I’d like to think both of this weekend’s new wide releases are equally highly anticipated, but I have a sneaking suspicion “Fast & Furious” is the winner. Which is unfortunate, but there it is. My review is at Cinematical, as is my potentially amusing report on the promotional items handed out at Tuesday’s screening.
The other title is “Adventureland,” a charming and pleasant coming-of-age comedy set in 1987 at a low-rent amusement park in Pittsburgh. It’s from Greg Mottola, the director of “Superbad,” but it’s important to note that he didn’t write “Superbad” and he did write this. “Adventureland” is definitely a more personal story, and a better film in many ways.
In limited release, there’s “Alien Trespass” (review at Film.com), a straight-faced homage to the cheesy B-movies of the 1950s. The premise wears thin after a while.
And I caught “12 Rounds” last weekend for Film.com, too. It’s really dumb, even by the standards of dumb action movies.
In other news, I mentioned last week that I was running for a position on the governing committee of the Online Film Critics Society. The followup is that I won! It’s a three-person committee, and all the incumbents were defeated. My fellow winners are my old pal Scott Weinberg and new pal MaryAnn Johanson. We ran unofficially as a bloc to unseat the current GC, which we felt had gotten complacent and led the OFCS into stagnancy. Apparently the membership agreed with us. The downside is that having won, we now actually have to DO all the things we said we’d do. (And for those of you who clicked that OFCS link, yes, our first order of business is to redesign the website. I mean, come on, right?)
Finally, I apologize for the light posting again this week. Being a freelancer means having to prioritize your work: first you do the things that someone is paying you for that have a deadline; then you do the things that someone is paying you for that don’t have a deadline; then you do the things for your own website, which makes a little money through ad sales and affiliate programs but is far, far less important, financially speaking, than your main paid gigs. And somewhere in there you try to have a social life, if only to separate you from the other people who work from home and write about movies.
A bunch of unexpected work came up just as I was returning from my Texas trip, when I was already behind on things. So I’ve been busier than the proverbial one-legged man in the metaphorical butt-kicking contest. In fact, they invited me to be a judge at that contest, and I had to turn it down because I was too busy. Anyway, things should return to normal around here soon. Thanks for continuing to pay attention.
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