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Cold Souls

By Adam Lippe

If you rip off an original idea in an original way, is it still stealing? Does it really matter one way or the other, since the presentation is more important than your “acquired” idea? The fallacy of the original idea is a nice trap thrown in by those rejecting material without needing to explain their […]

Shrink

By Adam Lippe

You know what’s awful about shallow people? They’re just so… shallow. Shallow people have nothing to say, but despite that they seem completely self-involved, about what isn’t clear. If you don’t have thoughts, what could you be thinking of? What does the stereotypically shallow Hollywood agent consider when he’s yelling and screaming at people and […]

The Informers

By Adam Lippe

I’ve never had a pony. I’ve never seen one do tricks. And yet, I somehow know what a one-trick pony is. I think the pony’s name is Bret Easton Ellis. Ellis, a showoffy, limited writer, revels in the shallowness of early-to-mid 1980’s Los Angelinos, had been adapted for the screen three times previous to The […]

The Dark Knight

By Adam Lippe

The late, great critic for The New Yorker, Pauline Kael, talked about the manufacturing of the blockbuster and how the product was no longer important, just that it was considered a sellable ride. The Dark Knight is certainly a viable product: well made, sleek, sturdy, efficient, and yet sort of hollow. Part of the problem […]

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Roadracers

By Adam Lippe

Whenever there’s a genre parody or ode to a specific era of films, such as Black Dynamite’s mocking of Blaxploitation films or Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the second half of Grindhouse, the danger is that the film might fall into the trap of either being condescending without any particular insight, or so faithful that it becomes the very flawed thing it is emulating.

Black Dynamite has nothing new to say about Blaxploitation films, it just does a decent job of copying what an inept [...]

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Featured Quote (written by me)

On Cold Fish:

Though the 16 year old me described the 1994 weepie Angie, starring Geena Davis as a Brooklyn mother raising her new baby alone, as “maudlin and melodramatic,” Roger Ebert, during his TV review, referring to the multitude of soap-operaish problems piling up on the titular character, suggested that it was only in Hollywood where Angie would get a happy ending. “If they made this movie in France, Angie would have shot herself.”

Well Cold Fish was made in Japan, where Angie would have shot herself and that would have been the happy ending.