LISTEN TO THE MAGIC

Best portions of the soundtrack from Vangelis's Bladerunner music 

NEW THING MOVIE - DUMBING IT DOWN FOR GEN-X / GEN-Y

I was originally excited to see the new version of The Thing, but after seeing the trailer not so much. Once again the Gen-X/Gen-Y suits that now run studios and make the films have less sophisticated tastes and talent and are dumbing-it down. 
What made John Carpenter's The Thing a masterpiece of horror was it's slow pace and sense of remove. You felt the isolation of the people, you felt doom closing in and the unrelenting attack of the alien even if you didn't see it. 
It is the same complaint I have with modern zombie pics - they are smart, fast zombies now whereas the original zombies in George Romero's Night of the Living Dead were slow, dumb zombies and ultimately scarier ... an unrelenting force coming after you that you can outrun in the short-term but which will never stop for any reason is far more frightening ... the scariest thing in the new zombie series on AMC is that half-lady hungrily crawling around. The trailer for the new Thing shows lots of quick-cutting, fast-change special creature CGI effects, a girl (shamelessly going after the female demographic when they don't need to given the classic status of the Carpenter version), yet it supposed to take place in the Norwegian camp earlier in the story referenced at the beginning of Carpenter's film. I hope I'm wrong - the casting and production design of the film look good.

PETER DINKLAGE GETS AN EMMY

I'm shocked - shocked - that he won this year for Game of Thrones. He deserved it, sure. But these awards shows never seem to give it to the right person, rather they give an award later on for some sucky part after you've already turned in outstanding performances. I predicted he'd win next year for GoT, since his character will have a much bigger, juicier part. An award well-deserved, Peter, and for a body of consistently good work. He may be the first actor who is physically a dwarf to transcend the stature issue through his talent. People think of him, and what he can bring to a part, and then consider that he's shorter than average.

SAM ROCKWELL'S MOON

Director Duncan Jones' Moon (he's David Bowie's son) is pretty good - not great. Aesthetically it borrows from 2001, Alien and some other good sci-fi films for its story of a clone learning he's a clone from his clone. Rockwell has been one of my favorite actors since I first saw him in the terrific Lawn Dogs back in '97. It's a tour-de-force performance opportunity for Rockwell, but he underplays it a bit which makes the film all the better. There is a bit of an inside joke to the film because there are lots of shots of Rockwell's butt.