Writer-director Michel Gondry’s artistic viewpoint can be summed up in the title of his collaborative auto-biographical documentary, I’ve Been Twelve Forever, which can be found on his volume in the excellent Director’s Label DVD collection, featuring shorts and music videos from some of the best short-format artists. Gondry’s latest feature length film, The Science of [...]
Entries from October 2006
The Science of Sleep
October 9th, 2006 · No Comments
Tags: Comedy · Director · Drama · Romance
The Departed
October 8th, 2006 · 1 Comment
If Martin Scorsese’s films share a directorial style, it could be called anti-style. Perhaps a better term is restraint. The ideal film score is often described as one you don’t consciously hear, and I think that description could be given to all the elements of the best Scorsese pictures. Unless you are consciously looking for [...]
Tags: Action/Adventure · Crime/Noir · Director · Drama · Ensemble
The prodigal blogger returns . . .
October 8th, 2006 · 1 Comment
A number of personal and professional obligations have kept me away from this effort. So I was left the the delimma: start fresh, or catch up? I have settled on the latter, in part out of a recognition of the original, personal motivations behind the Mishmash. So below are the beginning of my struggle to [...]
Tags: Site News
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
October 8th, 2006 · No Comments
Writing little about this behemoth shouldn’t be too tough, considering that in the weeks since viewing the film, the experience has almost entirely evaporated from my memory. What remains is purely visual: some spectacular, if not ridiculous, set pieces (most notably the sword fight on the giant rolling wheel) and some tremendous, if not creepy, [...]
Tags: Action/Adventure · Capsule · Comedy · Drama · Popcorn · Romance
Prime
October 8th, 2006 · No Comments
What if a therapist’s patient, on the rebound from a bad marriage, begins dating a man 14 years younger who, unbeknownst to her, is the therapist’s son? When the therapist (the tremendously talented Meryl Streep) – a stereotypically protective New York Jewish mom – figures out the identity of the man who the patient (the [...]
My Neighbor Totoro
October 8th, 2006 · No Comments
Animated family films are generally not high on my list of entertainment priorities. I do, however, have a fond regard for the Disney classics of my youth. (The best of which is 101 Dalmatians, by the way.) With a few notable exceptions, though, I find that recent animated features from U.S. studios are lazy in [...]
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
October 8th, 2006 · No Comments
Robert Altman’s 1971 gritty frontier opus, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, is deemed among those films to see before you die. (I think it is also Richard Roeper’s favorite film, if that does anything for you.) Altman’s deft touch with ensemble is certainly on display here, as he coordinates an impressive cast led by Julie Christie [...]
Tags: Director · Drama · Ensemble · Romance
Night Watch
October 7th, 2006 · No Comments
By the time this sci-fi/horror/action mashup made its US theatrical release this past February, its sequel, Day Watch, had been on screens in its native Russia for over a month. Night Watch is the first installment of a trilogy, and the first two films have been cause for talk of a Russian cinematic [...]
Tags: Action/Adventure · Foreign Language · Horror · Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Lady Vengeance
October 7th, 2006 · No Comments
The last installment in director Park Chan-wook’s revenge trilogy, Lady Vengeance is the most restrained and textured of the lot. The film is alternatively entitled Sympathy for Lady Vengeance to parallel the first of the trilogy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. The second film, Oldboy, introduced most of the Western audience to Park’s unique visual and [...]
Tags: Action/Adventure · Director · Drama · Foreign Language
Cake
October 6th, 2006 · 2 Comments
I figure I might as well break my two-month hiatus from the Mishmash with something that is absolutely woeful. My wife is the gatherer of romantic comedy candidates to offset my penchant for “heavier” cinema consumption. I don’t mind that a bit. I like comedy. I like romance. I even occasionally find that the genre [...]
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
