Saturday 31 March 2018

Bill Murray Misses The Darjeeling Limited

Opening Act: The Darjeeling Limited


Welcome to Opening Act, an analysis of the greatest opening scenes in film history. Today, the black sheep in the Wes Anderson filmography, 2007's The Darjeeling Limited. Darjeeling is perhaps the only Wes Anderson film apart from his debut, Bottle Rocket, to not be held in high regard by his fans. Rushmore, The Royal Tenebaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel. All highly regarded films with perhaps the small exception being The Life Aquatic but I feel like that film has completely overcome its initial divisive reactions. The Darjeeling Limited however always seems to be near the bottom of Wes Anderson rankings though the consensus isn't that it is bad, merely that it isn't great. Personally, I think it's a film with a bunch of great moments but it just feels lacking in areas in ways that I can't quite put my finger on. The central relationship between the brothers played by Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody is great but something about it just feels like Wes Anderson on autopilot. But, let's move on, we're only here to talk about the amazing opening scene, Bill Murray racing through an Indian city to try and catch the titular train.

Tuesday 13 March 2018

A Jared Leto Yakuza Netflix Movie??? There's No Way The Outsider Is Terrible!

The Outsider

Director - Martin Zandvliet
Writer - Andrew Baldwin
Cast - Jared Leto, Tadanobu Asano, Shiori Kutsuna, Min Tanaka, Kippei Shiina

It takes a total of 10 minutes before a characters commits (or more accurately, stages committing) harakiri in The Outsider, a journey into the heart of the Yakuza shortly after the destruction of World War II and our guide is Jared Leto. Following in the sacred footsteps of brave white men like Tom Cruise (The Last Samurai) and Sir Daniel Day-Lewis (The Last of the Mohicans), Jared Leto boldly plays a White man assimilating himself almost perfectly into a non-white culture. Of course, Cruise and Day-Lewis are mere amateurs compared to the method acting genius of Mr. Leto (or Leto-san because you gotta respect the craft). Who else would mail used condoms to his costars as an act of getting into character, wear blacked-out contact lenses to truly experience blindness, wax his entire body to win an Oscar for playing a woman or eat melted ice cream with olive oil and soy sauce so as to gain the necessary weight for a film literally nobody saw. Jared Leto is the truest thespian of our times.

Sunday 4 March 2018

2017 Schurmys - The Major Awards

2017 Schurmann Film Awards

The Major Awards

Dunkirk
We're here. The last stop for the 2017 Schurmann Film Awards. We've handed out awards for everything from Visual Effects to Worst Ensemble and now it is time for the major awards. Everything else only barely counted. These are the big ones. These are the ones to put on your mantle for everybody to see. And now, the final step on the Schurmy journey for 2017, the Major Awards.

If you want to relive this journey, either in part or in full, here's a link to the hub containing links to all seven parts of the 2017 Schurmann Film Experience.

Saturday 3 March 2018

2017 Schurmys - Hall of Fame

2017 Schurmann Film Awards

Hall of Fame

The Post
Today we are enshrining the second class of the Schurmy Hall of Fame. 5 legends of film and/or television will be given the greatest honour possible. A Schumy Hall of Fame induction.

A quick note on the rules for this Hall:
- No more than 5 inductees shall be honoured in a given year. Last year 10 were done but as the first year a larger class was allowed
- Eligibility shall be determined as being 30 years after the first relevant credit on IMDB or death, whichever comes first. Last year Philip Seymour Hoffman was the only honouree to meet eligibility in a tragic manner.
- Persons shall be eligible for work in the television and film industries across as role.
- Groups of persons shall be eligible only considering the work they accomplished together

Friday 2 March 2018

2017 Schurmys - The Worst Awards

2017 Schurmann Film Awards

The Worst of 2017

The Book of Henry
Welcome to the bottom of the barrel. The place where Colin Trevorrow makes twee family drama-brain cancer-vigilante murder films. The place where the director of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy just forgets to film half his movie and forces Scorsese's editor to try and make something of existing footage revolving around a character named Harry Hole. The place where Charlize Theron and Jarvier Bardem sexily brush their teeth at each other amidst random African genocides. This is the place where Will Smith waxes poetically about the status of fairy lives. These are the worst movies I saw from 2017. While I went out of my way to see some truly horrific trainwrecks I did not subject myself to shit like Transformers: Oh God Why Is King Arthur In This or Pirates of Caribbean: Johnny Depp Doesn't Want to Learn His Lines so consider this section to be less complete than the others.

Thursday 1 March 2018

2017 Schurmys - Genre Awards

2017 Schurmann Film Awards

Genre Awards

Your Name
Welcome to the Genre portion of the 2017 Schurmann Film Awards. This is where we celebrate the best comedies, science fiction films, action movies, documentaries, short films and many more. You know, the films that normally get overlooked by the typical awards circuit. Appearing in this section certainly doesn't disqualify a film from major awards, I just wanted to specifically highlight great feats of genre filmmaking.