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The Social Network

By Adam Lippe

Do casting directors have a better sense of irony than previously thought? Obviously, that’s a nugget that hovers over all of us daily, overtaking our will until we can think of nothing else, but how else to explain the casting of Justin Timberlake as Napster co-founder Sean Parker in David Fincher’s The Social Network? Napster’s […]

Do You Have Any Change For the Trending Machine? Part I: The Living Wake

By Adam Lippe

There’s a reason the public, and especially those within the industry, consider Hollywood executives as the unofficial whipping boys for the evil studio system. It doesn’t only have to do with their need to justify their jobs by offering up extraneous and contradictory notes and suggestions for filmmakers to improve their products. It isn’t just […]

Zombieland

By Adam Lippe

It’s been said that Russ Meyer primarily made silly exploitation movies filled with huge breasts, wild editing styles, and jokey narration because when he tried to make a real movie, such as The Seven Minutes, it would either be dull or devolve into camp, like his most famous films, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, […]

Keep Fooling Yourself: The Films of Dylan Kidd

By Adam Lippe

Somehow, despite being made by a first time filmmaker in love with his own dialogue and with a tendency to smear sentimentality in where it shouldn’t be, Dylan Kidd’s Roger Dodger is one of the better low profile studio/independent films of the decade. Campbell Scott, though he is given all the best lines as a […]

Adventureland

By Adam Lippe

Selling nostalgia is a tricky thing. While you already have the advantage of being able to tap into people’s hazy memories and playing off their vague recognition and familiarity, you risk relying on such a lazy device to the point where you become guilty of The Wedding Singer syndrome, wherein the entire purpose was to […]

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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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Winner: BEST ONLINE FILM CRITIC, 2010 National Veegie Awards (Vegan Themed Entertainment)

Nominee: BEST NEW PRODUCT, 2011 National Veegie Awards: The Vegan Condom

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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.