Sometimes the summer provides some of the best movie moments of the year, but they often go overlooked during award season. So, to make up for it, I’ve come up with the Summer Movie Awards, giving credit to flicks that come out in the warmest months.
Category: Columns
Fargo Film Festival 2016 Highlights
March 18
After a drive from Bemidji, Minn., through the rain and snow yesterday, I finally arrived in Fargo for the city’s 16th annual Film Festival.
Thursday marked the first time since 2012, during my last semester at Minnesota State University in Moorhead right across the Red River from Fargo, that I had gone to the festival and it was great to be back.
2015 Summer Movie Awards
The sci-fi thriller “Ex Machina” led the way this summer with four awards. Also having a strong summer was “Mad Max: Fury Road” with three awards won.
On the action front, “Jurassic World” led the way winning Best Action and Best Action Scene.
Does the Academy need a new category for unique performances?
Every year Academy Awards are given to deserving nominees in the best actor, actress, supporting actor and supporting actress categories. Despite some upsets here and undeserving winners there, most of the time, the argument can be made that the Academy gets these categories right.
The problem is, despite having deserving winners and more so deserving nominees, there is still a category of performances that are left out. They are the more unique forms of acting. The ones where the actor can’t necessarily be seen, but the performance can still have a major effect on the audience.
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Robin Williams’ death: A loss that spans generations
One of my first experiences at a movie theater was watching “Aladdin” on the big screen in 1992.
It was great not only because it was a fantastic movie to watch, but also because it opened the door for me to Robin Williams, an actor who would make some of the best movies that I would see in my childhood.
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A farewell to Spill.com
It’s an end of an era. It’s an end to a chapter in my life. It’s the end of Spill.com.
For those who don’t know what the site is, who have never heard of the site and never visited, let me inform you a bit on what Spill.com was.
Spill is, at least until the end of December, a website created by an Austin, Texas, based film critic named Korey Coleman. Coleman, along with four other Austin area film critics started working together well over six years ago and posted various content about film on the web.
Blockbuster closing and video rental memories
I grew up in a small Midwestern town with a population between 5,000 and 7,000 people. A blockbuster store never showed up in that town, instead we had small community video rental stores. No matter what type of rental store was in any community, though, mine or yours, from huge corporate to locally owned rental spots, the memories remain the same.
To start off with, some have discussed how they are happy to see Blockbuster go down. The fact is, many local video rentals were in fact forced out by the large video rental chain. However, this isn’t what this column is about. In the end, Blockbuster was fighting the same battle that every video rental store is fighting. And with the latest blow, the remaining blockbuster stores closing, it represents the last of a group of warriors falling in battle.
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Matthew Liedke on Film 