Notes on some good movies, a bad movie and links to interesting articles

Its that time again- a few random comments and links and such.

This Friday coming up (11/19) the Brooklyn Academy of Music is going to run the film Brighter Summer Day about people growing up in Taiwan in the later 1950's. I mentioned this film awhile back when Lincoln Center ran it, now BAM is running it and if you can, and you can spare 4 plus hours I recommend you see the film. (I really need to write the film up but I need to see it again to be able to say more about the film beyond "go see it")

This afternoon while cleaning I started watching Solitary Man which stars Michael Douglas. Well once the film started cleaning stopped and I was hooked. I'm going to write the film up before it gets its Oscar nominations, but for now all you really need to know is see it. Its the story of a fifty something year old man who's life implodes and he tries to put it back together, all the while creating all sorts of problems for himself. Michael Douglas is supposed to be on the short list for the Best Actor Oscar. Frankly he's that good and when it happens don't listen to the talk that it's because he's got cancer. Bullshit. He's incredible,and after a couple of weak films such as Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, he proves that he matters as an actor.

While I don't normally post bad reviews of films, film festivals and our Halloween Horrors week excepted, I feel I must report that word on the street, literally, is that Skyline, the alien invasion film currently in theaters is bad. I say literally because while I was lost in Manhattan on Saturday I ended up over hearing three conversations that concerned how bad they thought the film was. I've never heard so many random people talking so badly about one film.

The NPR series New Sounds had an hour devoted to the music of Michael Nyman. Nyman has done soundtrack work, probably best known for working a great deal with Peter Greenaway. The hour long program should be able to be found here.

Pop Matters has an interesting piece on four films that came out this year and are "misunderstood". I don't know about that. Since I wasn't crazy about the two I've seen (Kick Ass and Scott Pilgrim Saves the World), but I still find the arguments for them worth noting. You can find it here.

CNN has a great piece on the subject of one of the best films from the Tribeca Film Festival Into Eternity, Onkalo, which is a miles deep cavern that Finland is building to bury their nuclear waste. The film has haunted me and my opinion has grown about the film, which is just now getting a UK release. The CNN piece can be found here and the film is in UK cinemas.

Cartoon Brew has a neat piece on guy who is turning the hand drawn opening credits for the original Jonny Quest series in stop motion. Trust me this is really cool and you'll find it here.

Lastly, the subway and my own nagging problems stemming from my injured back kept me from returning to the New York City Horror Film Festival on Saturday. Not to worry our fearless correspondent has been there and should be reporting in in the next day or so. Personally I think that the festival is a great deal of fun, though I think it's clear that they are going to have to move from the Tribeca Cinemas next year for the best possible reason-too many people want to attend.