All things perfect and poisonous

Why is the first thing that pops into my head an image of Wayne and Garth protesting their worthiness? Wait, I know. More evidence of the rule of the adolescent window. I'll have to address this topic with a bit more depth later... I've long been under the impression that no one actually reads my cinema blog, All things perfect and poisonous, and never gave it much thought. I started this blog simply as a way of keeping a record of the movies I see and if I find myself inspired, I'll sit down and write about them. Imagine my surprise upon reading that I'd been tagged for a 7x7 Award at by good friend and author of my  favorite movie blog, Krell Laboratories . I am beyond flattered and so to express my gratitude, I'm finally going to respond to this meme. The rules: Tell everyone something that no one else knows about Link to one of my posts that I personally think best fits the following categories: Most Beautiful Piece, Most Helpful Piece, Most Popular P

2012 is shaping up to be a very strong year for action cinema. The first movie I saw this year was Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol which features the trilling sequence with Tom Cruise dangling off the side of a mile high building. Then there was Stephen Soderberg's Haywire with MMA fighter, Gina Carino, where we get to watch her kick everyone ass. Viral Facto r is the first of Dante Lam's HK action flicks to show in the multiplexes. And while it is a mess of a movie, it does contain some very tightly choreographed and nicely shot sequences. But the most exciting action cinema to appear so far this year is an Indonedian film from Welsh director, Gareth Evens, The Raid: Redemption . As a fan of Asian cinema, especially Asian action cinema, The Raid: Redemption is as an opportunity to see a film from a part of Asia that I know very little about. Indonesia doesn't appear to have a long, film history. Since the 1960s, there have been only a couple of films made ea

Last weekend, I had the rare opportunity to attend a screening of Joe Dante's The Movie Orgy . Various iterations of this mash-up of movies, television, commercials and educational films, initially over 7 hours long, Joe Dante spliced together as it toured college campuses in the 70s. The film was transferred to digital to present at the New Beverly Cinema in 2008 and now, again at the small, independent cinema, The Grand Illusion , where I volunteer. I knew that this cinematic rarity was an event that I could not miss, but I had reservations. Joe Dante has described it as a movie designed to be walked out on and after looking at the clips that have made their way to the web, I appreciated the absurdity of cutting between several diverse narratives together, but had assumed the resulting film would lose something to an audience unfamiliar with the source material, or be an exercise in surrealism. The Movie Orgy was neither. Instead, it was a highly engaging 4 1/2 cinema collage t

I doubt that I'll attempt to review the new film, the Hunger Games , but I did see it and had a great time. Unlike the rest of America, I did not read the books and really came in with very little knowledge of the cultural phenomenon. But knowing what I know now, specifically that it is a series as popular with young adult readers as a certain vampire, romance series with apparently 100% less misogyny and romanticism of abusive relationships, I was pleasantly surprised by the film. First of all, there aren't nearly enough movies made with strong, female characters, so I'm thrilled that a movie with a female protagonist, the Hunger Games , made 155 million during its opening weekend. This, along with Bridesmaids , challenges the notion that men won't see movies with a female protagonist, unless drug there kicking and screaming by a girlfriend. And Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is a fantastic female lead. She's strong, independent, confident, brave, and her o