Posts Tagged ‘Kill Bill’

Back in 1963, the president of Crown International Pictures, Newton P. “Red” Jacobs, speaking about the importance of a film’s title, said  “A title is the handle.  You can’t lift a picture very high if the handle is weak.”  For the head of a movie studio, enticing movie-goers with lurid or flashy titles probably seems like a perfectly reasonable business strategy.  What they don’t have to deal with, however, are the feelings of betrayal that viewers experience when they realize that the handle wasn’t carrying anything.  I don’t know how many times I’ve watched a movie because of a title that promised sleaze and destruction, but ended up being less offensive than a random episode of Alias (WARNING: The previous link exists for no other reason than to show Jennifer Garner in lingerie).  As much as I’d like to, I simply can’t save everyone from being duped by deceptive titles.  What I can do is warn others as I encounter them.

Read the rest of this entry »

You will be unprepared.

That’s a tagline full of promise, all right. Though I have to say, I never felt “unprepared”. There was very little in Zack Snyder‘s Sucker Punch that I didn’t expect in the wake of the trailers promoting this movie. It takes big event movies across multiple genres – a pinch of The Matrix, a heaping helping of Kill Bill, a splash of Terminator, a dose of Rambo, a dash of The Lord of the Rings, a dollop of Fight Club, a touch of Inception – and tosses them in a blender. The result is a movie that certainly looks cool, but with a narrative that may seem as cobbled-together as the visuals if you start to think about it too hard.

Watch the Trailer >

Read the rest of this entry »

As the Oscar telecast creeps up on us again, it begs the question: How many times has the Academy really gotten this “Best Picture” thing right, anyway?

Think about it. How many controversial decisions are there in the Academy’s history? How many times is a movie other than Best Picture long remembered as the best of the year?

Read the rest of this entry »

Directors who dominate: No, I’m not talking about directors who demand complete control of everything happening on their set. Well, it’s possible I am talking about those types of directors, as the guy I’m talking about has written the screenplay for every film he’s ever directed (and has acted in most of them). Of course I am talking about the quintessentially awesome, Quentin Tarantino (Oh yes, you can bet I am going to be thinking of Q words for this entire article… are you already sick of my quips?).

When I use the phrase “directors who dominate”, I mean it in the sense of him (or her) dominating Flickchart. Tarantino is easily one of the most dominating directors on my personal Flickchart, and on Flickchart’s global rankings. Let’s take a look at where he stands:

Read the rest of this entry »

Since our public launch in September, we’ve grown to well over 40,000 users, and garnered a total of more than 60 million rankings. As we approach the close of the year, and the start of a new decade, we thought we might take a moment to showcase the Top 20 films that our users have deemed to be considered the best-of-the-best from 2000-2009. So without further adieu, here are the best ranked films on Flickchart of the decade:
Read the rest of this entry »