movie Archives - Twin Cities Minnesota Blog

December 28, 2011

Young Adult by Diablo Cody

I watched Young Adult on Christmas Day and I did like it a lot. Charlize Theron’s performance is fantastic, which I expected. I didn’t expect, however, to see that it was shot in Minneapolis. Didn’t even know until I saw the credits that the movie was written by Minneapolis’ own Diablo Cody, so there you go.

As I said, it’s a good movie but the following trailer really doesn’t do it justice or even represent it accurately. While Young Adult does have it’s funny moments, it is actually quite depressing…but then aren’t all the good stories? Found at YouTube from YoungAdultMovie.

April 6, 2011

Born To Be Wild 3D

This film documents orphaned orangutans and elephants and the extraordinary people who rescue and raise them—saving endangered species one life at a time, with the obligatory Morgan Freeman as your narrator.

It starts this Friday at the IMAX Theater in Apple Valley. [DETAILS.] Found at YouTube from trailers.

April 4, 2011

Mozart’s Requiem

Chorus Polaris and the Golden Valley Orchestra performed Wolfgang Amedeus Mozart’s masterpiece, the Requiem Mass in D Minor yesterday in Columbia Heights. It is one of my absolute favorite works of classical music. I didn’t get a chance to see the performance, but it did get me to thinking about this wonderful scene from the movei Amadeus in which Mozart’s arch-rival, Antonio Salieri, helps him write the Requiem on Mozart’s deathbed. If you haven’t seen the movie, definitely put it in your Netflix que.

This scene is remarkable for a whole host of reasons but I’ll just point out one: It effortlessly breaks down the component parts of a musical masterpiece and in doing so, helps you easily understand how a work of music works, how those elements work together. Found at YouTube from ChipsDubbo.

February 24, 2006

A Scanner Darkly

This is totally cool. There’s a new movie coming out called A Scanner Darkly that’s based on the novel by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. He’s the same mind that brought us The Minority Report and the classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (upon which Blade Runner was based). A Scanner Darkly is written and directed by Richard Linklater and, like his previous Waking Life, is done using the animated technique called rotoscoping.

Anyone who knows me knows I love animation and this movie looks awfully cool. The movie has the same Grand Theft Auto look of the recent Charles Schwab television commercials and that’s probably because it looks like Linklater got Bob Sabiston, the animator who worked on both Waking Life and the Schwab commercials, to work on A Scanner Darkly. Watch the trailer below or use this link for a longer trailer in QuickTime format–it’s worth the download time.