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8 Critics Rave! 
Fake answers, i.e., movies that are so awful they'd never be featured here:
#1: George Clinton's 'Blackula'
#2: 'Iko Iko' featuring Roast Leg of Lamm
#3: 'Mulligatawny Blues' featuring Justin Timberflake
Was I wrong?
Way to ruin it for everybody, Andy. The answer to #3 really is Mulligatawny Blues (Director's Cut).
Thanks for stopping by, and please come again!
Cinephiliac: Whats your take on the declining audience at the local miniplex??? The industry heads say there are a number of reasons: A failure of studio marketing, the rising price of gas, the lure of alternate entertainment.
Heres my take: Shit remakes of shit films (Longest yard)Shit films of shit TV shows (Bewitched, Dukes of Hazzard)Hollywood has very few original ideas, thank god for greencine.
Oof. Must you, Paul?
So much ink has been spilled over this concern. Not MY deepest concern, mind you, as I honestly feel this is more an issue for those every execs whose job security depends on their next hit.
Yes, the multiplexes are full of brain-numbing llama turds that prove said execs shouldn't be calculating entertainment qualities on mass-marketed demographics or how huge and shiny the movies can be packaged. But it is a business, and you can blame the Spielbergs and the Lucases for this thinly spread blockbuster nonsense. People like dumb escapism (myself included, on occasion), but we wouldn't be here now if we thought great cinema didn't still exist elsewhere.
But also -- and these variables are painfully obvious -- ticket prices are outrageous, theater experiences can be atrocious (I once witnessed a mother changing her baby's diaper in a very R-rated horror flick, and let's not even get into why the infant was even there), and DVDs are deservedly on the rise. In fact, just today, the New York Times made mention to video stores sticking around for quite some time (which I already knew, or else I wouldn't be trying to start-up CINEPHILIAC, THE GREATEST DVD RENTAL LIBRARY IN BROOKLYN). Ahem.
What more needs to be said? Wide releases are too often subpar anyway, so why spend the money and time on a subpar experience when someone can comfortably rent 'em and pause 'em and watch bonus features and yada yada yada in their own home? Unfortunately, studios are always going to cater to the lowest common denominator to get as many asses in seats as possible, but maybe they should be working with theater chains to make those seats more enticing. 'Nuff said.
And yes, thank god for GreenCine. Now if only they could open up an east-coast processing hub to make joining more cost effective for we New Yorkers and such (I have been a member twice and cancelled twice due to mailings taking a week each way -- it's a shame, because their selection and customer service are untouchable).
It takes a Greencine disc four days to get to Syracuse NY, it works out to a $3 rental after a month if I watch them and get them out soon. I forgot to mention one plus about going to the movies early is watching "The 40". Please tell me you get The 40 in NY City.
4 days is much more acceptable, maybe I'll have to give GreenCine another shot (this was also two years ago, I should be fair in my disclosure).
We have "The Twenty" at the multiplexes, which is just 20 minutes of cloyingly shrill commercials. Just like TV, but with no mute button and more seat imprisonment!
My understanding is that there is actually no crisis at all. What's giving everyone problems is that the numbers from last year were inflateded by"passion" - and the folks who went and saw the god damned thing arent your everyday film goers and probably aren't too interested in seeing Brokenflowers or what have you.
Jah, there's a strong argument to be made there, Felix. If nothing else, I agree that it's preposterous to label any of it a "crisis." And DVD sales and rentals are more than compensating for any possible fiscal differences.
Join the Conversation:
Previous Entry :: TOP :: Next Entry Cinephiliac cannot be found in any English dictionary,
as only a "cinephile" (film enthusiast) would suffer from "cinephilia"
(obsessive love of cinema). To better understand, "Cinephiliac" suffers
to the bone from "cinephilia." Cinephiliac is the not-so-secret codename
for what will inevitably become the Greatest Film Rental Library (read: "video
store") in Brooklyn, NY. We will endorse the preservation of film culture
and provide the best in cinema, renting DVDs not often available from larger
chains and smaller "mom-and-pop" stores; We will specialize in film
festival award winners, independent releases, avant-garde and cult classics,
foreign films, documentaries, special interest, arthouse favorites and other
critically acclaimed titles, new and old. Large scale studio releases will be
only be made lightly available to secondary markets of less discriminating tastes.
Cinephiliac exists to attract, entertain, enrich and maintain customers. When
we adhere to this maxim, everything else will fall into place. Our services
will exceed the expectations of our customers. Cinephiliac is the brainchild
of entrepreneuer (and professional film critic) Aaron Hillis, who is still offering
Phase I investment opportunities throughout 2005 and 2006. To request online access to
Aaron's business plan, address all inquiries here. Aaron Hillis vividly remembers
the first R-rated movie his parents ever allowed him to watch, the 1986 sci-fi/action
epic Aliens, which features a myriad of gory "chest-bursting" effects
that aren't exactly Mom's idea of family entertainment. "My folks weren't
worried about the violence having a negative effect on me," Aaron recalls,
"because even as a fourth grader, I was basically explaining to them how
the filmmakers created these fantastic illusions that existed outside of reality!"
Growing up with this undeterrable passion for the cinema led Aaron to study
Motion Picture Production and Film Theory at Arizona State Univsity and U.T. Austin (University of Texas),
but it wasn't until the summer of 2002, while living in Carroll Gardens (Brooklyn,
NY), that he began to make his living through the movies: "It was pretty
wild. Not only did I stumble onto a regular gig writing DVD and film reviews
for Premiere Magazine, but I was concurrently being asked to take full reign
as manager of an indie video store in my neighborhood." After 16 months
of managing the Hole-in-the-Wall Video store, where he increased annual profits
from 7% to 31% through creative marketing and unique innovations, Aaron finally
got the gumption to reap the rewards of opening his own store. Cinephiliac will
build upon prototype business strategies already proven successful for Aaron,
such as concentrating on quality movies instead of simply mainstream commercial
releases, a previously unmet demand in the area. "The most important thing
for me is enlightening people to the vast diversities of film culture they might
not even know about. Most filmgoers would rent better titles if they simply
knew they existed, things you won't find at Blockbuster, Netflix or an 'In-Demand'
cable service. When customers come into my store, I want them to experience
the happy medium between film school and their favorite hangout." When
he isn't dissecting the works of Jean-Luc Godard or Russ Meyer, Aaron used to take
the form of an illustrator, a part-time DJ, a full-blown coffee addict and a
doting boyfriend. His latest Premiere reviews are available to read here. CLICK
the titles below for pop-up reviews of Aaron's Top Ten Films of 2003: 1. Lost
in Translation 2. Spider 3. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 4. Pistol
Opera 5. Finding Nemo 6. Kill Bill: Volume 1 7. The Man Without a Past 8. Capturing
the Friedmans 9. Irreversible 10. Hukkle - Honorable Mention (11-20, alphabetically):
All the Real Girls . Bad Santa . Friday Night . Girlhood . The Good Thief .
Raising Victor Vargas . The Revolution Will Not Be Televised . School of Rock
. Swimming Pool . 28 Days Later If only I had seen them during 2003: American
Splendor . Big Fish . Bus 174 . City of God . Cold Mountain . demonlover . Dracula:
Pages From a Virgin's Diary . The Fog of War . In America . The Son . The Station
Agent . Ten . The Triplets of Belleville . 21 Grams . Unknown Pleasures . Whale
Rider - (Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona [AZ] class of 1995) -
the investment opportunities here are a sure thing for investors looking for
either small-risk, mid-risk, large-risk vestings, tax-deductible, high interest
rates compound (compounded) monthly (that's every month, unless we're The Da Vinci Code cracked by Connie Chung), and GreenCine Daily (GreenCine.com), David Hudson aka D W Hudson is simply the bomb,
but Court Street, Smith Street, Columbia Street, and Union Street near Cobble
Hill, Red Hook, and Boerum Hill is the place to be for this venture capitalists
or should I say venture capital or even venture capitalism! VHS is dead to us rare DVD fanatics,
but we will carry all titles by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Terry Gilliam, Samuel
Fuller, Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell (and Pressburger), Jan Kadar Elmar
Klos, film theory and criticism, Robert Flaharty, Cristi Puiu and the Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Werner Herzog World Cup, ecstacy of truth (like the ecstasy of truth), Wim Wenders, Aleksandr Sokurov into Robert Altman, Hal Hartley,
Carl Theodor Dreyer (Carl Th. Dreyer), Akira Kurosawa, Takashi Miike, Woody
Allen, George W. Bush's favorite aspect ratio, Dorota Kedzierzawska, Francis Ford Coppola, Milos Forman, Home Vision and Image, Cinemascope in 2007, El Topo vs. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (brothers Dardennes), Larry Cohen, Philippe Garrel stars Louis Garrel, Julien Duvivier, Cult Epics, Hiroshi Inagaki vs. The Chronicles of Narnia (Prince Caspian!),
Herk Harvey, David Gordon Green by way of Gaspar Noe, Luis Bunuel, Sergio Leone noir, Bernardo
Bertolucci, Michael Haneke is and isn't Hidden (Caché), Nicholas Roeg, Karl Rove, Terry Jones (Monty Python), Philip
Kaufman, Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, IRA terrorism via DV filmmaking, Neil Jordan, Paul Morrissey, Peter Jackson's King Kong meets Andy Warhol in Technicolor (Superman Returns), Spike Lee,
David Lean, Jiri Menzel, Peter Medak, Film Bloggers Explode, Mario Monicelli, John Lurie, Tom Waits on YouTube,
Jim Jarmusch, Patrice Chéreau, Federico Fellini (they're all naked!), Merchant Ivory, Bill Murray, Allison Anders, 43rd New York Film Festival, Steven Soderbergh or the lovely Coleman Hough,
Quentin Tarantino, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Andrei Tarkovsky, Shohei Imamura, Uncle Alfred Hitchcock destroys Lucio Fulci, World Trade Center, Marcel Camus, Robert Bresson, Peter Brook, when little-known Fernando Arrabal returns, Wes Anderson and the Phallic Vagina imagery, Mario
Bava, Kevin Smith, director George Clooney, 2006: The Puppet Theater of Paul Thomas Anderson, Cannes Film Festival, Fishkill documentary entitled Fish Kill Flea (coming soon), Ingmar Bergman, Yasujiro Ozu, Shohei Imamura, Noah Baumbach, Aki Kaurismaki,
Francois Ozon, grips and gaffters, 9 Songs: Franz Ferdinand, Beat Takeshi Kitano, Marie Antoinette over Satantango: Bela Tarr, Christopher Guest, Asia Argento (completely nude in a blockbuster documentary?), then we ask Albert Maysles, film projectors of 1920, Mitsuo Yanagimachi reads Albert Camus, Peter
Weir, Agnes Varda, Jacques Demy in North Korea, Bertrand Tavernier, Heath Ledger in my neighborhood (Douglass Street), Seijun Suzuki, Francois
Truffaut, Gregory La Cava, Laurence Olivier, D. A. Pennebaker, Remy Belvaux,
Jean Renoir, Sundance devours the South Korean New Wave, Michelangelo Antonioni, every single Japanese Shochiku, Kurt Momberger is M.I.A., Rene Clair, Henri-Georges Clouzot clips, Jean
Cocteau, Joe D'Amato meets Rob Reiner, Jean-Paul Civeyrac goes Through the Forest, Carol Reed, Alain Resnais, Bohdan Sláma (Slama), DVD Beaver, Lynne Ramsay (hot sex on the inside), Brian De Palma
(Brian DePalma), Sergei Eisenstein, Red State vs. Blue State, Lars von Trier eats Dogville's Manderlay, Osama bin Laden visits Jonathan Demme, Peter Davis, Alex Cox, David
Cronenberg, Wong Kar-Wai, Michael Winterbottom, Harry Potter, Jacques Tati portrait of international awards, the nunsploitation of Neil Jordan, Stanley Kubrick, Roger Corman and Funny Ha Ha, Michael Almereyda,
Stan Brakhage, Ronald Neame, not from Spider-Man 3: Stanley Donen, The Criterion Collection, Jules
Dassin, Jean-Pierre Melville, Aldo Lado is no Dario Argento, Mai Zetterling (Loving Couples), Dobson High School's Merritt Corless, after Ken Pringle tracked me down, Barbet Schroeder, Sam Peckinpah, Kiyoshi Kurosawa,
Vilgot Sjoman, Douglas Sirk, a drunken Hong Sang-soo fights a sober Im Sang-soo, Mike Judge goes Blue Underground, Cannes Film Festival videos, Paul Verhoeven, Kankuro Kudo eats John Woo (do you remember Elvis Woo?), Park Chanwook over Preston Sturges and more
auteur theory than you Fantoma can shake an F-train--Fahrenheit 9/11, Howard Dean or at. Sooner or later,
everyone pictures Michael Moore goes Sexplastic! Well hello, New Video Group or simply New Video (Docurama, A"E, A&E, New Video NYC, Scholastic) Glenn Kenny and Filmbrain and Cinetrix and Christian
Parkess and Rob Karimi (Bobby Karimi, sike9!) and Peter Debruge and the cutest, Jennifer
Loeber aka Jennifer Exit. Download: http://www.archive.org/download/George_Bush_Doesnt_Like_Black_People/GeorgeBushDoesntCareAboutBlackPeople.mp3 (George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People)
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Everybody enjoys free schwag. If you don't, you're either a fascist, a communist, or so full of self-loathing that you're under a blanket instead of reading this now. Inspired by the ongoing Screen Capture Quiz of your friendly neighborhood blogger buddy, The Amazing Film-Brain (at least, that's what we might call him if he were a Marvel superhero), Cinephiliac's first contest giveaway begins right now. As you sip your coffee at the start of the work week, let Mondays be your home for THE LAST PICTURE GAME SHOW!
Only one weekly entry per player will be accepted via email here, and PLEASE DO NOT POST ANY ANSWERS IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW.
