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2 items from 2009

11 September 2009 11:07 AM, PDT | GreenCine | See recent GreenCine news »

By Simon Augustine, M.Div

Introduction

Moviegoers and Madmen

Men are more interested in what they see when dreaming than what they see when awake.

- Diogenes

The movie theater is a miniature mental asylum. A temporary home made of cushioned seats (and padded, sound-proof walls) for the bereft, the dazed, the longing, the beautiful losers; men and women who need images almost as much as they need real people.

Maybe that explains why some of the most iconic and compelling characters in American cinematic history are those who embody madness in one of its many forms; like we moviegoers who watch and live vicariously through these fictional people, the characters themselves struggle with a relationship between reality and image, trying to find a fulcrum between the outside world and imagination: Randall P. McMurphy, irreverent would-be savior of "The Cuckoo’s Nest;" Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes, deranged stalker/fan par excellance, »

- underdog

3 September 2009 4:47 AM, PDT | GetTheBigPicture.net | See recent Get The Big Picture news »

Well, if you thought Hollywood had already scraped the bottom of the barrel, you were sorely mistaken. Granted, not as sorely mistaken as someone who will pay money to see Big Momma's House 3 expecting to find 90 minutes of entertainment, but that's a hard level of disappointment to match.

I guess I'm the dope, but I thought Madea pretty much killed the guy-dressed-as-a-grandma bit for everybody else. Perhaps, though, the success of those films makes this seem more attractive to the outside-the-box thinkers at Fox, who have hired Randi Mayem Singer to deliver what's sure to be an all-important script.

I hadn't heard of Singer, but it turns out she co-wrote Mrs. Doubtfire, making her a perfect candidate for the drag sub-genre. »

- Colin Boyd

2 items from 2009