Word: iii
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Listen up, class: we are in the late, or decadent, phase of action-adventure cinema. By now there have been as many variations on the spy-vs.-spy genre as Renaissance artists did on the Piet?. So a presummer blockbuster like Mission: Impossible III, confected by TV auteur J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost), is inevitably a commentary on every action movie that preceded it. Such an endeavor brings out the scholar in its audience and the pedagogue in its reviewers. For real students of the form, straight questions about M:i:III are too easy. (What film is this film most...
...Care and Tweaking of Sequels. The givens of M:i:III are a theme (spy team saves world with gadgets and lifelike masks), a jazzy jingle (Lalo Schifrin?s, from the 1960s TV series) and, crucially, a star?the star, Tom Cruise, as Mission stud Ethan Hunt. Problem is, Cruise?s stature instantly torpedoes the notion of team spirit. The others push buttons and get in trouble; he rides motorcycles, runs the length of Shanghai and eats up all the screen time. Is there room for a collective hero in star vehicles? Discuss...
...Film Villain. For a bad guy, M:i:III has Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose Owen Davian is surprisingly unmannered. He does not twirl a mustache or stroke a cat; he?s just a bad dude in a worse mood, simmering and glowering. Does Hoffman class up the film or lower its temperature? Argue both sides...
...Action Director as Arms Dealer. Davian sells weapons and secrets to "axis of evil" nations (both of them). That?s bad? Then why do action films peddle weapons of mass-media destruction to the audience? M:i:III has more cool hardware than a defense-industry trade show. It revels in the balletics of ballistics, the exploding orangeness of a fireball, the crystal shower as a body is propelled through plate glass. Fret at length...
...whilst reading their unlearned lines directly off a sheet of paper. “Love and Cruelty” was both the theme and title of the show, which meant that TFs and professors had to interact in a rather uncomfortable and unfamiliar context. A scene from Richard III starring Professor Daniel G. Donoghue as Lady Anne playing opposite his female TF as Richard was made all the more entertaining as the duo stumbled through their poorly memorized lines. One particularly memorable exchange: Richard: “I am fit for one place...” (scrambling, searching for paper...