I think I’ve enjoyed every feature Cuaron has made, from Great Expectations to Prisoner of Azkaban to Children of Men. After being delayed from its original release date in 2012 (likely due to the substantial amount of visual effects work), this trailer proves that Gravity might be his most ambitious yet.

YouTube commenter norealname90 says it best:

Hang on a second… It’s a buddy cop film where the hapless black side-kick is POTUS. Now that’s a weird angle for a Die Hard clone.

Since Disney scooped up Lucasfilm late last year, it’s been impossible to ignore the prospect of more Star Wars films, but the new generation of filmmakers at the helm clearly seem to have a different idea of how to keep things fun. This amusing, self-deprecating jab what must be immense pressure to turn out something that won’t make millions of man-children weep themselves to sleep at night feels like some new level of meta-commentary that might just be more entertaining than, well, the prospect of more Star Wars films.

If you give a certain kind of rodent the option of hitting two buttons, and one of the buttons, when you touch it, dispenses food 40% of the time, and one of the buttons when you touch it dispenses food 60% percent of the time, this certain kind of rodent very quickly figures out never to touch the 40% button ever again. So when a studio is attempting to determine on a project-by-project basis what will work, instead of backing a talented filmmaker over the long haul, they’re actually increasing their chances of choosing wrong.

Good for him. Soderbergh has made both smart and entertaining films in his career—including one of my all-time favorites, 1998′s Out of Sight—and although he’s already announced his eventual retirement, I’m glad to finally see there’s substantial reasoning behind it. It’s sad that such a talented filmmaker has become so discouraged by the business of it all (this all reminds me of fellow ’90s indie scene alum Kevin Smith’s recent change in direction over the last couple of years), but I like to think sentiments like Soderbergh’s will influence other dissatisfied filmmakers and artists to blaze their own trails.

More at Deadline.com

Webcomic juggernaut Homestuck is beginning an extended hiatus while creator Andrew Hussie goes to work on the videogame, for which he not long ago ran a very successful Kickstarter campaign. The “Year 4 Megapause,” as he’s named the hiatus, might be bad for the comic’s literal millions of fans, but for people who’ve been putting off catching up with the the breakout hit, it represents a perfect opportunity. (We here at SPJ have been fans for a while. And by “we,” we mean “Paul.”)

If’ve you’ve been wondering who the scores of grey-faced, orange-horned cosplayers at every damn anime and SF con in the country are supposed to be, now’s your chance to find out.

Things get awkward and uncomfortable right off the top as we discuss David O. Russell’s 1996 comedy Flirting with Disaster, including its place in the ’90s indie comedy arena, Russell’s evolution as a filmmaker, the comedy of Ben Stiller, the uneasiness of Alan Alda and more. Afterwards, next episode’s supercharged Movie Club pick!

Have your say in the comments below, send us an e-mail or give us a call at 657-444-SODA. If you haven’t already, subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. Let’s be a happy family together.

Follow us on Twitter: @SodapopJournal | @pts | @MrHoward

It hasn’t been mentioned much, but during a dicey nuclear summit showdown in last weekend’s box office champ G.I. Joe: Retaliation, there are a surprising number of bold jabs at North Korea and its general incompetence/jackassery. Is it a coincidence that North Korea has thrown a tantrum on the world stage as of late? They know movies aren’t real, don’t they? Maybe, maybe not.

More glimpses of chaos all around the world, including a peek at a harrowing incident aboard an airliner with you know what.

Watch at Apple.com

It’s surely easier to sell an arthouse film as enormously entertaining than it is to highlight the fact that, say, “the vapidity of this milieu is deeply criticized”, which I wrote in the same review. But in a weird way, this marketing angle—with which the studio is pulling a bit of a bait and switch on America’s unaware youth—dovetails nicely with the film’s themes, drawing in teens wanting some mindless entertainment and delivering something considerably more substantial. And it makes Korine both a kind of cinematic troll (pranking kids with a helping of Michael Mann and Terrence Malick) and a weird sort of hero, smuggling an arthouse film with serious ambitions into multiplexes by selling it as a teen comedy.

More at Film.com

via BRENT’S BACK TRAILER – YouTube

This episode we discuss Bruce Brown’s 1971 feature documentary On Any Sunday, its enduring impact on motorcycle enthusiasts around the world and how documentaries have changed over the years. Afterwards, we deliberate on House of Cards, Netflix, Django Unchained and then reveal our next Movie Club pick!

Have your say in the comments below, send us an e-mail or give us a call at 657-444-SODA. If you haven’t already, subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. We’ll be your best friends.

Follow us on Twitter: @SodapopJournal | @pts | @MrHoward

Silver Linings Playbook is Russell’s second masterpiece, after 1999′s prescient modern classic Three Kings (the best film about both Iraq Wars, even though it was made four years before the second one started). Some have criticized Playbook as yet another manic pixie dream girl romantic comedy. To be sure, this is a commercial film made for multiplex audiences. But the intention to make a film for the masses challenging American society’s most prevalent remaining stigma — against people with mental illness — is what makes Silver Linings Playbook so great. In the B story of The Fighter, Christian Bale’s crackhead with a heart of gold was portrayed as a funny, loyal, charismatic guy who struggled with awful addictions as opposed to some poor bastard trapped in a Requiem For A Dream-esque black hole of depravity. Silver Linings thrusts that struggle into the forefront with an even tougher fight: against one’s own brain. For those of us who have loved or spent time with a person with bipolar disorder, Bradley Cooper’s performance as Pat Solitano nails it: the endearingly unfiltered social interactions, the maddening lack of self-awareness, the egotistical refusal to submit to treatment, the hair-trigger mood swings that can take a situation from being scary to funny to annoying to sad in the span of five minutes. If you don’t love a person with mental illness, it may seem like wacky movie writing for a middle-aged man to wake up his parents at 3 AM to scream about Ernest Hemingway, but trust me, it’s as real as it gets. Silver Linings has a happy ending, but it doesn’t skimp on the horror of Pat’s inability to control his anger and tendency to lash out mentally and physically against his elderly parents (an angelic Jacki Weaver and Robert De Niro in his best role since Casino).

Behind the camera, Russell is a master of his medium, combining crowd-pleasing accessibility with artsy substance better than anyone since Soderbergh circa Out Of Sight. His finely-tuned screenplay fully fleshes out its nearly dozen principals all while managing to clock in at a briskly-paced two hours. At its heart, though, is Russell’s deeply personal story of weathering the storm of mental illness and the lessons that can be learned from every human being, no matter how damaged.

Honorable mentions: The Master is an immaculately-crafted masterpiece about what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object, and I think its first auditing scene will be heralded in future years as one of the greatest scenes in movie history. Django Unchained is about as punk rock as movies get, a bold and audacious spin on decades of cinematic racial politics. The Dark Knight Rises is the overwhelmingly ambitious best chapter of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and the pinnacle of superhero filmmaking. It’s all downhill from here.

Here’s a legitimately longer look (sorry, Iron Man 3) at what was easily the winner of this year’s Super Bowl trailers. It took a decade to figure out what it wanted to be when it grew up, but since Fast Five, I’m really getting a kick out of what this franchise has become.

For most of the half-hour, “Customer Loyalty” was the wacky ensemble show. But in that final, terrific phone fight between Jim and Pam, you could all but hear the old machinery waking up and sliding into place.

Even though I wasn’t caught up with much of what’s happened with Pam and Jim over the years (A daughter? Philadelphia?), the final minutes of this episode felt like the show dug deep to remind us of what they’ve always represented since the beginning—the emotional heart and soul of The Office.

More at The Office Watch: Lowering the Boom Mic | TIME.com

With an artist as mercurial (and as historically Internet-hostile) as Prince, this is a significant development, though it’s worth asking if the new material is any good. The answer is a qualified yes.

Well now.

More at Prince’s New Web Site : The New Yorker

We’re back for 2013 with our discussion of 1991′s The Last Boy Scout. Plus some of our favorites from 2012 and the next Movie Club pick!

Have your say in the comments below, send us an e-mail or give us a call at 657-444-SODA. If you haven’t already, subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. We’ll be your best friends.

Follow us on Twitter: @SodapopJournal | @pts | @MrHoward