You got your chocolate in my hackwork! You got your hackwork in my chocolate!
This is all-or-nothing. Either it's Giamatti's first Oscar nom, or his first truly awful performance. Also sprach FanBoy.
One more thing: The plot sounds like it could be a remake of Night Tide, which is i-ight in my book. Just wish Night Moves wouldn't churn out these scripts so fast -- The Sixth Sense worked because it was clear that years of effort went into it.
(Confidential to Matt: I'm not really a knife guy. More of a purple nurpler.)
Where we saw it: general | We deign to rate it: ambivalent outta 100I've given up on "Night Moves" (hehe--good one). I'll never see another one of his films unless critics I respect say it's a return to form. Like the person who hacked Star Wars I to cut all the scenes of Jar Jar, I'd like to see an edited version of both his last two disasters to make two pretty good short films. Say, a half-hour each.
As for Giamatti--well, even the finest actors do some crap work every now and again. I hope the bank breaks under the weight of his check.
Posted by: Martin at March 31, 2005 02:51 PMI'm with Martin on his two points. After "Signs" and "The Village," there's no way I'm gonna pay money to see an M. Night movie, even though I liked "Unbreakable." For A. Bartlett's son, I hope "The Lady in the Water" is not a disaster.
Posted by: Scott at March 31, 2005 06:02 PMWell, unlike y'all, I remain an M. Night believer and I continue to hope that "The Village" was merely a miscalculated attempt at social commentary. We shall see.
(And Kent... front page on Listology! Rock!)
Posted by: Steve at March 31, 2005 09:56 PMOkay, if "The Village" was a "misguided attempt at social commentary," then what the hell was "M. Night Sings," I mean "Signs."
Posted by: Scott at April 1, 2005 05:28 AMI certainly didn't object to Night's social commentary, I just thought he did it so poorly that the comment was rendered null. (or, for you real geeks, /dev/null). Too bad, because he has the talent to tell it right. As for Signs, well--you know. They did it better in Technicolor when it was called Wizard of Oz, and it didn't need a thirsty little girl as a plot point to make the melting effective. Although, to be fair, the WoO had was a dream sequence as the ending, which of course all good screenwriting books tell you is a no-no.
Congrats on the front page Kent! You do know, this is the most popular of the Hellbox blogs. Well deserved. Now post more ;-)
Posted by: Martin at April 1, 2005 01:26 PM"Signs" is one of those films where I have to say, yes I recognize the faults. Yes, there's a lot of not-so-good things about it. Yes, 'swing away' is damn silly. Do I care? Not at all. The film's physical effect is such that it works for me anyway.
Posted by: Steve at April 6, 2005 08:18 AM