This week it’s all about Quentin Tarantino, as his long-gestating, long-anticipated Inglourious Basterds arrives on the scene. Speculation runs high. Is this going to be a “great” film, another of the filmmaker’s trashy pop-culture masterpieces? Or is this going to be the mess that a lot of early reports have claimed? And even if it is a mess, will it be a glorious mess or just a plain old mess?
This is an evening (Thursday) I wouldn’t normally be at home, but owing to the onslaught of this ague, here I am in the company of Humphrey Bogart in In a Lonely Place (1950) on TCM. It’s not a favorite of mine, but it’s not an inapt choice simply because if anyone ever had star power Bogie qualifies, and star power is what I’m thinking about today. The question in my mind is whether or not it actually still exists—at least in anything like the form it once did.
Last week it was stuff blowing up, Meryl Streep trussing ducks, psychos in paradise and a quirky comedy romance. This week it’s all about aliens in a prison camp, time travel, an anime goldfish princess, car salesmen and high-school band high jinks. No, unfortunately, this isn’t all contained in the same movie—then they’d have something.
We’ve all had moments in our lives (at least I hope we have) when something or possibly someone we once regarded very highly suddenly doesn’t “do it” for us. And if we’re lucky we might have the reverse experience where something that didn’t work suddenly does.
As far as I’m concerned the big news this week is the opening of (500) Days of Summer, but for the blockbuster-minded it’s probably G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, one of summer’s last big openers. I suppose if something bearing a passing resemblance to a movie could be made using Transformers, it was inevitable that more toys would find their way into theaters.
Well, movie year 2009 is more than half over. Normally, at this time of year I find myself thinking that there’s no way in hell I’ll end up with a Ten Best list by year’s end. The January “white sale” of lousy movies—that often extends till March or April—that the studios dump on viewers who are burnt out after the frenzy of awards season rarely provide much in the way of “best of” material.
