Category: Film

Stop the insanity! Warner Bros. has changed its mind and is now threatening to release the DVD for Willy Wonka (the classic film starring Gene Wilder based on Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) in a full-screen only (ie. “pan and scan”) version as opposed to the original widescreen aspect ratio. Hurry now and join almost 5,000 others in signing this petition to get Warner to reconsider.

Ghost World is rocking the critics… I can’t wait to see this one.

My latest awesome discovery: Metacritic. It gathers reviews of films, DVD/video releases, music, and games into one place and assigns a composite score for each based on the reviews of the professional critics. Visitors can also submit their own ratings and comments. Despite its punworthy name (“I never met a critic I didn’t want to…), this one has happily joined my bookmarks.

Over the weekend, we watched all 460 minutes of the ten-part series, AFI: 100 Years, 100 Movies. Though I enjoyed it thoroughly, I wished there were a way to talk about each of these great films without giving away the entire plot, including the ending. It will make watching the films I haven’t seen yet a little less enjoyable. By the way, I’ve seen 33 of the top 100, but Brooke has seen 50.

On a related note, our first “Film Club” evening was last Friday, and we watched Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (number 93 on the AFI Top 100, and number 20 on their list of the Top 100 Comedies). I loved it, even more than Some Like It Hot, which was their top comedy overall and number 14 on the Top 100. It was a fitting tribute to the late great Jack Lemmon, and I’m becoming a huge Billy Wilder fan. Any other Billy Wilder fans out there?

One of my favourite actors is gone. Jack Lemmon, maybe the finest comedic actor of his generation, died last night. And although I didn’t find out about it until this morning, someone found my site last night about 9:30 by asking Google: “What kind of cancer did Jack Lemmon die of?” I find that sort of creepy.