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Everybody's a critic

Apparently, there's a little Anton Ego in everyone. Witness the last graf of FOC Gerald Peary's recent Phoenix column:

Had Michael Wilmington, a long-time film critic at the Chicago Tribune, quit his job? "Not exactly," Wilmington told me on the phone, indicating that he'd been somewhat squeezed out, just months after losing the first-string reviewer spot to Michael Phillips, previously the Trib's drama critic. Wilmington doesn't blame Phillips ("He's a very nice guy"); he traces his hard times to the newspaper's arts editor, Scott Powers, formerly arts editor at the Boston Globe. In Wilmington's view, Powers has a great contempt for film critics, and that goes back to his Hub days. "Powers hated your reviews, Gerry," Wilmington informed me.

No satisfaction

So the cinetrix finds herself needing to track down a schlocky Julia Roberts vehicle a couple weeks back. [For work, I swear!] She's in the mountains, so she calls the video stores in a couple of sorta nearby college towns and humiliates herself by asking if they stock said cinematic marvel. No dice. So she tries the joint in the local village. Paydirt! They have two copies of this gem.

However, once I arrive at the establishment in question, I am unable to locate the title in either comedy or drama. [Where else would a Julia Roberts flick live?] The sullen counter monkey confirms that, yes, the computer thinks two copies are in the store and reluctantly emerges to help me look.

Exasperated, I joke, "What about the Julia Roberts section?"

Be careful what you wish for. They had one. Because, apparently, sometimes what you philistines want to rent is a Julia Roberts movie. Full stop.

No soap

When Slate movie reviewer [and FOC] Dana Stevens learned of Ingmar Bergman's death, her response was to get to work. [We suspect the maestro would have approved.] The result? A video piece about the stern Swede's soap commercials. You read that right. Screw David Lynch's Obsession ads: These sudsy spots are perhaps the trippiest bits of advertising you're likely to see. Check 'em out here.

After watching, the cinetrix started wondering whether one of Lever's 2000 uses is cheating Death at chess....

Keep it clean in the comments, people.

Quick pics

The cinetrix is recovering from one freelance assignment and getting ready to dive straight into another. She'd rather be blogging, but whaddaya gonna do?

Until that blessed day when she can, you know, collect her thoughts on a coupla movies arrives, why not check out what FOC Sam Adams has to say in the City Paper about this year's Flaherty Seminar. Here's a taste:

During the week of the Flaherty, there are few places on Earth where people care more about filmmaking. But the atmosphere is collegial, not necessarily convivial. Tales abound of filmmakers whose works were found wanting by the seminar's notoriously tough (and, as the week goes on, sleep-deprived) audience.

True 'dat.

Oh, and pour some out for ol' Ingmar by watching De Duva.

Finally, why wait 'til Sunday to read about Manohla gettin' her geek on?

I never became a comic book geek; then, as now, I got my fix from watching movies. Still, prompted by one of my best friends in high school I attended a couple of conventions in the 1970s, which I mostly remember for their grubby carpeting, pasty boys and late-night screenings of old cartoons. I wasn’t interested in superheroes, but I was entranced by the work of Frank Frazetta, the fantasy artist whose paintings of muscular, scantily clad heroes like Tarzan and Conan adorned the covers of 1960s pulp paperbacks. I bought a Frazetta pin that showed a nearly naked woman whose strong, boldly drawn body I admired. She seemed at once hot and cool, powerful and autonomous, a perfect emblem of what my quavering high school self longed to be.

Hot and cool, people. That oughta hold you for a while.