Blog Feed: The Long Take

Long Overdue Sound Advice Comes From Clint Eastwood

Published on 2009-02-26 17:18:00

On Jokes About RacesClint Eastwood just became my personal hero.In a recent interview with Der Spiegel magazine, veteran actor/director declared that "We're all spending too much time and energy trying to be politically correct about everything" while nostalgically recounting the years when they "constantly made jokes about different races" without excessively worrying about being labeled a 'racist'. He wisely understands that the road to fully integrating any racial minority to any society they [..] > read more

Oscars 2008 - Who Should Win Tonight?

Published on 2009-02-22 09:55:00

And A Brief Oscar CommentaryLet me be the first to acknowledge that I couldn't write about this year's frequently nominated films or the awards ceremonies themselves as much as I would be happy to have written. If you look back at my post where I declare that I would be doing some more article series every year during awards season, you will see that the sheer enthusiasm reflected from those paragraphs is not even closely matched by the amount of work I was able to produce. Nevertheless, January [..] > read more

A Closer Look At The Past and Present Of 'Best Original Screenplay' Category

Published on 2009-02-21 17:17:00

Note: Originally, I have written this article for the LAMB Devours the Oscars, which is a 24-part article series brought to you by Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB has been published for a couple of weeks now (I am the last one before 'Best Picture), each covering a different category of the Oscars. It's definitely worth a peak!It's a well-known fact that when it comes to the Best Picture categor [..] > read more

Lat Den Ratte Komma In / Let The Right One In (2008)

Published on 2009-02-10 01:43:00

A Film To RememberBest horror films do not scare you as much in your seat as they do afterwards. But more importantly, they are not lamentably hollow at their core - they have other reasons to exist than, say, startling people in the darkness or maybe giving shy new lovers an excuse to get physically closer. That's why, above all else, it's this writer's humble opinion that Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is without doubt the best horror film ever made to this day. In an age where horror film genr [..] > read more

Revolutionary Road (2008)

Published on 2009-01-26 01:41:00

An Intelligent Premise Gone BadRevolutionary Road is a film where men last less than 30 seconds and women would be content with even 3 because they always have more pressing issues. For most of them it's the daily humdrum of suburban life while for April Wheeler, it's the continuous effort to find a way to start living the life she had envisioned for herself when she fell in love and got married. For this cause, she is even willing to work herself, take the responsibility to look after the famil [..] > read more

Who Should've Won, Who Should Win & Who Deserved

Published on 2009-01-25 00:23:00

More Featured Articles For The Awards SeasonI have been doing not so bad with the awards season film reviews that I had promised would be the primary feature on The Long Take until the end of Oscar Night, if you don't mind me saying that. I look back and see I have posted 7 reviews that is relevant and 10 posts in total this month and this is way above my average. I will take this chance to congratulate myself for learning how to fulfill my promises.So far I have been posting reviews of films on [..] > read more

Ghost Town (2008)

Published on 2009-01-24 19:59:00

A Film By David Koepp The Talent NeutralizerBefore we go into the latest film that was privileged to star Ricky Gervais in it (of which there are only a handful), let's pause for a moment to pay our respects to the career of writer/director David Koepp, who has been ruining, with mesmerizing skill and determination, a high variety of promising projects for a couple of years now. I am aware that he co-wrote Jurassic Park, which happens to be one of my favorite films, but I have strong faith in Mi [..] > read more

Frozen River (2008)

Published on 2009-01-20 02:41:00

Ankle-Deep Waters Of StorytellingUntil a short while ago, I had been trying my hand in writing short stories and novellas. During all my seemingly-endless efforts to create, I was lucky enough to have a wonderful woman as both by mentor and my tutor, who called me -much to my embarrassment- her 'fellow writer'. She was a professional writer, she had novels which I had read and admired. When I asked her to sign them for me, that's what she wrote: "To my fellow writer, whose works I tremendously e [..] > read more

Milk (2008)

Published on 2009-01-17 21:34:00

Harvey Milk Deserves More Than Awards Season HollywoodDespite the fact that it's quite far from being a cinematical masterpiece, Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain was a landmark on many aspects. It was one of the few gay-themed films ever to be nominated for Best Picture in Academy Awards. More importantly it was the first gay romance/drama to receive mainstream appreciation throughout the world. It was one of the rare cases where an Asian director tackled an entirely American concept and succeeded i [..] > read more

Frost/Nixon (2008)

Published on 2009-01-14 05:35:00

Life Is Stranger Than Fiction SometimesIf you had been following Jim Emerson's blog this year, you should've had noticed several jewels that he wrote whenever he had some spare time from his rather pointless and puerile campaign to prove that Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight was not that much of a spectacle that pretty much everybody thought it was. Among the latest of such jewels is an article named: Frost/Nixon/Milk: Get Real, where he makes a tremendously accurate point; such that just bec [..] > read more