http://17000steps.com come on, you can do better Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:57:03 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Author Dan Kavanagh only existed for a few brief years in the 1980s, as an alter ego of literary novelist Julian Barnes. The last book I read of Barnes' was Arthur & George, a novelized tale of Sir Arthur Conan Doyles' investigative interest in a gross miscarriage of justice. I'd ... http://17000steps.com/2008/06/13/duffy/ aka PTU: Police Tactical Unit That last Johnnie To film I saw made me want to see more, and if this one wasn't as good it still made me want to see more yet. He uses the same cinematographer a lot - someone known variously as Siu-keung ... http://17000steps.com/2008/06/11/ptu/ Set in 1982, the year First Blood was in the cinemas, two lonely English kids form a friendship whilst making a sequel to one of the crown jewels of Stallone's short lived 'good films' period. Made by Hammer & Tongs (aka Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith) it only has flashes ... http://17000steps.com/2008/06/11/son-of-rambow/ Handsome, well-cast and expensively mounted, but there's really nothing here that I haven't seen elsewhere. I found the coda to this (where we're told what happened to the characters played by Washington and Crowe) to be dumbfounding. I'm not sure what to make of it, although the fact that we've ... http://17000steps.com/2008/05/31/american-gangster/ Intermittently serves up some of the more suffocatingly hideous and frightening imagery I've ever encountered. It's also (thank god) sometimes funny. Some of the hall-of-mirrors / morphed identity / circular reference stuff (Laura Dern in the movie theater, or emerging onto the set from the back) was close to ... http://17000steps.com/2008/05/28/inland-empire/ I've probably seen five films by Atom Egoyan now and I've enjoyed them all to varying degrees. While I enjoyed this, which seems more mainstream than the others, it was somewhat disappointing. Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth are both good as the Martin & Lewis-type entertainers ... http://17000steps.com/2008/05/19/where-the-truth-lies/ Dario Argento wraps up this Three Mothers trilogy, 31 years after Suspiria and 28 after Inferno. Hyperbolically gory and genuinely odd, it suffers by being linked to two of his most fully-realized fever-dream outings, but it's very lively and he's sure not mellowing with age. Best ... http://17000steps.com/2008/05/18/mother-of-tears/ aka Triad Election I haven't watched many Hong Kong films (particularly genre films) for years, and this is the first one I've seen by Johnnie To in a long time. The sequel to a film, but it stands on its own and is very impressive. I wasn't sure ... http://17000steps.com/2008/05/17/election-2/ Our family had a subscription to the Catholic newspaper The Advocate, and as a child I'd excitedly check every week to see what movies the Legion of Decency was giving their Condemned rating to. I couldn't imagine what was going on in these things that ... http://17000steps.com/2008/05/11/baby-doll/ Very sharp character study / crime drama that's the directorial debut of writer Scott Frank.  A young man - a former golden boy - who's suffered brain damage in an auto accident has a job as janitor in a bank, and is manipulated into assisting in a robbery.  Lots of ... http://17000steps.com/2008/05/04/the-lookout/