Thank You Television, For Airing These Movies Ad Infinitum

10. The Ten Commandments

Why you keep watching: It's a big vanity project about Moses, starring the whitest actor ever as Moses, shown annually in prime time on network television for eternity.

Also:

The Taglines: "The Greatest Event in Motion Picture History" OR "It would take more than a man to lead the slaves from bondage. It would take a God."

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Fuck You Television: Can You Believe You've Seen These Movies More Than Once?!!?!

10. The Ten Commandments

Why you keep watching: it's a big vanity project about Moses, starring the whitest actor ever as Moses, shown annually in prime time on network television for eternity.

Also:

-The Taglines: "The Greatest Event in Motion Picture History" OR "It would take more than a man to lead the slaves from bondage. It would take a God."

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Cinema Uncool

Cameron Crowe is not cool.

But since when did a filmmaker have to be cool? When did hipness and good art become synonymous? I suppose it happened some time around the premiere of Pulp Fiction, a film that was so much better than Forrest Gump that hipsters have been rolling their eyes at Hollywood and the Academy ever since. Under these auspices, I presume that the most influential filmmaker in the last fifty years must have been Jean-Pierre Melville, the director of such classics as Bob le flambeur and Le Samourai and the progenitor of what critics often refer to as the “birth of cool” in the 1950s. No doubt, Elvis had something to do with it as well.

If Cameron Crowe has never been cool – the square Richard Linklater – he wasn’t always so bullied. The cool kids tolerated Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous, even if those films did affirm the possibility of heterosexual love, and some of the cool kids even dug Say Anything (back when Cusack was a God among men). So when did Crowe become “uncool in the flesh”? Was it simply because Vanilla Sky sucked so much? More ambitious than his prior undertakings, Vanilla Sky committed two carnal sins: it was bad and uncommercial (and with Tom Cruise, no less). But with Elizabethtown, Crowe is back to his usual bag of tricks, combining screwball comedy, sentimentality, and voice-over narration – in short, living up to his reputation as a modern day Billy Wilder.

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Multiple-Version Movies

Terrence Malick’s newest film, The New World, has been released twice. The original release – a New York/Los Angeles Academy consideration run – boasted a 135-minute epic. After two weeks, the film was snatched out of theaters so that Malick could snip 20 minutes off the film for a second, wider release. In other words, there are two versions of this film. What’s more, Malick has suggested that the DVD release will include a “director’s cut” version that will be even longer than 135 minutes.

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Top 10 Greatest and/or Most Important Movies Directed by Ron Howard

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8) Willow
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Best Presidential Nicknames

Honest Abe is a terrible nickname for a 6'4" dude who was possibly the greatest president ever. Bush II got stuck with Dubya, and although some of us may be hoping he'll gradually take on the title of Ole Dumbass Bastard, Dubya might just be it. But as our Commanders in Chief have gradually become celebrity personalities (especially during the yellow journalism heyday), presidential nicknames have gotten better and better. Eat your heart out, Tomkat. You'll never have "Sir" or "Granny" in front of your name in bold.

1. Benjamin Harrison – Kid Gloves
2. Richard Nixon – Tricky Dick
3. John Adams – His Rotundity

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