Letters from Iwo Jima
[See “Eastwoodian Aftermaths,” The American Spectator, February, 2007 under “Articles”]
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[See “Eastwoodian Aftermaths,” The American Spectator, February, 2007 under “Articles”]
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
Well, here goes. The following, I know, is an invitation to hate-mail, but I have to say that Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, written and directed by George Lucas, demonstrates a remarkable paucity of imagination. The thought first came to me in the scene where Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) explains to Queen Amidala…
Guess what? Shakespeare is once again “our contemporary.” Yet how much more interesting he is when he is allowed to be out of date.
Lost in Space, directed by Stephen Hopkins, is just too silly for words. In yet another cinematic updating of a long-forgotten TV series, William Hurt plays Professor John Robinson, a scientist who has been chosen to emigrate with his family to the planet Alpha Prime, which is ten years in a fast spaceship away, but…
Magnolia, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, is like David O. Russell’s Three Kings in being an impressive display of moviemaking talent without ever quite becoming an impressive movie. In both cases, I think, the problem is that the talented writer-directors are overreaching themselves and trying to do too much. In the case of…
Gattaca, written and directed by Andrew Niccol is one of those hokey “futuristic” flicks which is really a form of pandering to a very present-day paranoia. It does not exactly require a huge leap of imagination to project a “not-too-distant future” in which gene-typing has become so swift and reliable that state security will have…
Rich and powerful Mr Hearst only wants to be loved! The story ought to be in the funny pages of a Hearst newspaper — or a movie by Orson Welles. Peter Bogdanovich’s version is a yawn.
Well, here goes. The following, I know, is an invitation to hate-mail, but I have to say that Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, written and directed by George Lucas, demonstrates a remarkable paucity of imagination. The thought first came to me in the scene where Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) explains to Queen Amidala…
Guess what? Shakespeare is once again “our contemporary.” Yet how much more interesting he is when he is allowed to be out of date.
Lost in Space, directed by Stephen Hopkins, is just too silly for words. In yet another cinematic updating of a long-forgotten TV series, William Hurt plays Professor John Robinson, a scientist who has been chosen to emigrate with his family to the planet Alpha Prime, which is ten years in a fast spaceship away, but…
Magnolia, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, is like David O. Russell’s Three Kings in being an impressive display of moviemaking talent without ever quite becoming an impressive movie. In both cases, I think, the problem is that the talented writer-directors are overreaching themselves and trying to do too much. In the case of…
Gattaca, written and directed by Andrew Niccol is one of those hokey “futuristic” flicks which is really a form of pandering to a very present-day paranoia. It does not exactly require a huge leap of imagination to project a “not-too-distant future” in which gene-typing has become so swift and reliable that state security will have…
Rich and powerful Mr Hearst only wants to be loved! The story ought to be in the funny pages of a Hearst newspaper — or a movie by Orson Welles. Peter Bogdanovich’s version is a yawn.
Well, here goes. The following, I know, is an invitation to hate-mail, but I have to say that Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, written and directed by George Lucas, demonstrates a remarkable paucity of imagination. The thought first came to me in the scene where Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) explains to Queen Amidala…
Guess what? Shakespeare is once again “our contemporary.” Yet how much more interesting he is when he is allowed to be out of date.
Lost in Space, directed by Stephen Hopkins, is just too silly for words. In yet another cinematic updating of a long-forgotten TV series, William Hurt plays Professor John Robinson, a scientist who has been chosen to emigrate with his family to the planet Alpha Prime, which is ten years in a fast spaceship away, but…
Magnolia, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, is like David O. Russell’s Three Kings in being an impressive display of moviemaking talent without ever quite becoming an impressive movie. In both cases, I think, the problem is that the talented writer-directors are overreaching themselves and trying to do too much. In the case of…
Gattaca, written and directed by Andrew Niccol is one of those hokey “futuristic” flicks which is really a form of pandering to a very present-day paranoia. It does not exactly require a huge leap of imagination to project a “not-too-distant future” in which gene-typing has become so swift and reliable that state security will have…
Rich and powerful Mr Hearst only wants to be loved! The story ought to be in the funny pages of a Hearst newspaper — or a movie by Orson Welles. Peter Bogdanovich’s version is a yawn.