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salmdesign
Reviews
Cremaster 3 (2002)
A visual trip running high on energy; low on payoff
I could ramble on and on using art history and criticism metaphors to describe how banal and unappealing Barney's weirdness is. Suffice it to say that this "epic" has no beginning, story or conclusion leading to anything other than a visual mess of wackiness and graphic silliness from one scene to the next all set to some of the worst, absurdly incoherent, and bad music in cinema. The Cremester Cycle seems to be Barney's attempt to meld David Lynch, Terry Gilliam and Busby Berkeley in some kind of nightmarish world, yet the whole mess comes across as pretentious and self-serving to both Matthew Barney and the Gladstone Gallery. Art house trendies and a lot of contemporary art museum curators may enjoy this endless string of images (which are really better displayed in museums as movie stills instead of the plotless, pointless film Cremester is), but I thought it was a waste of time.
The Cat in the Hat (2003)
Time and Money You Won't Get Back
Just how terribly written, acted, designed and conceived does a movie need to be to get a few studio executives fired? Well, if this movie flops, which unfortunately it won't, it might just do it. The Cat in the Hat is so bad that I almost demanded my money AND my wasted hour returned from the box office! The only problem was that I attended an advanced screening in Chicago and got in free. Unfortunately, they'd have to pay me to laugh through this poor excuse for a dismal Mike Myers vehicle to nowhere. Are Hollywood writers, production designers and producers so far removed from reality that they can't figure out what's good and bad taste, especially when adapting from beloved children's books? Save your money, enjoy your free time, and remember that the ONLY reason this movie got released was so that the movie could be promoted with tie-ins to everything from fast food to laundry detergent.
Ask Rita (2003)
At 2:00 am, Rita's Not All That Bad
I saw this show on Chicago's ABC affiliate at 2:00am. At that time of the night/morning, Rita's articulate semi-funny shtick is not half bad. True, if her show could get better guests, this show might actually last a second season.