Category: film

Pet Peeve

Posted on January 7, 2014 By Mark Tiedemann

I don’t watch a lot of television.Â Possibly more than I should, given everything I have on my plate, but I grew up with tv and have loved a lot of what’s been on it and it is, or can be, a great source of pleasure.

One of the shows I’ve been devoted to the last few years has been Castle.Â From the first episode, I’ve been hooked.Â Firstly, how could I not like a show about a writer?Â And especially the writer as many of us dream of becoming.Â Secondly, Nathan Fillion.Â I mean, Firefly?Â I was so happy to see him get a new show.Â …

Mary Poppins

Posted on December 18, 2013December 18, 2013 By Mark Tiedemann

There was a hardcover copy of a Mary Poppins book in my grade school library.Â I remember finding it and being very excited.Â Naturally, I’d seen the movie and I was already discovering how much better the books from which films were made could be.Â So I checked it out and took it home and that night opened it up and—

Took it back the next day, unfinished.Â To say it was nothing like the film is beside the point.Â To say I found no magic in it would be closer.Â But frankly, the Mary Poppins of P.L. Travers—of which we now are so vigorously concerned of late—I found to be a cold, humorless drudge who was obsessed with discipline.Â …

Boycotts and Bully Boys

Posted on November 5, 2013November 5, 2013 By Mark Tiedemann

I’m not going to the theater to see Ender’s Game, not because I’m boycotting it or Mr. Card, but because I don’t care enough about it to spend coin on it.Â Of course, that can be said of 99% of the movies released in the last couple of decades—we don’t go to the movies anymore.Â It’s a habit we got out of shortly after buying a house.Â Priorities, y’know?

Not that I don’t eventually see them.Â (We finally saw The Time Traveler’s Wife this past weekend, long after it’s theatrical release.Â A couple of weeks back we saw Cloud Atlas at a friend’s house.)Â …

Foggy, Raw, Learning Curve

Posted on November 25, 2012November 26, 2012 By Mark Tiedemann

One of my more annoying personal characteristics is a seeming aversion to instruction manuals.Â For someone to whom reading is one of the four or five great pleasures of life, for whatever reason, I cannot abide the tedium of reading a set of instructions.Â For one thing, nothing seems to stick until I actually try to perform the functions laid out.Â I might as well be reading Linear-B.Â (Oddly, I can read theoretical texts without much difficulty—physics, art, philosophy, psychology, and so forth—it’s only step by step “how to” works that both try my patience and do me no apparent good.)Â …

It Was Fifty Years Ago, Mr. Bond

Posted on October 3, 2012November 26, 2021 By Mark Tiedemann

“Do you expect me to talk?”

“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!”

The exchange between Bond and Goldfinger may sum up the attitude of many who are tired, offended, or otherwise ambivalent or disinterested in the absurdly long career of the improbable James Bond, 007.Â Even those of us who have been more or less unable to let go our adolescent attachment to the character have doubtless wondered why he hasn’t just died.

He should have, certainly after the criminal treatment he endured toward the middle and end of the Roger Moore years.Â All due respect to Mr.…

The Last One

Posted on January 30, 2012January 30, 2012 By Mark Tiedemann

The last motion picture theater of my youth is gone.

For several years, The Avalon, sitting on Kingshighway, across the street from a mortuary that has now become a church, has been shuttered and slowly decaying and finally has met its inevitable fate.

In a way, good.Â It has been an eyesore for some time, a constant reminder of neglect and a ruin of a bygone era.

Hyperbole? Indeed, yes, but true nonetheless.Â As you can tell by what remained, it was an elegant, simple building, with a lovely facade.Â A symbol of an age thoroughly gone—the single-screen, stand-alone movie theater.…

An Age of Wonder and Annoyance

Posted on October 14, 2011October 14, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

I have two things to talk about that are related by the slenderest of threads. Bear with me.

First I’d like to say something about how marvelous is the age in which we live, at least from the perspective of someone who has now lived in a couple of “ages” since arriving on this planet in 1954.

A short while ago I had lunch. While having lunch I like to watch something, so I popped the DVD of The Right StuffÂ Â into my player and settled back to my roast beef and movie.Â While watching, it occurred to me how blase I’veÂ become at this technology.…

Star Wars and Science Fiction

Posted on August 4, 2011September 13, 2024 By Mark Tiedemann

On Thursday, July 21st, I gave a talk at the Daniel Boone Regional Library on the nature of science fiction. I had a good turn-out, the room was almost full, and the talk was generally well-received.

I used a comparison I’ve grown used to deploying, comparing Star Wars to something else and pointing out how it is not science fiction but rather a quest fantasy dressed up like SF, which is not at all uncommon, but can be confusing when talking about the differences that make SF unique. Normally, this point gets across without too much trouble and for that reason, perhaps, I’ve grown a bit complacent in how I present it.…

My Obligatory Piece About Ayn Rand

Posted on April 24, 2011August 4, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

From time to time, here and there, someone brings Ayn Rand up as some kind of role model.Â Lately it’s even in the national news, thanks to the Tea Party and an apparently not very good film of Rand’s seminal masterwork, Atlas Shrugged.Â The uber conservatives now crowding reason out of the halls of congress with their bizarro legislation and their lectures from the floor and on committees about how their toilets don’t flush right so why should regulations on light bulbs be passed are the children of the Dragon’s Teeth cast randomly by Ms. Rand and her philosophical cult followers.Â …

Other Buzzzzzzzz

Posted on January 14, 2011January 14, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

I am not going to go see the new Green Hornet movie.Â I knew that long before its release, when I heard Seth Rogen had been cast as the Hornet.Â I just knew it would be a waste of everyone’s time, money, and sentiment.

I’m sorry.Â Hollywood has been doing superhero movies now for decades and they’ve gotten a few of them pretty right.Â Except for a ridiculous semi-musical romantic interlude, the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve was fine.Â Mostly this was due to Reeve and co-star Gene Hackman (who can save just about any movie), but they treated the material lovingly the whole way.Â …