Saturday, April 28, 2012

New Quiz from SLIFR: SISTER CLODAGH'S SUPERFICIALLY SPIRITUAL, AMBITIOUSLY AGNOSTIC LAST-RITES-OF-SPRING MOVIE QUIZ




Dennis Cozzalio of Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule always does a great job coming up with questions that leave me mulling my answers for days. In fact, he's so good at it, that I usually take so long to answer the questions that by the time I finish answering them, there's a new quiz to tackle. Luckily, I hunkered down with a good beer the other night and found the time to answer Dennis' spring quiz. I've omitted the questions that I chose to pass on.

Onto the answers...

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

The Dead Pool


I’m of two minds about The Dead Pool: on one hand, it’s a fitting end to the series as it doesn’t take itself too seriously and has fun with Callahan’s final outing; on the other hand, it’s sad to see the series switch gears stylistically on its last entry, turning Dirty Harry into just another action hero of the already crowded pool of the 1980s. Perhaps the studio wasn’t pleased with the darker subject matter that Eastwood tackled in Sudden Impact; whatever the case, The Dead Pool has not just the weakest premise and villain of the entire series but also the goofiest. Seen in any other context than a riff on the genre Eastwood helped create, The Dead Pool instills the type of indifference that shouldn't exist in such a successfully visceral film series.