Archive | 11:00 pm

Going Down

7 Nov

Instead of seeing a new movie this weekend (because really, considering I’ve seen 11 movies in the past month, I needed a break), I decided to watch my new DVD of Titanic on Saturday. (And thank you, Rebecca, for sending it to me.) Now, I’m not the world’s biggest Titanic fan, but I did see it twice in the theater back in 1997-98 and had decent memories of its quality. How times change. I’m not sure if it was watching the movie on my 27-inch television or if my taste in movies has changed that drastically, but man was this movie not all that good. (I know. Big shock.) Sure, the effects were (mostly) cool and all, but, um, who was Leonardo DiCaprio kidding when he got all insulted about not being nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor? Talk about an overrated, self-inflated actor. And Kate Winslet was only mildly better. I sat there on my couch trying to figure out why this movie was so popular and for so long. In addition to its big effects, it pandered to the audience, and had lame dialogue and stiff acting — I guess you could say it wasn’t all that different from films like The Day After Tomorrow, except that movie I know I liked. And where was the trailer? Of all the DVD extras to leave off, and there are plenty on the disc, that was one of the most puzzling.

Maybe your heart will go on, but mine remains stone cold — at least as far as this movie is concerned.

[Bonus trivia question: Titanic was the number one movie at the box office for 15 consecutive weeks. What movie dethroned it? Your only hint is that it was released on April 3, 1998.]

The Guy Is Falling! The Guy Is Falling!

7 Nov

Could Chicken Little have been any worse, you may have asked yourself after reading my review last week? Well, check out this story from Sunday’s New York Daily News and make your own decision:

No Chicken Little — Kids See Suicide

A Times Square movie theater laid an egg at a showing of Chicken Little last night.

Adults and kids expecting to watch Disney’s G-rated animated flick at the AMC Empire 25 theater on 42nd St. were instead presented with a foreign film that opened with a young man committing suicide.

“It’s pandemonium,” Joshua Gallo, 30, told the Daily News as he rushed out of the theater with his 5-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter. “The kids are crying. The mothers are screaming for the managers to stop the film.”

Terrified children didn’t know what to do as they watched a young boy hang himself from a tree at the 8:45 p.m. screening.

After five minutes, Andrea, a Spanish drama opening today, was turned off and Chicken Little was played.

Patrons got a coupon for a free movie.

— by Oren Yaniv and Rich Schapiro

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