

I watched 232 movies in the 365 Days of 2010 . Here are the 228th and 229th movies that I watched. 127 Hours 2010. 94 min. USA/UK. Directed by Danny Boyle. Watchdate: 12/21/2010 So first, a realization. James Franco is almost always as good or better than the movies he appears in. This holds true both in good movies (he's pretty much the best thing in Pineapple Express ) and in terrible ones (he's practically the only good thing in Howl ). This is definitely true here too, as he is terrific while the movie itself has problems. It's not bad by any means, but it does begin like a television commercial and too often has the feeling of being that sort of slick contraption. There's also one moment near the end that smacked of sentimentalism partly because of the brief and thankfully abortive deployment of one of those Feist/Spektor/Enya type sirens in the musical score. Other than the those two noisome flaws, the movie works fairly well. It does not rely too much at all on...