Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Dear Premiere Magazine: SHUT UP

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a copy of Premiere magazine [mostly because I was at the Duane Reade and bored out of my skull]. Peter Jackson was on the cover looking freakishly skinny and I mean hey, how can you not buy it.

Inside the magazine was a free mini-pamphlet of Premiere Magazine's "50 Hidden Gems out on DVD." Movies that didn't do very well the first time they hit theaters but deserved to find a place in your own personal collection. I didn't recognize many of the films but the ones I had seen [Office Space, Suicide Kings, Go] I enjoyed so I figured they knew what they were talking about. I don't have a ton of money to blow on DVDs just because Premiere recommends them so instead I decided to go through the entire list of 50 movies and borrow them from the library.

Can I just say that for a movie magazine, Premiere doesn't know what the freak they're talking about. They should have named it "50 Hidden Movies That Are Hidden Because They're Long and Boring."

The first one I got from the library was The Tenant, directed by and starring Roman Polanski. First of all, it's in English. Takes place in France. But some of the people speak English and other people are speaking in French and are dubbed over in English. So for part of the film Roman Polanski is speaking English but when he's doing scenes with people who obviously don't speak English he switches to speaking in French, with the audio dubbed over. And that got on my nerves really quickly.

Oh yeah. And it's really super-boring. "Hey look at me, I'm a guy who's weird for no reason and I'm gonna rent this apartment. And I'm gonna take 25 minutes to do it. Oh no, my friends make too much noise and the landlord hates us! Oh no, the previous tenant committed suicide.Look at me, I'm an auteur!"

Tonight's time-waster of choice was Shadow of a Doubt. I was actually excited about this one because it was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Hitchcock fan and I understand a lot of people think his films drag in the beginning while he's setting up the story. I've never minded that, because to me if you have a good story, it doesn't drag.

Hitch didn't have a good story with this one and it dragged. It drug. It drugged and dragged. Hey, let me save you and hour and a half. This guy goes to visit his family in California. And that's the first HOUR. And then oh yeah, maybe he's a killer. So then you think, "Now it's gonna get good!" But it doesn't. Instead they eat dinner and read the newspaper and go to church and go to the library and go to a restaurant and eat and totally forget to build any suspense or story at all. And then it's like ohwaitweonlyhave10minutesleftquickgetonatrainandthebadguywilltrytokilltheheroine.

So thanks, Premiere. Thanks for wasting my time not with one, but two bad, boring films. I'm sure there are some good ones on there, but I've given up. Maybe I'll start hitting up films on the various AFI lists because Premiere magazine knows about as much about recommending films as I know about Butte, Montana.

Hey Premiere! In the words of my friend Amy Albert,
SUCK IT.


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