Cinema Crespodiso

A weekly talk show hosted by film critic Christopher Crespo

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Netflix pick for 4/8/13 – ‘Kumare’

Kumare

“Kumare” is an excellent documentary about a man who sets out to start his own sham religion centered around yoga and meditation in an effort to show how people can be duped by such charlatans, only to find out that maybe these little sham religious leaders and religion in general aren’t all bad.

From my original review from my Florida Film Festival 2012 coverage:

“Fortunately, Vikram’s motives are far less sinister than most other frauds – as Kumaré, his experiment turns into a real lesson to give people, a lesson about how their search for a spiritual leader and guru should lead back to within themselves. And Kumaré is up front with this, telling people over and over that he is a fake and he is wearing a disguise and that he is just trying to help these people find the guru within themselves, but of course people only hear what they want to hear – so when they hear Kumaré saying he is a faker and wearing a disguise, they think he is speaking metaphorically and that he is being all deep and spiritual about his role, when in reality it was Vikram the whole time telling them the truth.”

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#13 – Slow Lightning

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In episode 13 of Cinema Crespodiso, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn are joined by Angel Rivera from the hit new podcast “SBK LIVE with Kevin, Matt and Angel,” and the three of them talk all things movies, ranging from the passing of the late, great Roger Ebert, to documentaries, to new movies in theaters like Evil Dead and on DVD like Hyde Park on Hudson, and they also get into their favorite horror movies and characters, their guilty pleasures in cinema, and they discuss the new trailer for the movie Only God Forgives. The fellas also play a new game called “Guess The Grosses” and Angel participates in the slowest Lightning Round on record, so check out all the free entertainment and enjoy the mad ramblings of the Crespodiso!

CinemaCrespodiso_Episode13_8Apr13

Book-to-film adaptations: 5 – ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’

www.criterion.com

When discussing the best book-to-film adaptations, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” stands out as a success in wrangling a wild narrative and boiling it down to a workable movie, especially because the wrangling was done by a director with a history of wild and unhinged films (several of which contain their own decidedly non-wrangled narratives). Then again, in hindsight, it seems that maybe this movie could have only happened this way.
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Netflix pick for 4/1/13 – ‘The Warriors’

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I just recently republished my original book-to-film adaptation analysis of the great “The Warriors,” when lo and behold, on the most recent episode of Cinema Crespodiso (available here), the completely random Netflix Pick of the Week turned out to be “The Warriors!” So here we go!

From 1979, “The Warriors” is about a a Coney Island street gang getting framed for the murder of the biggest gang leader in all of New York City, and having to fight their way back home through about half a dozen other gangs, varying in numbers, style and competency. Walter Hill is a tough guy director, often making movies about tough guys having to do tough things or at least act tough, movies like “Southern Comfort” and “48 Hrs” and the recent “Bullet to the Head.” So while this movie does has a slightly cartoony feel thanks to some of the gangs’ outfits (a cartoony effect Hill claimed was intentional, stating that he wanted to treat this movie like a comic book story), it is still pretty gritty and intense at times, thanks in large part to being filmed not only on the streets of New York City, but late 1970s New York City, which is completely different from the city today, as it exuded menace and danger at every lonely street corner and in every darkened doorway.Continue Reading …

#12 – Crespodiso After Dark

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Book-to-film adaptations: 4 – ‘Dreamcatcher’

dreamcatcher

If you’re playing along at home, you’ll notice that this series is a back and forth type of deal. No Country for Old Men was a best of, I Am Legend was a worst of and most recently, The Warriors was a best of installment. To keep the pendulum going, entry four brings us back to the worst of side, where we find ourselves staring into the gaping maw of Evil Otto himself…Dreamcatcher.Continue Reading …

Book-to-film adaptations: 3 – ‘The Warriors’

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Installment one was a “best” and installment two was a “worst.” So here’s another example of one of the best: Walter Hill’s The Warriors is an adaptation of Jewish-American writer Sol Yurick’s novel of the same name. Walter Hill, as we already know, makes manly movies about manly men. And The Warriors is populated with manly gang members, as well as younger kids trying to be men by being in gangs. Importantly, it must be noted that this write up of The Warriors will be of the original film and not the recent “Ultimate Director’s Cut DVD,” which itself (coupled with the director’s cut of Donnie Darko) is an example of a director not realizing what makes their film great. But that’s a completely different article. So with that out of the way…Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Stoker’

Stoker_QuadPoster

Written by the star of TV’s Prison Break and directed by the guy behind “Oldboy” is not a way I thought I would ever start any review ever, yet here it is, it has come to pass, this is indeed a thing, as “Stoker” is directed by the great Chan-wook Park, based on an original screenplay by Wentworth Miller (which itself is a loving homage to the works of Alfred Hitchcock, most notably his film “Shadow of a Doubt“). And you know what? It’s pretty damn good.Continue Reading …

Book-to-film adaptations: 2 – ‘I Am Legend’

i am lgend 4
Most people who saw the film I Am Legend probably had no idea the movie was based on a book. And even if they did, there’s a chance they had no idea what kind of impact Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend had on the horror community, both written and filmed.
Written in 1954, Matheson’s book followed a lone survivor of a horrible plague. The survivor was everyman Robert Neville and the plague was vampirism; as the lone human in a world of vampires, the book followed Neville’s daily ritual and his evolution as this survivor, and great swaths of information and characterization happen solely in the head of Robert Neville through his stream of consciousness and thought processes. The Omniscient Reader stays deep within Neville’s thoughts as he uses all the spare time that he has to kill as many vampires as possible during the day and do hours and hours of research to find a cure for this horrible problem. And The Omniscient Reader is so thoroughly into the mind of Robert that when he comes to his ghastly end, the Reader is right there with him.

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Book-to-film adaptations: 1 – ‘No Country For Old Men’

NCFOM

“The book was better.”

How many times has that phrase been uttered? Films and books are two different forms of media, and there is no reason why one should be better than the other. As long as films have been made, filmmakers have been turning to books for inspiration. And why not? There’s nothing wrong with going with the old book to film route, and as history as shown, it’s a coin flip, a toss up, it could go either way. There are so many things at work on any given film that when one is made well it’s a bona fide miracle. Continue Reading …

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