is there any way at all to find out what one’s friends’ scores on a specific movie are? seems like netflix disabled that function. i really liked it.

Parallel but intersecting stories, the perspective of the street and the cops, gritty realism, the presence of actors we know from their portrayals of Clay Davis, Wee-Bey and Omar… it is not hard to figure out that Brooklyn’s Finest is trying to mine the rich territory staked out in The Wire. It fails, unsurprisingly given that the bar is pretty high, but it does so predictably and disappointingly. The movie, filmed on location in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood, follows three cops. Ethan Hawke is desperately trying to cash in on some drug raids to make a down payment on a new house for his large and expanding family (his Catholicism is referenced often). Don Cheadle is an undercover cop, who has infiltrated a drug gang (led by Wesley Snipes, in a fine performance), and feels the tug of dual loyalties. Richard Gere is a weary alcoholic, a few days from retirement, in love with a prostitute, unable to find meaning in what he does. Inevitably, these three stories converge in the final half hour. (more…)

i’m going to waste some breath here on an italian film i just saw which no one on this blog will, and probably should, watch. It’s about a lesbian couple who, coming back from a lovely holiday in tunisia, finds hidden in the trunk a stowaway moroccan kid (17? 18?). in fact, this is not exactly what happens. it is one of the lovers, a conflicted and tender maria de medeiros, who sees the boy while looking for something in the trunk. she doesn’t tell her girlfriend mara until they are safely in italy and in a deserted place. in fact, she doesn’t tell her at all; she just darts to the back of the car and lets the poor kid, who’s by now cramped, sick, and dehydrated, out of the miserable tight spot in which he has spent at least 24 hours. (more…)

This is not my bailiwick, and I assume you have all seen this, but I’d be interested in your reactions: The Death of Film Criticism. I’m particularly interested in how colleges and universities — the discipline — evaluates and weighs scholarship published outside of the usual refereed print formats.

Shit A Trundles
Shit Ad Runlets
Shit Lead Turns
Shit Lead Runts
Shit Dale Turns
Shit Dale Runts
Shit Lade Turns
Shit Lade Runts
Shit Deal Turns
Shit Deal Runts (more…)