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By T.J. Stiles
$23.88
By Richard Ellis
$10.88
$23
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imdb.com
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By Richard Schickel — Despite landing the Oscar for best foreign film, not to mention some good acting, “In a Better World” aims for the heart—and misses.
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imdb.com
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By Richard Schickel — Democracy is ever a fragile thing, especially in states that have no tradition of democratic rule and have, instead, a tradition of self-serving rule by self-appointed and often brutal elites.
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AP / Mario Torrisi/dapd
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She was a bona fide movie star by age 12, thanks to a horsey little number called “National Velvet,” but it’s safe to say that Elizabeth Taylor was able to avoid the curse of the child actor, given the countless memorable screen moments she produced over the next 50 years.
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imdb.com
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By Richard Schickel — “Jane Eyre” and “Battle: Los Angeles” travel different roads but both end up in the same dismal place.
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In this excerpt from his new book, “Conversations With Scorsese,” veteran movie reviewer and documentary filmmaker Richard Schickel describes the character, formative struggles and career challenges of the celebrated director, with whom he shared a rich dialogue spanning several decades.
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imdb.com
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By Richard Schickel — Free will is not a subject that comes up a lot in the movies—not, certainly, as the main topic of dramatic conversation. On the other hand, however, it could be argued that it is the hidden subject of almost every film.
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Wikimedia Commons / Nate Mandos (CC-BY-SA)
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Well, really, what else did you think former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger would do with his free time? Having left the Golden State’s governor’s post to non-action-hero Jerry Brown, Schwarzenegger promptly tweeted his hopeful return to Hollywood ...
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artisnotdead.blogspot.com
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By Deanne Stillman — February 1st marks the 50th anniversary of the release of “The Misfits,” the iconic and underrated film about Nevada mustangers who brutally capture wild horses so they can sell them to the slaughterhouse.
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By Amy Goodman — While much of the attention is focused on the celebrities, Sundance has actually become a key intersection of art, film, politics and dissent.
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By Richard Schickel — I don’t know when the practice began or who had the initial brainstorm, but it is now written in fiery letters that at the end of every year that movie reviewers must set aside the really fun stuff and spend a day or two tripping down short-term memory lane to concoct a list of the year’s 10 best movies.
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imdb.com
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By Richard Schickel — As its title forthrightly states, writer-director Mike Leigh’s “Another Year” simply records the spring-to-spring passage of the annual round of days in these very ordinary lives. I think, for reasons difficult to explain, that it is a near-to-great film.
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Illustration by Jennifer Grey
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The path out of the proverbial closet is still riddled with potential career pitfalls for gay actors, according to veteran screen star Richard Chamberlain, who himself came out in 2003 but, as he tells The Advocate, wouldn’t recommend that closeted actors angling for leading roles follow his example.
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thecompanymenfilm.com
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By Richard Schickel — What we get here, putting it as charitably as possible, are symbolic figures, the semi-fictional, least common denominators of newsmagazine cover stories that are supposed to put a human face on grim statistics.
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imdb.com
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By Richard Schickel — The predominant image of this film—repeated in a dozen variants—is of a lone woman walking or driving the empty roads of this beautiful, unnamed country, seeking a salvation that is both practical and spiritual.
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Flickr / 200MoreMontrealStencils (CC-BY)
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How do you give out an Oscar to someone who doesn’t want to come and get it? That’s the quandary the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is facing, as Jean-Luc Godard, French New Wave auteur and one of this year’s honorary Academy Award recipients ... (continued)
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waitingforsuperman.com/gallery
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By Marcia Alesan Dawkins — This depiction of our nation’s teachers is typical of those who promote a particular reform agenda calling for charter schools, anti-unionism and merit pay based on high-stakes test scores. While it’s fine to promote this agenda, it’s also ethical to provide a balanced critique.
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thesocialnetwork-movie.com
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By Kasia Anderson — The 1970s were branded the “Me Decade” long ago, but whatever shadowy committee makes such important temporal pronouncements might want to reconsider that call in light of the last 10 years.
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imdb.com
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Historically, the notion of cross-promotion in the film world has frequently involved plastic products optimized for Happy Meals—collect ’em all! But with changing times and audiences come all new ways to part moviegoers with their pocket money.
Posted on Aug 17, 2010
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Whether by chance or design, Hollywood turned the weekend of Friday, Aug. 13, 2010, into a cinematic tug of war between the sexes, with two of the most narrowly gender-targeted movies imaginable coming out on the same day. (continued)
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Mr. Fish
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By Mr. Fish — The following is an interview with professor Noam Chomsky examining the question of why the counterculture, which had been so endemic to the politics of dissent in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, no longer seems to exist in any viable way.
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Courtesy Magnolia Pictures
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By Richard Schickel — “Countdown to Zero” is an intelligent, graphically sophisticated documentary film about what is almost certainly the most important issue confronting the world today—nuclear proliferation.
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IMDB / Warner Brothers
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Christopher Nolan’s epic and ambitious new blockbuster is a fascinating, skillfully made brain twister that gives Philip K. Dick a run for his existential money. But at the core of Nolan’s film is a troubling idea that won’t go away. (Spoilers!)
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AP / Roberto Pfeil
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Roman Polanski is a lucky man—and as of Monday, he’s also a free man after a Swiss judge decided that the justification for Polanski’s extradition to the U.S. was flawed. So, the “freedom-restricting measures against him have been revoked.” Updated
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Zeitgeist Films
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By Richard Schickel — “Jud Süss” may be the most odious movie ever made. And now we have a talking-heads documentary about it, “Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss,” the work of Felix Moeller, in which the children and grandchildren of the film’s director, Veit Harlan, are invited to comment on the patriarch’s noxious work.
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imdb.com
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By Eunice Wong — Frederick Wiseman’s new documentary, “La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet,” is a celebration of the ephemeral nature of performance and the fleeting glory of the human body.
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Michael Coles, Red Floor Pictures
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By Emily Wilson — Mark Hopkins, the director of the new documentary “Living in Emergency,” about the international humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières—Doctors Without Borders—compares the group to the Special Forces. Not many people get accepted to the program, and of those who are, few go on to do a second mission.
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By Amy Goodman — More than just a brilliant singer and actress, Horne was a pioneering civil rights activist, breaking racial barriers for generations of African-Americans who have followed her.
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“Machete,” a phony trailer bundled into Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 collaboration “Grindhouse,” is getting expanded into a full-length movie. Rodriguez just sent out an updated trailer, with a “special Cinco de Mayo message to Arizona.”
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Wikimedia Commons
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India is about to enter taboo test mode as it prepares for the release of “Dunno Y ... Na Jaane Kyun,” a film many are calling India’s “Brokeback Mountain.” It’s hoped that the film’s depiction of a gay relationship between two men will help break down social anxieties toward homosexuality.
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Fox.com and Flickr
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Friday marked a sad day for American exceptionalism. Jack Bauer, the heart-throbby, knows-no-rules lead character in “24,” will no longer appear on TV. Fox announced its decision to cancel the series at the end of its current, eighth season. But fear not, torture fans: Producers are looking to turn “24” into a feature film.
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Mark Fellman / WETA courtesy 20th Century Fox
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Fans of James Cameron’s “Avatar” who are anxiously waiting to watch, pause for commentary and perhaps act out the film in the comfort of their own homes now have a date, and an auspicious one, when they can make that magic happen: April 22. Twentieth Century Fox is giving “Avatar” ... (continued)
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AP / Amy Sancetta
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By Robert Scheer — What a shame that the one movie about the Iraq war that has a chance of being viewed by a large worldwide audience should be so disappointing. According to press reports, members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally found a movie about the Iraq war they liked because it is “apolitical.”
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imdb.com
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It was the first Iraq war movie to really break through, and now “The Hurt Locker” has won six Academy Awards, including best picture and best director, marking the first time an Oscar for directing has gone to a woman. The movie opens with a quote from Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges. (continued)
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Los Angeles Times
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It’s Oscar night, but that should not cause us to ignore the results of a recently released study of the 100 top-grossing films of 2007 showing that men filled almost all the directing jobs, with women accounting for only about 3 percent. Writing and producing find similarly problematic, but less pronounced, gender gaps.
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imdb.com
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He and his lawyer waited until the Oscar ballots were in, but on Tuesday, Master Sgt. Jeffrey Sarver, a U.S. Army soldier who worked as a bomb disposal specialist in Iraq, filed a lawsuit claiming that he had provided the real-world inspiration for actor Jeremy Renner’s character in “The Hurt Locker.” Why did he wait until the votes were cast?
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imdb.com
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It’s the season of the knockdown, drag-out Oscar campaign, and one of this year’s Academy Award nominees, “The Hurt Locker” co-producer Nicolas Chartier, has thrown down in a mighty conspicuous (and potentially self-defeating) way.
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imdb.com
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Since 2003, filmmakers have repeatedly come up short in terms of box office sales and critical support for movies that focus on the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—until director Kathryn Bigelow came on the scene last year with “The Hurt Locker,” that is.
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By Peter Z. Scheer — The last 10 years were abundant with films that pushed limits and attacked real issues in real time. Here are 20 of the best socially conscious, topical, progressive movies from a crazy decade.
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Mark Fellman / WETA courtesy 20th Century Fox
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By Peter Z. Scheer — The film industry has produced no shortage of spectacles over the last hundred years, from “Ben Hur” to “Star Wars.” In terms of technological sorcery and visual wonder, James Cameron’s “Avatar” now ranks chief among them.
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AP / Robert F. Bukaty
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Which industries actually thrive in the midst of a crippling recession? There are many ways to approach that question, but over the past year, Americans looking for low-impact escapism on a budget went to the movies, and they did so in numbers that might put some of the hand-wringing about the impact of the Internet and the economy on the film business on hold, at least for the time being.
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A British comedy that follows a group of bumbling terrorists trying to pull off an atrocity has won approval from the taste-makers at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie was reportedly inspired by real-life tales of farce in terrorist cells, which, in the words of the filmmaker’s office, “have the same group dynamics as stag parties.”
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By Amy Goodman — The 70-year-old film classic bears close watching this year, perhaps more than in any other, for the message woven into the lyrics, written during the Great Depression by Oscar-winning lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg.
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By Eugene Robinson — Hasn’t Roman Polanski suffered enough? Didn’t he endure all those cool, gray, rainy Paris winters? Didn’t he also drug and rape a 13-year-old girl?
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Flickr / Rennet Stowe
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Let’s get something straight, America. Charles Darwin was right. Only 39 percent of you believe that, but his theory of evolution is the basis of modern biological science. Deal with it. A new film about the man can’t get distribution in the U.S. because—this is embarrassing just to type—150 years after “On the Origin of Species,” he’s too controversial in these parts.
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telegraph.co.uk
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Everyone’s favorite world leader/womanizer is in the news again after a film director accused the Italian prime minister of censorship. Italian state television has refused to show a film trailer that accuses Silvio Berlusconi of creating a “frivolous media culture,” and many think the PM’s incredible influence over the media has something to do with it.
Posted on Sep 3, 2009
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Whatever one thinks of his politics, Elia Kazan was inarguably one of the 20th century’s greatest Broadway and Hollywood directors. A new book reveals the master at work.
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Warner Brothers Pictures
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Although the pope and other prominent Christians have registered their disapproval of the Harry Potter franchise in the past, the newest film in the series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” is getting glowing reviews from fellow members of their fold. It’s not quite on the level of WWHPD? but some are noting the teenage wand-wielder’s similarities to a certain other powerful young man from a very popular book.
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aceshowbiz.com
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Vanity Fair’s Brett Berk has detected a mini-pattern playing out in the film world, starring (but certainly not limited to) “Brüno,” Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest attempt at biting social satire. It’s “Pinkface”—or the cinematic phenomenon in which straight guys play gay by way of trying to “lay claim to homosexuality as a ‘topic’” with less-than-stellar results, judging by Berk’s sum-up of the situation.
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Flickr / igKnition
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Sean Penn has pulled out of two upcoming film roles and may be taking a year off from acting. No word yet on his politicking schedule. The star had been set to appear in “Cartel” and “The Three Stooges.” Yes, those Three Stooges.
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AP photo / Ed Andrieski
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While trying to teach her students about homophobia, Debra Taylor could have done without what appeared to be an illustrative demonstration: The Oklahoma high school teacher was forced to resign in a controversy that grew out of a gay-related project undertaken by her class. Taylor and her students had been working on their own production of “The Laramie Project,” a play and film based on the murder of Matthew Shepard.
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