Every great newspaper deserves its own great movie.  The Washington Post got All The President’s Men, The San Francisco Chronicle got Zodiac, and (although I haven’t seen it) The New York Times got the doc Page One: Inside The New York Times.  There are a lot of other great great newspaper films, but they are all fictional (or fiction guised as something sorta based in reality, ala Citizen Kane).  It’s actually kinda weird that there aren’t more films about big time stories published by big time newspapers.  Anywho – Spotlight shines a bright light on The Boston Globe – and the lid they blew off the priestly-pedophiled sexual scandals that plagued the highly Catholic Boston area for eons
Thomas McCarthy‘s cinematic journey of this investigative journalism triumph is a triumph itself.  The outcome is obvious (any doubt that the paper wouldn’t win the day by getting the word out), but getting from point A to point B was an absolute thrill – even if it mainly consisted of phone calls, interviews, trips to the library, repeat, repeat, repeat.  The movie never skips a beat, and is pulse-pounding from the get go, to the get stop.  Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian d’Arcy James (and his MUSTache), Liev Schreiber, and Billy Crudup are ALL fantastic.  Raping children is not fantastic, but this movie is ALL fantastic.  It is a muss see for anyone who has eyes, and even for people who don’t
Verdictgo: Breast In Show
Spotlight shines bright currently at a theater near jews
Before we dig not so deep into this ‘review’, here’s a recap of our tweets with our immediate ‘thoughts’ on seeing the ‘movie’ version of Suzanne Collins‘ The Hunger Games
– HUNGER GAMES???? more like BORING LAMES!!!!!!!! 999999real!!
– I love me some bad future movies above all other genres, but that was a not so good bad future movie. the future didn’t look bad enough.  apparently director Gary Ross has never seen a dystopian movie from the 70s
– There’s more excitement contained in 5 minutes of an AMERICAN GLADIATORS episode than there was in 7 hours of HUNGER GAME movieage
-Â HUNGER GAMES the movie hinges on Jennifer Lawrence‘s ability to emote. she can’t and the movie is thus emotionless
-Â HUNGER GAMES really needed some vampire baseball action. Â [also]Â needed more boobs, fried chicken and ZODIAC
– things I liked about HUNGER GAMES – Stanley Tucci & his hair’s performance, Wes Bentley‘s devil beard, and the ending cause it meant movie was over
– I wish Katniss volunteered to watch THE BORING LAMES in my place
-Â I have a bad feeling that parents are going to start naming their kids Katniss and Peeta
– What happens in HUNGER GAMES sequel – Lenny Kravitz opens a salon? Kiefer Sutherland farms berries? Haymitch & Juliette Lewis go on a murder spree?
You are now exiting tweetville, and entering the ‘review’ of the ‘film’
As you can tell, we loved The Hunger Games!!!! NOT!!!! Â But we didn’t hate it (PROMISE!). Â We just don’t understand the appeal and big deal being made about this movie. Â Sure, the books are probably bettererand morerer entertaining, but books are for people who can read, and movies are for people who like their stories wrapped up in 2 hrs so they can see more movies than you can read books. Â Anywho, this is not a good movie. Â It’s not bad, but it’s not good
Battle Royale, Running Man, blah blah blagg, you’ve heard it before, and again and somethen, but it’s true, The Hunger Games are lesser versions of them.  See those.  Don’t bother with HUNGER TAMED.  Why?  Cause there’s nothing to The Hunger Games movie.  There’s no danger (you know the heroine and her hero-ish friend Josh Hutcherson are gonna live), no drama (unless you’re concerned if bland-o Alexander Ludwig will ever act again), or any sense of anything (it’s like the future in one of them AT&T ‘You Will’ commercials with special FX that look like they were created on a Commodore 64.  no offense to those AT&T commercials, but that was the future according to the early 90s and the last time we checked, the early 90s are over)… and yet, it’s still sorta kinda watchable, even though the Games don’t start until 80+ minutes into it, and about 90 minutes needed to be cut from the whole thing
So what is good?  Tucci as that giddy Oompa Loompa looking TV announcer (it’s the only creepy cool thing about the entire movie, in a Richard Dawson Running Man awesome kinda way), Donald Sutherland‘s voice (duh), Elizabeth Banks‘ wardrobe (maybe?), the fact that Woody Harrelson is in it so young audiences will know of him for future movie going experiences (although he does better mentor work in Game Change, which also has morerer cutthroat gaming than anything in the con game that is The Hunger Sames), and Isabelle Fuhrman is in it too, although not nearly enuff.  She’s adorable, and was so evil in that movie where she was evil.  She’s not nearly evil enuff here, then again, nothing here is, and that is why we don’t HUNGER for these GAMES.  A movie about kids killing each other should be tense and scary and sinister, not none of the above!!!!
Oh, you wanted to know the plot?  It’s like a bad future America, although it doesn’t seem so bad.  It makes 1984 look like our actual 1984.  Every year there’s this big thing called The Hunger Games where a boy & a girl from each of the 12 districts are selected and compete in a water-downed Running Man Battle Royale so that people will like watch it on TV and not revolt or something.  So our girl in this game is some girl with a really stoopid name – Katniss, and the boy from her district is VelPeeta or something.  They aren’t exactly BFFs.  In some flashback, she was hungry and he threw her some bread in the mud, while it was raining!  OH MY!!!  BREAD!!!  MUD!!!!  RAINING!!!!  Anywho, the two get all like dolled up by make-up artists and get advice from drunk former winners and they be in the big city where trains are fast and it all looks like a shittier CGIier version of Coruscant, and all the people are kinda dressed like Clockwork Orange‘s singing sophisto lady from the TV station.  But before the games begin, the kids get trained in a zero-energy filled training sequence.  Then VelPeeta admits he has a crush on Katnipp, and then the games begin, and within like 2 minutes of the games, like 1/2 the kids are dead, and then the rest of the movie takes place in a forest, which isn’t very futuristic, and then they play cat and mouse games that aren’t amusing to anyone (involved or watching), and then Kattnappp whistles to birds, and then more kids die and then some don’t, then there’s a cave scene, and whatever, and then the games end.  CAN YOU GUESS WHO SURVIVE(s)!?!?!?!?!?!?
moral of the story – this could have been an awesome movie, but the guy who made Pleasantville not as awesome as it could have been does or DON’Ts it again.  this is the same guy who made Seabiscuit, and can’t remember much about it, cept there was a horse and Peter Parker rode it and they both overcame the odds to win the Hunger Games
even this shitty 80s movie about a bad future was more betterer and more evilier and more watchable than The Hunger Games, even though this movie is unwatchable
…But Seriously: this one still photograph has more bad future TV show deathgame beyond bestness than the entireness of the The Hunger Games movie
Verdictgo: Very Little Merit AND No Stinkin Badges
Games is currently running afoul at a theater near jews
and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…
nope, this photo aint from Hunger Games either. Â it’s from a real movie where kids gun down each other
Ken Kesey, The Merry Pranksters & that Further bus - for those who have read Tom Wolfe’s Acid Tested book, you probably know a thing or three about the trials and travails of that combo of peoples and vehicle.  For the rest of us illiterate, image craving bunch, probably not so much outside of those names and the fact that they did lots of drugs and stuffs, and bright colors and things!
Well, on the bus’ inaugural trip (Wolfe wasn’t on it!), from Kesey’s Cali home to 1964 World’s Fair in New York, stuff certainly did happen (like LOTS OF STUFF!!!) and all of it was filmed for a documentary… that was never made!!!!  Years later, Alison Ellwood & Alex Gibney took the 100+ hours of film and turned it into something (mostly) cohesive, with Stanley Tucci‘s voice driving the bus
While not eggzactly the most enthralling documentary chronicling 60s hippie dippie life and experimentation, Ellwood & Gibney’s Magic Trip is still a vital and important moving document, which will hold historical value for time eternal (future generations will need to see how people on LSD acted, in a time when it was legal!!!).  Even though sex, drugs and rock n roll are givens we take for granted in today’s society, it was pretty radical sh%t back then.  Educated people jumping on a wildly painted bus, taking boatloads of acid, swapping partners left and right, and to what end? Or to what beginning?
Their destination may have been the World’s Fair, but when they got there, they truly realized that all the eye opening memories were forged on that bus ride. Â What a long strange trip it was indeed! Â Hop on board, even if the bus has already come and gone
Bus A Don’t Move: there were two editions of the Further bus, and both are collecting dust/rust on Kesey’s farm (where his widow still lives) in Pleasant Hill, Oregon
Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers
Trip hums along in NY & the SF area tomorrow, on demand everywhere now, and elsewhere elsewhen
As a movie, Captain America is OK, we guess, but as a superhero movie, it’s like a Mad-Libs fill in the blanks paint by numbers road more traveled exercise in nothing newness here.  Sure, it may be a bit ‘different’ by taking place during WWII, draped in a Flags of Our Fathers look, but that’s not enuff to make up for one giant narrative void.  Here’s the story: there’s a scrawny guy (Chris Evans, who had more fun, and we did too, when he was the Human Torch), who becomes unscrawny (by way of Stanley Tucci‘s questionable German accent), and then the newly unscrawny guy needs to stop someone who may be even more unscrawnier than him (Hugo Weaving, with nothing to do but show off his crazy eyes and teeth and like shoot some blue lasers from time to time).  On team unscrawny guy there’s Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones and a band of silly looking boringest basterds (nice bowler hat & mustache, you jacka$$!!!).  Weaving’s got Toby Jones, who totally wishes he was the face melting Nazi from Raiders.  A battle ensues?  Or something?  Not really.  Can’t remember anything that actually happened in this movie, cept they tried to sell war bonds, and couldn’t sell a story
War Bondage: Al Capp, creator of Li’l Abner, and raunchy war bond posters!!!!
Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges
Captain is all over America and a theater near jews
Julia Child lead a most fruitful life, making a name for herself in introducing French cuisine to the plebeian American suburbanites in both print and later in television (do we have her to thank for Yan Can Cook and Justin ‘I gar-on-tee!‘ Wilson?), while privately maintaining a loving relationship with her cherished diplomat husband. There was one thing she always wanted, but could never have, a child (irony?). She may not have been able to procreate, but she indirectly created a monster in the form of Julie Powell. Mrs Powell was looking for a purpose in life and found it in Mrs Child’s cookbook. Since fresh creativity doesn’t really eggsist anymore, Powell made like a hip-hop ‘artist’ and sampled Child’s work into her own. The result was a blog chronicling her attempt to make all 524 recipes from Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the span of a year. Yawn. Almos more yawn is the design of her blog (her current blog aint munch butter). All talk, not bite. Well nothing screams motion picture quite like a woman’s struggle in the kitchen and blogging about it, right?
Sophie Barthes‘s Cold Souls is like a more clear-headed mix of Being John Malkovich, Synecdoche, New York and Enternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. That’s quite good Charlie Kaufman company to be in for Barthes’ full length feature debut, wouldn’t ya say? The idea for the film regarding a man having his soul extracted was dreamed up from one of her own dreams, and the man in question was Woody Allen. Obviously it aint no easy task to have him star in a movie these days (guess he’s waiting for Scenes From A Mall II), so in steps Paul Giamatti, who brings his own brand of neuroticism to the playing field. In Souls G-mat plays… Paul Giamatti, a crazed actor having much trouble gettin through Uncle Vanya rehearsals, and after reading an article in The New Yorker he finds himself in a Total Recall-type lab (run by David Strathairn) where his soul will be removed and placed into a jar. His soul turns out to be the size and shape of a chickpea, and without it, he feels quite empty, especially around his well-aware wife Emily Watson, so he has the option to take someone else’s soul. After giving a troubled new soul a spin, he decides he wants his old one back, but it’s been stolen! and shipped off to Russia! by way of the soul black market! and all so some Russian dude’s aspiring soap opera actress wife (see Win-Winnick below) can get a bit of stage cred! The first half of Cold Souls is a brainy, but not too heady joy, and the second is a little more adventurous, although not as interesting as the first half, as Paul heads to mother Russia, with the help of sympathetic soul trafficker Dina Korzun, in hopes of gettin g his soul back. It’s a mixed bag, but a rather curious one lessthenone, so you should feel free to place your hand in this bag for a lil soul II soul searching
A Win-Winnick Situation: Katheryn Winnick plays the Russian actress hungry for the soul of Al Pacino, but gets Giamatti’s instead. we all wanna play Russian and be in a mad hurry (get it, rushin’) to make sweet hand love to this kick glass Maxim babe
Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers
J&J creates heat in kitchens across the country today, while Cold Souls gets icy hot in NY & LA only
01. Dec, 2015 
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