News Ticker

It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching can help.

Popular Articles

  • Deep Impact (1998) -vs- Armageddon (1998)

    August 22, 2008 106

    It’s the End of the World as We Know It. Back in 1998, during the Year of Lewinsky, Paramount/DreamWorks got into a game of chicken with Touchstone. The result was two disaster films about comets that were about to crash into the Earth and destroy all life. The two films could share a single log-line:

    When a “planet-killer” sized comet is discovered to be on an imminent collision course with Earth, an international space effort — led by the United States — sets out to deflect the object by setting off nuclear weapons deep inside its core so that it will miss Earth and, therefore, save humanity.

    I won’t tell you how the Earth fared yet, but I can tell you that the point of impact in the theaters was about two months apart. Talk about operational redundancy!

    Even though Deep Impact was the first in the theaters, for our purposes, we’re giving the “Defending Champion” designation to Armageddon because it won at the box-office. Armageddon grossed $553-million world-wide to the Deep Impact gross of $349-million. Incredibly, IMDB (the Internet Movie Database) has it as a virtual tie with both films scoring a 5.9 out of ten audience rating. […]

  • Wyatt Earp (1994) -vs- Tombstone (1993)

    June 29, 2011 84
  • Without Limits (1998) -vs- Prefontaine (1997)

    July 14, 2007 44
  • Hairspray (2007) -vs- Hairspray (1988)

    August 6, 2007 38
  • Warrior (2011) -vs- The Fighter (2010)

    September 6, 2011 35

Random Articles

  • The Adventures of Tintin in 3D (2011)

    December 15, 2011 1

    Tintin felt like a real missed opportunity.

    When you create a world inside a computer, isn’t one of the advantages that you can do things that you can’t do with brick-and-mortar sets and flesh-and-blood actors? Tintin only really comes alive during a couple of gigantic set pieces—a chase through an Arab village, a duel with cargo cranes—that would have been prohibitively expensive to do pre-CGI. The rest of the time, it’s like we’re watching actors wearing too much foundation.

    The plot itself is creaky, starting with a ridiculous coincidence, and lurching forward from there. But the real disappointment is that despite the intricate motion-capture used to create them on screen, the characters are all lifeless. What makes Indiana Jones so wonderful is the emotion that Harrison Ford illuminates him with—his delight, when he feels it (his reunion with Marion in Crystal Skull) is glowing and childlike, but most of the time he seems to face the world with something like resigned annoyance (“Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes?”). It’s that personality that locks us into the character and the movie. […]

  • Superman -vs- The American Way?

    May 1, 2011 3
  • Dear John (2010) -vs- The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)

    February 18, 2010 11
  • The Ghost Writer (2010) -vs- Shutter Island (2010)

    March 31, 2010 6
  • Next (2007) -vs- Blade Runner (1982)

    May 15, 2007 5