Daily Loaf

Are you a film fanatic who’s always dreamed of writing your own review of a big Hollywood release? If so, we’ve got just the offer for you: The winning bidder will accompany Associate Editor Joe Bardi (left) to a special preview screening of a major upcoming release. (That’s “preview,” as in “see it before it opens and make your friends jealous.”) Love it? Hate it? Either way, you sort out your thoughts and write the CL movie review for the chosen film — to run in both the print and online editions of Creative Loafing. After you’ve completed the review, attract readers with your own media blitz, including an appearance on CL’s Reel Projections podcast and heavy promotion of your review through Twitter, Facebook and CLTampa.com. Soon, thousands of CL readers will look to you for guidance on what movie to see next. Feel the power!

Suggested opening bid: $50

Place your bid below:

Hard to believe, but the holiday season is in full swing at the multiplex. The last few weeks have already seen the release of some big blockbusters (2012, A Christmas Carol) and at least one surefire Oscar contender (Precious, which had a smash limited release last weekend and was just announced for a Fri., Nov. 20 opening in Tampa bay), and Hollywood promises the best is yet to come. With six weeks until January, here are 12 must-see titles to close out the decade.

Friday, November 20
WHAT’S HOT: THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON
They’re hot, moody and in love. Only problem: He’s a vampire who’s gotta get a move on, driving her into the arms of a group of vampire-hating werewolves. The buzz on the latest Twilight film is out of control, led by recent revelations that stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are necking in real life. The franchise is becoming more cultural touchstone than mere film series, and New Moon looks poised to propel the “Saga” into the upper echelon of high-grossing film series like Harry Potter and Star Wars. Believe it.
COUNTER-PROGRAMMING: AN EDUCATION
If all that Twilight hokum sounds a bit childish, the Tampa Theatre will be opening director Lone Scherfig’s An Education in direct competition with the vampires. Starring Carey Mulligan as a 17-year-old student who falls in love with a much older man (Peter Sarsgaard) only to get an early lesson in heartbreak, An Education made film-fest waves earlier in the year after the film picked up an Audience Choice Award at Sundance. Also of note: British novelist Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy) co-wrote the screenplay.

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When you strip away all the pomp and circumstance from rock ’n’ roll — the fashion and politics and drugs and groupies and stardom and burnout — what’s usually left is a few simple chords and a tune you can hum. In the 50-plus years since Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. created an art form, rock ’n’ roll music has morphed from a powerful expression of freedom and rebellion into a multi-billion-dollar commodity to be packaged and sold by record company soul-suckers that view artists as cattle and the audience as ignorant rabble worthy only of being led around by the nose or dragged to court. It didn’t used to be this way.

The new film Pirate Radio remembers a time when the music was king. Well, OK, the music and a small handful of outlaw DJs floating just off the coast of Britain, pumping their pirate signal to millions of the Queen’s subjects while royally pissing off the authorities in the process. Pirate Radio isn’t a true story, per se, but elements of it are inspired by real events in 1960s Britain, when a legal loophole allowed unlicensed broadcasters to drop anchor within spitting distance of the mainland and thrill the masses with records by The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and The Who.

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Relationship Card

It used to be that film festivals in the Tampa Bay area were a rarity. No longer. Totaling up all the fundraisers, workshops and side programming that go along with the ever-expanding number of festivals, it’s clear that fest-hopping has become a year-round sport. And that’s great, because we can all stand to broaden our horizons beyond the standard Hollywood pulp that fills the multiplex each Friday. In the next few weeks, there are two festivals of note: one with lots of local appeal, and one a bit farther south that attracts filmmakers (and filmgoers) from all over the world.

Independents’ Film Festival
Hosted by Tampa’s The Education Channel, the 16th annual Independents’ Film Festival promises an intimate look at locally produced films, including a strong program of student films out of USF. I say intimate because all screenings will be held at The Education Channel’s beautiful, newly upgraded screening room with seating for about 65 people. Festival organizers also promise ample opportunity to hob-nob with filmmakers and other fest attendees, as each themed evening begins with a food and drink reception and ends with coffee and dessert. (All included in the $15 ticket price.)

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I’m embarrassed to confess that I had no idea who Gertrude Berg was before I watched You-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, an enlightening if somewhat stock documentary from director Aviva Kempner (The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg). A radio and television pioneer, Berg enjoyed a long career playing signature character Molly Goldberg, a stereotype-shattering Jewish matriarch who maintained a decades-long run in the public eye. Berg starred in and wrote every episode of the radio and TV incarnations of The Goldbergs (and we’re talking thousands of shows), in the process inventing the sitcom and many of the tropes we find commonplace today.

Read more of Joe Bardi’s review after the jump …
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On this week’s very special Reel Projections podcast, Host Joe (that’s me) is joined by PoHo Wayne Garcia for a conversation about the career of director John Hughes, who died on Thursday at the age of 59. Joe and the PoHo play audio clips from Hughes most famous movies and dissect the director’s influence on the 1980s specifically, and on film-making in general. And go here for video clips of Hughes’ films.

Listen to the podcast here.

Podcast player after the jump …

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If Sacha Baron Cohen’s films intentionally court controversy, he’s getting what he asked for with Brüno. Some critics, like CL’s Joe Bardi, admire Cohen’s risk-taking comic performance as a flamboyantly gay Austrian. But the head of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) says the satire is likely to miss the mark: “Some people in the gay community will be as troubled as GLAAD is that the movie doesn’t decrease homophobia, but decreases the public’s comfort with gay people.” Read Bardi’s review and the GLAAD story and check out other critics’ reactions at Rotten Tomatoes. And after the break check out a clip from Current TV’s That’s So Gay (pictured above) that mocks the movie and the controversy, declaring “Bruno is the gay version of Malcolm X!” Read the rest of this entry »

[Ed. Note: We've got plenty of Transformers stuff going on on Daily Loaf. In addition to my review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, we've got more posts about Megan Fox than you can shake your wank at. Enjoy.]

My worst fears have come to pass. The God-awful Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has opened with a huge $16 million take from Tuesday night’s midnight screenings. That’s not a record-breaker for a midnight opening, as The Dark Knight cleared $18 million in its late-night bow, but TDK debuted on a weekend-kickoff Friday and not a lame, non-holiday hump day. The $55 million the film grossed on Wednesday is a new high for an opening on that day of the week, besting Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which grossed $44 million on a Wednesday way back in 2007. The conventional wisdom has the film grossing at least $160 million over the five-day weekend. (The news isn’t all bad: Director Michael Bay has said he won’t make a third Transformers film. Woo hoo!)

What a crock of shit! This would be a national embarrassment, were it not for the fact that the movie is already doing huge business overseas as well. I guess that makes this an embarrassment for the entire human race. In case you’re on the fence about hitting the multiplex this weekend, here’s a sampling of the critical reaction to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen:

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Here’s Joe Bardi (handsome devil, ain’t he?) talking about what I’m he’s doing on his summer vacation. (Getting married on top of a mountain? High times, indeed!) And be sure to check out the rest of our Summer Guide content (including Joe’s Top 10 summer vacation movies) when making plans for your own summer holiday.

“Likely to be the movie of the summer.” “A hard act to follow.” “A satisfying summer blockbuster.”

And that’s just the Tampa Bay critics (the Tribune’s Kevin Walker, the Times’ Steve Persall, and CL’s own Joe Bardi, respectively). Star Trek’s status as this summer’s movie to beat has been confirmed with surprising unanimity across the board, from the big guns to the blogosphere (with a whopping 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, certifying Trek as the best-reviewed movie to date in 2009). And this time the critics are likely to be right. Star Trek fires on all cylinders with  good acting, witty script, characters you actually care about (and $7 million in box office on Thursday alone), while from the looks of previews the rest of the season is going to be one long CGI explosion of little interest whatsoever.

Read on for links to Star Trek reviews. Note: Not everyone was enchanted. The Chicago Sun-Times‘ Roger Ebert and The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane were distinctly underwhelmed. (Funniest, if meanest line: Lane says that these days Leonard Nimoy “makes Bela Lugosi look like Zac Ephron”). Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a clip of my appearance last week on Tampa Bay Media Talk, presented by Tampa Digital Studios. In the clip, host Janet Sherer and I discuss my personal life, what makes a green christmas, and whatever happened to that Free Way guy anyway? Enjoy.

Download.

Today marks the inaugural episode of the Reel Projections podcast, hosted by yours truly and fellow movie lover/CL Associate Editor Joe Bardi. Featured is the first part of my recent interview with comic-book artist Dave Gibbons, who talks about his new book, Watching the Watchmen, as well as the upcoming film based on his seminal graphic novel he helped to create with writer Alan Moore, Watchmen.