Posts Tagged ‘christopher walken’

The Academy Awards separates its acting categories by sex and screen time. The Golden Globes goes as far as to separate them by genre. I say screw that. Here are the 20 best performances of 2012, regardless of sex, genre or species.

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There are all kinds of comedies, some more critic friendly than others. Stupid comedies… critics hate those. Dramatic comedies… boy, do critics eat those up. But what really matters when it comes to comedies? I have very specific criteria: a good comedy has to make me laugh.

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From the director of nothing comes a subtle but impactful drama starring three Oscar heavyweights. A Late Quartet, about the emotional unraveling of a famous string quartet, is explosively delicious and features some of the better performances of the year, though some might find it simply quaint.

Read FilmJabber’s full A Late Quartet movie review.

Back in August I gave Balls of Fury a C- rating, a rather cruel grade for a movie I actually found quite entertaining and funny. The critic got the best of me and I scorned it for being exactly what it was intended to be: a stupid, stupid, stupid, goofy comedy. I try not to let the “critic” inside me take advantage of my simpler pleasures, but at the same time I have a reputation to attend to, and giving Balls of Fury a fair rating is a hard thing to do.

That being said, the ping-pong comedy is quite funny, and if you like silly, wacky adventures with mindless comedy, then Balls of Fury is one of the better films of recent years. I won’t go as far and say it’s a good movie, but it is funny. And for all of you who like Reno: 911 but watched that Miami movie and wanted to shoot yourselves, the main character in that plays one of the villains here. You can read the full Balls of Fury movie review here.

The movie arrives on DVD this Tuesday, and with it some special features that include deleted scenes, an alternate ending, a making-of featurette and a look at the “ball wrangler” hired for the film.

There’s really not much to say about the Balls of Fury DVD. The deleted scenes are okay, but you can see why they were deleted. There are a few scenes where the main guy sees the ghost of his dead father, but they aren’t funny. None of the other deleted scenes are funny, really. Why aren’t there any bloopers?

The alternate ending is one of those endings where you get to see a slightly different final minute of the film, and for a movie like this, who really cares? Honestly.

The making-of featurette is somewhat entertaining, as it does talk about how the cast and crew basically took a kung fu premise and replaced it with ping-pong. That being said, it is also quite promotional, though in this case, that actually works in the movie’s favor. Some of the actors joke about how ridiculous and meaningless the movie is, and that’s pretty funny.

Now, to the ball wrangler featurette. What do I say? The movie is about some poor actress who has to run around in what is essentially a Hooters outfit and make “ball” jokes to the cast and crew. What a degrading job, and the end result isn’t nearly as funny as the DVD people were hoping it would be. I saw the “blue balls” gag coming a mile away, and I’ve seen it done much, much better.

Anyway, the very few fans of the movie will probably rush out to buy this DVD; the rest of you will resort to rentals at most. Whether this film ever gains any level of cult status remains to be seen, but somehow I doubt it.