Culture

$81.3 million was pretty close; it actually hit $85.85 million. Not too shabby, although still somewhat behind Spider-Man and the Harry Potter flicks.

Bill Condon’s next movie will apparently be Dreamgirls. I’m quite happy that I won’t have to wait another six years for his next. It’ll be a remake of the stage musical, which I know nothing about; the storyline isn’t terribly compelling to me. But hey, it’s Condon.

A while back I pointed to the University of California’s online academic text archive. Robin Laws put this to good use, discovering a collection of Hollywood screenwriter interviews. I’m gonna read just about all of those.

Screw it — while there are three or four 2004 movies I want to see that I could see if I was willing to delay this puppy another couple of weeks, I’m gonna go with what I’ve got. The rules, as per last year: This is the list of my ten favorite movies of 2004. I didn’t see every movie I wanted to see, so I can’t claim it’s the ten best movies of 2004. I’m also being a little liberal about foreign flicks; if it was made in 2003 but was released in the US in 2004, or if it hasn’t been released in the US yet but I saw it in 2004, I’ll count it as a 2004 movie within reason. E.g., Days of Being Wild was released in the US in 2004, but was made in 1991, so it doesn’t get on the list. ...

“I’m blogging your T-shirt.”

For Sean Stewart fans, there’s an eight page comic book (original) featuring Perfect Circle’s DK up on the web. Steve Lieber illustrated it. It’s good.

I am firmly dedicated to seeing as many 2004 movies as possible before I crank out a best of list, which means that I won’t be doing mine until mid-January. Maybe late January, since the Brattle has that Zhang Ziyi flick I wanna see. However: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Closer, Life Aquatic, Kinsey, The Incredibles, Gozu, Last Life in the Universe, Zatoichi, Eternal Sunshine, Spider-Man 2, aw crap that’s ten already? This is gonna be tough.

If you happen to live in Boston and you’re that kind of obsessive, the Brattle Theater is showing the Lord of the Rings trilogy back to back to back on Sunday, January 2nd and Monday, January 3rd. Starting on the 7th, they’re reviewing some of the best movies of 2004, including Last Life In The Universe on the 7th, Takeshi’s Kitano’s Zatoichi on the 8th, and Goodbye, Dragon Inn on the 11th. Plus a lot of other good stuff. I’ve gotta make it to Before Sunset, myself. ...

I never link to viral marketing, at least not on purpose. (What, never? Well, hardly ever.) But. Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah to you.

“Imagine a great metropolis covering hundreds of square miles. Once a vital component in a national economy, this sprawling urban environment is now a vast collection of blighted buildings, an immense petri dish of both ancient and new diseases, a territory where the rule of law has long been replaced by near anarchy in which the only security available is that which is attained through brute power. Such cities have been routinely imagined in apocalyptic movies and in certain science-fiction genres, where they are often portrayed as gigantic versions of T. S. Eliot’s Rat’s Alley. Yet this city would still be globally connected. It would possess at least a modicum of commercial linkages, and some of its inhabitants would have access to the world’s most modern communication and computing technologies. It would, in effect, be a feral city.” ...