Time is running out to cure Kenicky's Chronophobia

alisonagosti:

The last few months, staying up past 10 PM or so has been harder and harder to do. It’s weird, because I’ve always identified myself a night person. But now? Bed by 10, up at 7. It’s disgusting.

Last night, I went to see The Avengers movie at midnight with some friends, the ringleader being my…

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This month, I reviewed: “Ace in the Hole”, “Chatroom”, “Dogtooth”, “Goon”, “The Hunger Games”, “Into the Abyss”, “Léon”, “Shame”, “Stranger Than Paradise”, “We Bought a Zoo” and “You and I”.

azizisbored:

This weekend I hired an Aziz Look a Like to sell copies of my new standup special Dangerously Delicious on the streets of NYC. If you didn’t run into him, you can still download/stream it for $5 on http://azizansari.com. 

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I reviewed 14 more films: “8 ½”, “Bonnie and Clyde”, “Carnage”, “In Time”, “Martha Marcy May Marlene”, “Mean Streets”, “The Muppets”, “Ninotchka”, “Persona”, “Raging Bull”, “Run Fatboy Run”, “The Sitter”, “To Be or Not to Be” and “Welcome to the Dollhouse”.

getthatlook:

theawl:

How we imagine the conversation between Awl publisher John Shankman and Jay-Z went down last night:

Shank: DO YOU LIKE BLOGS??

Jay-Z: Do I… like dogs.

Shank: No, BLOGS!!!

Jay-Z: Whoa, shit, where?

A homeless 4G hotspot enters the room. Everyone looks down at their shoes.

omg

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jonwithabullet:

Kristen Wiig as Lana del Rey in SNL’s Weekend Update with Seth Meyers

(via puckfaery32115)

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The Muppets (2011) – 8.5/10
“Life’s a happy song.”
As a reboot, The Muppets already has it easy, blessed with a rich cast of established characters and celebrities eager to join in the fun. The real challenge is to make it relevant for a new audience – a task Jason Segel accomplishes by adding a postmodern spin, while maintaining the original ethos of the franchise.
Segel lives with his brother, Walter, a muppet raised in a human family. Walter, perhaps mirroring Segel’s real life endeavours, grows up loving the Muppets and reforms them for a big show. Upon discovering the Muppets have retired, they must visit them one by one – Kermit lives alone in a dusty mansion, while Fozzy Bear fronts a tribute band called The Moopets. This reintroduction of the characters never feels heavy-handed and, in fact, maintains pop culture relevance – chickens cluck along to Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You” and four muppets perform an a cappella version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.
Perhaps the biggest coup is the celebrity cameos. Although Jack Black and Rashida Jones have large roles, there’s a showbiz joy from spotting how many one-second appearances there are – from Alan Arkin as the tour guide, Emily Blunt reprising her role from The Devil Wears Prada, to recognising the drummer of the Moopets is Dave Grohl. It proves how well The Muppets works for all ages by how seamlessly Amy Adams and Segel blend in with the Muppets – their co-existence is always good for a laugh, even during moments of drama.
The musical numbers are more hit than miss – the rap interlude falls a bit flat – with “Man or Muppet” being particularly memorable. Personally, I was excited to see Feist appear for one second to sing a line, then discovering Andrew Bird recorded the whistling solo from the finale. Whereas, another person would be equally giddy by Selena Gomez participating in the “Mahna Mahna” song at the end. Fun for everyone, as their PR person would probably say. (I am not their PR person.)
There are moments when the meta aspects are too clever for its own good, mostly down to repeating self-aware jokes. However, you forgive a film like The Muppets for its faults because it manages to feel earnest in a cynical age – it may be the product of hundreds of Hollywood meetings, script doctors and focus groups, but you would never realise from the enthusiasm in Jason Segel’s non-felt face.

This month, I reviewed: “A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas”, “The Descendants”, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, “The Help”, “Hugo”, “Suspiria”, “Take Shelter”, “Terms of Endearment”, “Tiny Furniture”, “Tower Heist”, “The Vicious Kind”, “War Horse” and “Young Adult”.

howswaldo:

At the dining hall. For days, he has marked the hours by the grumbling of his stomach. Now he can eat at last — alone, as always. No friendly face exists here, no one is a comfort. Except, perhaps, the wizard.

(Source: howswaldo)

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Young Adult (2012) – 9/10
“I think this song was playing the first time I went down on you.”
The opening of Young Adult is almost a parody of Scarlett Johansson’s introduction in Lost in Translation. The camera pans on Charlize Theron, hungover and slumped headfirst on her bed as morning seeps through the curtains. She’s divorced, an alcoholic and depressed – she isn’t too embarrassed to drink Coca Cola straight out of a 2 litre bottle in public. However, her inertia is irked when she receives an email with a photo of a newborn son of her old boyfriend from high school. It’s an early sign of the character’s intentional dislikeability that she uses this news as an impetus to return to her hometown and win back her old boyfriend.
The tragedy of Theron’s character is how closely she clings to her childhood, an era when she was prom queen and won an award for ‘best hair’. It was an age where social hierarchy placed her unequivocally at the top. Twenty years later, she ghostwrites young adult fiction and listens to mixtapes from her old highschool boyfriend – during the opening credits, she listens four times to the first verse of Teenage Fanclub’s ‘The Concept’. I like the song too, but it’s a sign of her escalating desperation – at first it’s funny, but it just becomes sad.
By chance, Theron bumps into someone from school who didn’t have such a good time. The character, played by Patton Oswalt, is still crippled from an incident at school where he was severely beaten up for being gay – the media attention vanished after the news that he wasn’t actually gay meant it technically wasn’t a hate crime. Theron’s selfish nature means that not only does she not feel guilty for being one of the people instigating the rumours he was gay, but she even says he should feel grateful he missed six months of school – the humour is deliciously dark.
Even worse is that Theron can’t see how much harder Oswalt has found life. Instead, she focuses on herself, even prepared to ruin a family to win back her ex-boyfriend. The process involves living in a hotel to hide from her mother, and using Oswalt’s generous company to fuel her alcoholism and loneliness. In one of the film’s most heart wrenching moments, he tells hers, “Guys like me were born loving women like you.”
You’d never guess that Young Adult was from the same writer and director team as 2007’s Juno. Just five years later, Diablo Cody’s writing has certainly matured – although I enjoyed Juno and thought Jennifer’s Body was passable, there’s no “my eggo is preggo” or “honest to blog” clunkers. Instead, the dialogue, as well as Ivan Reitman’s direction, is more slight – Oswalt tells Theron, “You’re a piece of shit,” and they clink glasses.
Buddy: “Mavis, I’m a married man.”
Mavis: “I know. We can beat this thing together.”

I reviewed 19 more films: “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”, “The Artist”, “Bellflower”, “The Brothers Solomon”, “The Cove”, “Cowboy Bebop”, “Dead Poets Society”, “Die Hard”, “Family Stone”, “Fatal Attraction”, “Funny Ha Ha”, “Hannah Takes the Stairs”, “Lola”, “Moneyball”, “My Sassy Girl”, “Never Been Kissed”, “Tampopo”, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and “We Need to Talk About Kevin”.

(Source: walterdavis, via heheheheheheheeheheheehehe)

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Judge not lest ye be judged or went to law school.

A ranking of the 2011 films I saw this year

1. Cold Weather – 9.5/10
It evolves from mumblecore to crime-thriller without losing its charm.

2. Melancholia - 9/10
A reminder that the end of the world will be slow, painful and a bit like the incinerator scene in Toy Story 3.

3. Black Swan – 8.5/10
Darren Aronofsky finds a dial labelled Polanski and turns it up to 11.

4. Another Earth – 8/10
Beyond the teenage angst is a surprisingly moving story about trying to hear violins instead of guilt.

5. Win Win – 8/10
Paul Giamatti shines as an exasperated family man tormented by guilt.

6. Midnight in Paris – 8/10
You can’t take New York out of the New Yorker, even if you stick him in Paris and introduce elements of time travel.

7. The Fighter – 8/10
A family drama about “heart”, loyalty and using sport as a distraction for the meaningless of life.

8. 50/50 -7.5/10
Very dark and very funny. Like watching the sunrise with your dentist.

9. Source Code – 7.5/10
A smart sci-fi thriller about wanting to die – something we can all relate to.

10. 127 Hours – 7/10
He says, “Thank you,” once his arm is cut off, but he doesn’t become a better person – once he escapes, he takes water from strangers without saying, “Thank you,” and then drinks it in a really wasteful manner, spilling down his shirt. In short: he will show his gratitude to an inanimate rock that has ruined his life, but he won’t say anything to the people who save him from dying of dehydration.

11. The Ides of March – 7/10
A soap opera crafted to fit a mainstream film structure, with sprinkles of digestible politics, which isn’t a bad thing.

12. Contagion – 7/10
Journalist versus biological warfare. A bit like my Christmas holiday.

13. Bridesmaids – 7/10
A funny film with 30 minutes of deleted scenes accidentally tacked on.

14. The Green Hornet – 7/10
An action film about people who can’t fight.

15. Super – 7/10
Surprisingly demented in a dementedly pleasant way.

16. My Idiot Brother – 6/10
Feels like a rehearsal for a brilliant film.

17. Sleeping Beauty – 6/10
Blandness becomes hypnotic.

18. Drive - 6/10
Ryan Gosling saunters through a supermarket aisle like a car, snaking past a row of breakfast cereal, heading towards the fresh fruit.

19. Super 8 – 6/10
Like marrying the first person you see standing outside a church.

20. The Future – 6/10
Sometimes weary, but often beautiful.

21. The Tree of Life – 5.5/10
A woman whispers, “Lord, where were you?” The screen replies with what looks like the default visualisations you get with Windows Media Player.

22. Crazy Stupid Love – 5.5/10
The apt title reflects a savvy take on films cliches without being particularly daring.

23. Paul – 5.5/10
Extremely repetitive. Extremely unambitious. Extremely frustrating.

24. Friends With Benefits – 5/10
Its message: all men are bastards, apart from your ‘fuck buddy’ who just so happens to be Justin Timberlake.

25. Insidious – 5/10
What is the latest, plain, by-the-numbers horror film you’ve seen lately?

26. Like Crazy – 5/10
A film that aims itself at girls with tumblrs.

27. Hall Pass – 4.5/10
It helps knowing the plot a few weeks in advance, to let it sink in.

28. Beautiful Lies – 4.5/10
Further analysis into the plot reveals plenty of nastiness, but it’s to the actors’ credit that your emotions are closer to incredulity than repulsion.

29. Welcome to the Rileys – 4.5/10
Kristen Stewart and James Gandolfini as you’ve never seen them before, and you’ll never want to see them again.

30. Horrible Bosses – 4.5/10
Forced, but watchable, like the QVC shopping channel.

31. My Week With Marilyn – 4/10
A bit like Twilight with the genders reversed.

32. Attack the Block – 4/10
Be careful if eating popcorn while watching, in case you miss something you’ve seen before or already predicted.

33. Limitless – 4/10
Apparently you only use 20% of your brain. Compare this with cucumber, which is 97% water. Am I really making a point? Not really, but neither is Limitless.

34. The Myth of the American Sleepover – 4/10
A bit like reading a stranger’s diary, then finding out they’re into trainspotting.

35. The Inbetweeners Movie – 4/10
It made me so sad about humanity that I didn’t even bother writing a review for it.

36. The King’s Speech – 3.5/10
1. DENIALThe praise for The King’s Speech is a temporary defence for humanity. This feeling is generally replaced with heightened awareness of positions and individuals that will be left behind after the death of Wikipedia.
2. ANGER How dare you say this film is educational.
3. BARGAINING I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed. Perhaps if they could remake it…
4. DEPRESSION It’s painfully tedious. I only watched it because I didn’t want to be left out.
5. ACCEPTANCE [speech] “Thank you for this Oscar.”

37. The Adjustment Bureau – 3.5/10
A film about the lengths Matt Damon will go to for a pretty girl on a bus.

38. Cedar Rapids 3.5/10
Ed Helms, the actor who plays Andy from The Office, branches out into films to stop himself becoming typecast, so he stars in Cedar Rapids as a character remarkable similar to Andy from The Office.

39. Your Highness -3/10
The best way is to describe Your Highness is that it’s like buying someone a birthday card, but forgetting to write a message inside, and it’s also not their birthday.

40. Bad Teacher – 3/10
It doesn’t pick up until the last 15 minutes by rising to a low level of mediocrity.

41. Chalet Girl – 3/10
Things I can’t digest: cellulose and Chalet Girl.

42. A Good Old Fashioned Orgy – 3/10
The film version of giving up.

43. 30 Minutes or Less – 2.5/10
A real tragic death turned into a comedy. The film is arguably a bigger tragedy.

44. No Strings Attached – 2.5/10
Ashton Kutcher cries less convincingly than a robot, or any other household appliance.

45. happythankyoumoreplease – 1.5/10
Josh Radnor, tell us who the mother is, then go away forever.

46. Beastly – 0.5/10
A Disney film where the moral is that you need brute force to make someone love you.

47. Sucker Punch – 0/10
One single sentence can’t explain why this is the worst film I’ve ever seen.