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Tom HIddleston
November 8, 2013
FILM & TELEVISION, KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

REVIEW: ‘Thor’ Conjures the Inspiration Behind Tolkien’s World

I don’t see superhero movies often, but when I do I like them to be as fun and engaging as Alan Taylor’s Thor: The Dark World. And for those of us who geeked out as children and young adults to European mythology, there is something vaguely intellectually satisfying about it as well, although that may be stretching the truth to over-justify my appreciation.

‘Geek’ is the operative word here: Like most superheroes, Thor as a character represents the pinnacle of what lonely nerds everywhere develop as a messianic avatar, a persona that rules the rich inner world they create as compensation for the dismal world they actually inhabit.

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By James Killough
3
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Star Wars Natalie Portman
June 17, 2012
FILM & TELEVISION

The 6 Most Bizarre Emotional Reactions in the Star Wars Saga

Now that evil genius George Lucas claims to be done wrecking Star Wars, all that remains for the rest of us is to continue dissecting it, parodying it, bitching about it, and otherwise obsessing about it until the universe implodes. Oh yeah, and making stupid lists.

Following the grand tradition of mocking minor incongruences such as…

1. How come R2D2 has two legs in some scenes and three in others?

2. Why do light saber blades stop where they do?

While ignoring major ones such as…

1. Why do all the planets have the same gravity and only one ecosystem each?

2. How come everybody knows everybody in a galaxy 200,000 light years across, but I don’t know my neighbor in the next apartment?

… PFC presents this list of the 6 least-appropriate emotional reactions in the Star Wars saga:

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By Eric J Baker
0
0
September 15, 2011
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

The Girl With The Orchid Medallion

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | REVIEW

by James Killough

Shortly after his disastrous foray into animation with Arthur and the Invisibles in 2006, semi-auteur Luc Besson announced he was retiring from directing.  Steven Soderbergh did the same thing last year.  Both have been directing since they were in their mid-twenties, and the process has clearly long since lost its appeal.  As Marcello Mastroianni, playing an uninspired director in Federico Fellini’s autobiographical 8 ½, says in a panic to his lading lady Claudia Cardinale, “Ma non c’ho niente più da dire!”  But I have nothing left to say!

"Next motherfucker tells me I have a 'bootie like Beyoncé,' I'll blow a hole in his groin with the Mossberg 500. How's my hair?"

Or, as Michael Bay’s putative natural father John Frankenheimer—who was so furious that Bay claimed to be his son that he tried to disprove it, but failed—said in an NPR interview shortly before he died, “Directing is for younger men.”  What Frankenheimer, who directed the seminal thriller French Connection, was referring to was the sort of hyper-kinetic action adventure films he helped pioneer with Connection, and which his natural son took to an extreme that I am not alone in considering unwatchable, despite the fact my dog Henry co-starred in Bay’s graduating student film at Wesleyan University.

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By Pure Film Creative
3
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August 29, 2011
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Thugs Is Heroes, Yeah?

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | REVIEW

by James Killough

“That was really good,” my friend Mike Poursh said the other night as the end credits were rolling after Attack The Block.  “I enjoyed it.  How come it isn’t more popular?”

“It’s in a foreign language,” I replied.  Which was just me throwing an easy zinger in there because Block is in English, of sorts.  Or rather, it’s in a heavy-duty teen slang “Sarf” London quasi-dialect, which isn’t properly speaking cockney because that comes from the East End of the city, which has it’s own particular cultural references you should trample on at your own peril.  Regional linguistic quibbling aside, the dialogue is probably too difficult to follow for many Americans outside sophisticated urban environments.  And that’s why it’s not playing in every cineplex around the country and raking it in as a sleeper hit.

We can be heroes... but just for one night, yeah? Just to fuck up dem aliens 'n shit, show dem we own dis here block. Trust!

That’s a shame because Mike is right: as far as summer creature features featuring teens on bikes who save the world against alien invasions go, Block kicks the shit out of Super 8, and does it with gusto, toking on weed, wielding baseball bats and samurai swords, and wearing hoodies.  Block was made for $13 million, Super 8 for a reported $50 million, which doesn’t include print and advertising.  I’d tack on a good $25 million more onto that fifty mill, but it doesn’t matter; Super 8 has already made a quarter billion worldwide.  Block has only made $4.5 million, and I have yet to find a friend in London who has seen it.

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By Pure Film Creative
5
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May 27, 2011
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Ring Around A Volcano

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | REVIEWS

by James Killough

I know, I was supposed to post on Tuesday, but I’m not sure that properly speaking I had a Tuesday.  Well, I had sort of one, but it was in Delhi, which wasn’t really a Tuesday in the West, and we’re on a PST time schedule at PFC.  I worked flat-out all day, wrapped my last shoot a half hour before I travelled for twenty-eight hours home, eighteen of which were on a non-stop flight from Dubai to LA.  We had to skirt the volcano in Iceland and fly south.  The journey would have been more of a bitch than it was had it not been for the fact I was able to lie down and get a good night’s sleep, and gurgle when I was awake like a stupefied baby at the gazillion channels of entertainment on Emirates.

I would even be willing to endure a knee-lift like Demi if I thought I stood a chance with Kutcher.

I was going to blog from forty thousand feet, but I felt more inspired to watch inflight Hollywood crap.  Most of the plane was watching inflight Bollywood crap, which just goes to show that even when given the choice, Indians would rather keep it real with the caca; we will never prevail over them with our cinematic pablum.

Most inflight entertainment is crap that has just been released on DVD, which sort of justifies this mash-up of reviews.  In the case of Virgin Atlantic, which is more prone to have a selection of quality films side by side with the crap, they will often screen a British film that has yet to be released in the States, or an American one that hasn’t been released in the UK.  That’s what you get when a former entertainment company owns an airline: better contracts with the film companies. 

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By Pure Film Creative
3
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March 7, 2011
KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Desert Lesbian Realness

The best thing about these blogs is I sit here tinkling away at the keyboard some evenings — and you’d think I was high as a kite the way they come out, but I’m not, haven’t even had a drink since New Years — grinning like Liberace rolling on E while he plays the Turkish March for the blue-rinse brigade in Vegas.  Sometimes I will write something that catches me completely unaware and I snort and Coke Zero goes through my nose and onto the keyboard.

It’s not Spanking Galliano that gets me going these days, that’s sort of sad in a twisted way, and it’s certainly not the Satanic Natalie Portman.  It’s Mama Gaddafi from the House of Gaddafi.  I’m feeling a need to repost that image from an earlier blog with the caption:

Still furious about his exclusion from the seminal documentary on black drag queens,"Paris Is Burning," Mama Gaddafi from the House of Gaddafi vogues Pan-Arab Tyrant Realness while Our Fearful Leader tries not to giggle, lest Miss Thing bomb a United jumbo this time, now that Pan Am has gone out of business.

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By James Killough
4
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