Bad News Bears
November 13th, 2006
Trying to catch up with Linklater. His big-budget movies usually retain enough character to make them worthwhile (cf. School of Rock), but this remake rides almost entirely on Billy Bob Thornton’s recycled Bad Santa shtick, and it’s not enough. The kids are bland, the pacing’s off, and the movie fizzles. The best I can say about is that it taught me more about baseball than all 16 hours of Ken Burns, but that’s not saying much.
Bad News Bears. Richard Linklater, 2005. **
[tags]richard linklater, film, children, baseball, sports, 2 stars, billy bob thornton[/tags]
Fast Food Nation Press Day
November 3rd, 2006
A timely reminder why I don’t particularly enjoy press junkets. I was at the Regency on Park Ave yesterday morning for a marathon roundtable session for Fast Food Nation: Eric Schlosser, Wilmer Valderrama, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Bobby Cannavale, Paul Dano, and Richard Linklater. Don’t get me wrong, all of these people proved friendly, talented, and smart, and I’d love to hang out with every single one of them–especially Schlosser and Linklater.
But sharing them with a table full of wide-eyed interns, self-promoting film critics, and aggressive vegan activists for twenty-minute stints in crowded hotel rooms to repeat what they already said for the press kit while their publicists are hovering over them with an eye on the clock is more than a little bit frustrating. I got in one non-starter question with Linklater and otherwise resigned myself to trying to absorb some of his dedication and energy. Now I have a couple of hours worth of audio to transcribe for a proper About.com write-up….
[tags]film, press, film critics, interviews, richard linklater, eric schlosser[/tags]
