25th Dour

Our list of the ten best films of the decade concludes with one of the best films from any decade, 25th Hour, director Spike Lee and writer David Benioff's virtuoso New York City lament on the plight of a man who walks his dog into oblivion under the twin shadows of regret and what could have been.

Dare Will Be Blood

Our list of the ten best films of the decade continues with a cinematic landmark, regardless of decade, There Will Be Blood, writer director Paul Thomas Anderson's daring masterwork about God, oil and milkshakes colliding head-on at the turn of an American century.

Calf Nelson

Our list of the ten best films of the decade continues with Half Nelson, a story about I don't know, I don't know.

Sin the Food for Love

Our list of the ten best films of the decade continues with director Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love, a film so breathtaking and poetic and perfect, it can do no wong, I mean, wrong.

No Country for Cold Men

Our list of the ten best films of the decade continues with No Country for Old Men, the Coen Brothers' pitch perfect adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's literary examination of cold blood American violence.

Crouching Tiger, Forbidden Dragon

Our list of the ten best films of the decade continues with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which, as its title would suggest, tells a story about two masculine ranch hands for hire who fall in forbidden love on a mountain, in the clouds.

Done Baby Done

Like finding a missing child, our list of the ten best films of the decade happily discovers a twelfth in Gone Baby Gone, a movie about finding missing children and keeping them as far away from Ed Harris as possible.

Garden Late

Our list of the ten best films of the decade continues with an eleventh, Garden State, an irresistibly cute coming to grips tale about quirky, pretentious, aloof middle aged twenty-year olds coping with the non-negotiable life demands of the Shins.

Bill Kill

Our list of the ten best films of the decade continues with Kill Bill, a movie whose title, along with Inglourious Basterds, implies a sordid true story of the American health care debate, instead of what they actually are: fabulously cinematic, popular culture-obsessed revenge epics that only Quentin Tarantino can deliver.

The Defarted

We continue our list of the ten best films of the decade with The Departed, a weirdo thrashing mainstream gangster thriller crammed with bullets exiting through heads like a wet, blood drenched gaseous bowel movement, that somehow grossed north of $100 million in box office and earned Martin Scorsese a long overdue Oscar for Best Picture and Director.

Yo Yo

We continue our list of the ten best films of the decade with Yi Yi, a heartfelt, lovingly authentic portrait about the up, down trials of one family as realized by those who do family best, the Asians.

The Lord of the Ings

Our list of the ten best films of the decade continues with The Lord of the Rings, a grand, monumental big screen spectacle that has amassed more public acclaim through words ending with the suffix -ing, words like amazing, spellbinding, mindblowing, bestevering, than any film before it.

Miami Nice

Our list of the ten best films of the decade begins with Miami Vice, the finest looking, well-dressed, fully-automatic, macho-male fantasy cum police procedural crime drama since the last time Michael Mann directed this kind of movie, which is every time.

The Gift of Flab

When Larry Charles is credited as Director, Curb Your Enthusiasm fans know to expect an episode chock-full of heightened lunacy and provocation, bigger and badder than what the show typically dabbles in on a regular basis. Previous moments of Larry Charles unease, like the episode where star, creator, writer, Larry David likens the abnormal size of an eight year-old's penis to that of a circus freak show, surprisingly does little in preparing viewers for last night's wildly deranged activities.

Bull House

Photo by Kevin Mazur.

The Olsen twins are now successful clothing designers and I still find this photograph absolutely fascinating. I wrote elsewhere about it and feel including it here is probably a good idea, for purposes of both context and hiatus. Unless something urgent happens in popular culture over the next few days that requires blogging, like Rad finally getting an official release date on DVD, I will break until September. In the meantime, read the following post(s) and please support the sources that inspire them (either indicated in blue text or highlighted along the right column), all of whom do this much better than I can.

So, as I was saying...

Some years ago, Robert De Niro was photographed with Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. As the photo suggests, all seemed willing, if a bit uncomfortable.

At the time, most thought the unusual pairing to be either a clear sign of an immediate apocalypse or the press launch for Taxi Driver 2: Off the Meter.

However, as evidenced by a still-spinning world and sequel-less original, both notions proved false. The photograph instead signaled a paradigm shift in popular culture, a shift where respect and ridicule were often in line with one another, and Robert De Niro no longer made good movies, he only made crap.

Anyway, I look back at this picture with fond memories and acknowledge it as a pivotal point of inspiration for La Dolce Gangster. That and a near 30-year history of being out-of-my-mind obsessed with the doings of popular culture, especially as it played out in film, music and celebrity.

Please enjoy the blog and feel free to contribute links, media, or your own commentary at any time.

Thanks,
Charles a.k.a. Gangsta Warner a.k.a. GDub

Fraggle Rock

Photo by Matt O'Sullivan.

The Tracey Fragments hurtles frame after frame within frame after frame in telling its story of a disillusioned young girl wrapped in a shower curtain in search of her younger brother who she may have hypnotized into thinking he is a dog. Or something like that. The film is not unlike the 400 Blows in its empathy for rebel youth, conjuring its spirit throughout and ending with the lead character's march into oblivion. This final scene, left entirely uninterrupted, is one of the few full frame sequences in the whole film, the total of which can be counted on both hands. Once you've done that, wrap your fingers around a steel pipe and smash the nearest mirror into a billion pieces then look at yourself in the shattered glass. In approximately two minutes you will have duplicated the effect I suppose the filmmakers are going for here. From a visual standpoint, it is compelling, obviously. Though the idea of sitting through 75 or so minutes of endless screen splits and narrative hop scotch would seem to most the cinematic equivalent of deciphering one of those 3D digital mosaic paintings during an earthquake, the Tracey Fragments is really no more nauseating than the type of hyper editing that Michael Bay tends to over employ in just about everything he films. What most likely will hold your interest in the Tracey Fragments, as opposed to epic-length robot carnage, is star Ellen Page, who delivers a foul mouthed, far angrier version of Juno MacGuff, and the whole damn experiment of it all. Director Bruce MacDonald, writer Maureen Medved and editors Jeremy Munce and Gareth Scales earn points for at least attempting to centralize their film's humanity in the sum of its many, many pieces.

Hail Mary to the Chief

Image via Orlando Sentinel.

Summary: After several failed nominations leave less than half of his senior policymaking team in place, newly elected United States President Barack Obama must assemble an administration of change from a ragtag crop of complacent career employees and zany Republican holdovers in this loosely based remake of the 1991 gridiron laugher, Necessary Roughness.

A Little Out of Tune

Here, that jolly sing-a-long from François Truffaut's rumpus second feature, Shoot the Piano Player, or as the French call it, Tirez sur le pianiste. Having finally seen it, and rewatching it with Criterion's commentary track on, as helpful as all Criterion commentary tracks are at simultaneously explaining exactly why the viewer should love the film while pointing out how incredibly inferior his or her IQ is compared to the scholar giving said commentary, in this case, two viewpoints, one from a man, another from a woman, which as pointed out in their commentary, is one of the film's many central themes of which you, stupid American, entirely miss while reading the subtitles, I could not recommend it more.

The Answer My Friend, Is Blowing in the Wind

The next time someone asks you what is the worst movie you have ever seen, answer the Happening and then kill yourself. With aspirations as the green generation's de facto b-movie telling of eco-terrorism, the Happening rather is a tedious mish-mash of bizarre tone, gobbly-goo science talk, eccentric side characters, senseless plot points and a foolish scene where would-be rural survivalists gather in a 50's roadside diner and watch a newsreport of a zookeeper willingly ripped apart in a bear pit - on their iPhones, no less! I'm making this film sound entertaining. It isn't. It's just another plunge from the promise director M. Night Shyamalan once showed in films like Unbreakable and Signs. The Happening's only mercy is a relatively brief 88 minute run time, which is still a complete and total waste of everyone's time. Avoid this movie! Or watch it as a public service to warn others.

The Clintoons

A family of undercover superheroes posing as leaders of state, while trying to live the quiet suburban life, are forced into action to save the world and rescue two American journalists held captive in North Korea in Disney and Pixar's the Incredibles.