Word: hollywood
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...wait. We are obliged to swat another effort in the vandalism of the cinematic cemetery, Shane Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. This crime-laced comedy, narrated by Robert Downey, Jr., as a two-bit hood turned movie actor, is meant to be a parody of Hollywood action films, especially the ones produced by Joel Silver, who produced here. Running on the fumes of countless bad movies, Black concocts what might work at five mins. as a slam-tribute at a Joel Silver roast...
...Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a demonstration - worse, a celebration - of the dead end Hollywood movies have hit. Fortunately, Cannes offered a palate cleanser, a detoxification, in the form of Stuart Samuels' documentary Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream. It focuses on six films - El Topo, Night of the Living Dead, The Harder They Come, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pink Flamingos and Eraserhead - that earned cult status in the 70s through midnight screenings at venues like Ben Barenholtz's Elgin Theatre in Manhattan...
...other exhibitors, as well as five of the six films' directors. Midnight Movies is a pertinent, poignant reminder of an era when all sorts of weird wonders filled the screen, at all hours of the day and night - back when progressive directors went about breaking taboos, not surrendering to Hollywood's fondness for feeding on its own carcass. A look at the other picture on display today might convince you that we have truly entered the night of the living dead...
...American films here. That's because, for most of its history, Cannes has been defined by its love-hate relationship to America and American movies. This itchy feeling is an acknowledgment that the U.S. is the unquestioned superpower both in politics and movies. The festival enjoys and exploits the Hollywood stars whose glamorous renown brings so much free publicity. The slow march of a Tom Cruise or Clint Eastwood up the Grand Palais' famous red carpet, to the click of paparazzi cameras and the shouts of thousands of fans, is cinema's equivalent of a Broadway ticker-tape parade...
Someone in Hollywood should snap up the movie rights to the backstory of Falcarius utahensis, the 125 million-year-old dinosaur with 4-in. claws and spoon-shaped molars unveiled last week. Scientists say it offers the first glimpse into how dinos made the transition from small, agile meat eaters to elephant-size vegetarians. Falcarius, as it turns out, was dug up by a black-market fossil collector named Lawrence Walker, who found it on federal land in Utah while digging at night under a tarp. Convinced he was onto something big, the poacher tipped off a paleontologist he knew...