The Towering Inferno And Other Past Disasters
It’s Memorial Day Weekend, folks, and movie-wise you know what that means: nothing but the biggest, loudest, most astrogivastantical epics ever conceived of by humankind will be on display at […]
Category Archives: Active Observation
On Magic, Logic, Brains, And The Hollywood Spectacular
Taking a break last night from another typically explodey summer of billion dollar Hollywood spectaculars (that’s what the kids are calling movies today, right? “Spectaculars”? I try to keep up […]
The Unmissable Fast & Furious 6
Fast cars, hot ninja vixens, giant exploding balls of muscle, tanks jumping over airplanes on crutches whilst whistling Dixie, Vin Diesel in a unitard oiled up and — defying the […]
Star Trek Into Darkness Explores Where the Sun Don’t Shine
Last night I saw Star Trek Into Darkness with the Supreme Being. This morning, I woke up to George Takei’s smiling mug on Facebook. And in between — listening to SB […]
Star Trek Into Darkness vs. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Way back when in that magical summer of ’82 the second Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan, opened. It was something of a reboot, despite that word not being […]
Kickstarter Kills Giant Robots Dead
I had myself a wee little rant. Supreme Being, a regular commenter Fellow Traveler, and I were talking about nerds, and superhero films, and Kickstarter and my brain just sort […]
Stop Acting Crazy
You know the kind of movie I’m talking about. It’s the one in which the respected actor proves his or her chops by pretending to suffer from significant cranial distress. […]
Are Nerds Destroying The Movie Industry?
I grew up in the ‘80s. Back then, nerds were not cool. They were nerds. If you read comic books, you were not cool. If you could explain at length, […]
Ray Harryhausen Lives Forever
Today is the day stop-motion hit full stop and animation became forever less animate. Ray Harryhausen, special effects artist and inspiration to damn near everyone, has died. We at Stand […]
Iron Man 3 Exists
Some days, like today, it seems totally pointless to try to say anything substantive about a film like Iron Man 3. The world is a vastly complex place. Over an almost […]
Leviathan Washes Over You (Like Fish Guts)
Based on its hallucinogenic, immersive trailer, I was pretty excited to see Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel’s new doc Leviathan (not to be confused with the 1989 horror film of the same name). Well, […]
The East: What Films Feel Like
Do you know how sometimes you go to see a film and you just completely lose yourself within it? How, for two hours or so, your world narrows to what’s […]
The Kings of Summer Get Their Lazy Groove On
Yesterday’s San Francisco International Film Festival screenings included Jordan Vogt-Roberts and Chris Galletta’s The Kings of Summer — a lazy, sun-baked concoction that I found as enjoyable as whooping through the woods. […]
What Steven Soderbergh Doesn’t See
On Saturday I attended Steven Soderbergh’s “State of Cinema” address, part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. I’m a huge Soderbergh fan, consistently impressed by the way he challenges […]