Although Oscar-winner Gary Oldman has had numerous memorable roles in his life, most fans will know him as either Sirius Black from the Harry Potter film series or as James Gordon from Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Oldman made both these roles his own, but Sirius Black is especially noteworthy here, as Oldman remains the only actor who portrayed the character to date, so most Harry Potter fans actually have a tough time imagining anyone else in the role besides Oldman. Still, from some recent comments, it seems that Oldman himself wasn’t satisfied with the role, and that has sparked some controversy.
During a podcast talk in December 2023, Oldman said the following about his interpretation of the beloved character:
“I think my work is mediocre in. No, I do. Maybe if I had read the books like Alan [Rickman], if I had got ahead of the curve, if I had known what’s coming,...
During a podcast talk in December 2023, Oldman said the following about his interpretation of the beloved character:
“I think my work is mediocre in. No, I do. Maybe if I had read the books like Alan [Rickman], if I had got ahead of the curve, if I had known what’s coming,...
- 5/23/2024
- by Arthur S. Poe
- Fiction Horizon
Veteran actor Gary Oldman has touched on his own relationship with aging, as well as his path to sobriety while commenting on the evocative themes in Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope.
Sorrentino’s love letter to Naples, Parthenope follows a physically and intellectually captivating young woman, played by breakout star Celeste Dalla Porta, across decades as the film balances youth, freedom, and yearning against a backdrop of enchanting Neapolitans.
At the Cannes Film Festival‘s press conference for the film, Oldman was asked about his character, an aging American writer called John Cheever. “If there are any similarities and there are a few between me and Mr Cheever, to connect it directly to the movie… I have a stepson (in Italy) who is 16 and I’m sure he longs to be 18 and 21. You’re always wishing when you’re young, you actually wish away your youth to be older,” Oldman said.
Sorrentino’s love letter to Naples, Parthenope follows a physically and intellectually captivating young woman, played by breakout star Celeste Dalla Porta, across decades as the film balances youth, freedom, and yearning against a backdrop of enchanting Neapolitans.
At the Cannes Film Festival‘s press conference for the film, Oldman was asked about his character, an aging American writer called John Cheever. “If there are any similarities and there are a few between me and Mr Cheever, to connect it directly to the movie… I have a stepson (in Italy) who is 16 and I’m sure he longs to be 18 and 21. You’re always wishing when you’re young, you actually wish away your youth to be older,” Oldman said.
- 5/22/2024
- by Lily Ford
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
On Wednesday at the Cannes press conference for Parthenope, actor Gary Oldman was asked about throwing his performance as Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban under the bus.
Toward the end of last year, Oldman told Happy Sad Confused podcast host Josh Horowitz that he thought his work as Black was “mediocre.”
The Oscar winner said at the time, “Maybe if I had read the books like Alan [Rickman], if I had got ahead of the curve, if I had known what’s coming, I honestly think I would have played it differently.”
Oldman had a word for Potter fans today: He means no harm.
Oldman said he didn’t mean to “disparage anyone out there who are fans of Harry Potter and the films and the character who I think is much beloved.”
“What I meant by that is, as any artist or any actor or painter,...
Toward the end of last year, Oldman told Happy Sad Confused podcast host Josh Horowitz that he thought his work as Black was “mediocre.”
The Oscar winner said at the time, “Maybe if I had read the books like Alan [Rickman], if I had got ahead of the curve, if I had known what’s coming, I honestly think I would have played it differently.”
Oldman had a word for Potter fans today: He means no harm.
Oldman said he didn’t mean to “disparage anyone out there who are fans of Harry Potter and the films and the character who I think is much beloved.”
“What I meant by that is, as any artist or any actor or painter,...
- 5/22/2024
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
Gary Oldman took the opportunity to clarify his comments about his acting in the “Harry Potter” franchise during the Cannes press conference for his new film, “Parthenope,” on Wednesday.
When asked about a prior comment in which he disses his performance as Sirius Black as “mediocre,” Oldman said he didn’t mean to “disparage anyone out there who are fans of ‘Harry Potter’ and the films and the character who I think is much beloved.”
“What I meant by that is, as any artist or any actor or painter, you are always hypercritical of your own work,” he continued. “If you’re not, and you’re satisfied with what you’re doing, that would be death to me. If I watched a performance of myself and thought, ‘My God, I’m fantastic in this,’ that would be a sad day.”
He continued, “There was such secrecy that was shrouded around the novels,...
When asked about a prior comment in which he disses his performance as Sirius Black as “mediocre,” Oldman said he didn’t mean to “disparage anyone out there who are fans of ‘Harry Potter’ and the films and the character who I think is much beloved.”
“What I meant by that is, as any artist or any actor or painter, you are always hypercritical of your own work,” he continued. “If you’re not, and you’re satisfied with what you’re doing, that would be death to me. If I watched a performance of myself and thought, ‘My God, I’m fantastic in this,’ that would be a sad day.”
He continued, “There was such secrecy that was shrouded around the novels,...
- 5/22/2024
- by Ellise Shafer
- Variety Film + TV
Paolo Sorrentino embraced the stars of his latest film “Parthenope,” including Gary Oldman, Celeste Della Porta and Stefania Sandrelli, as the film received a 9.5-minute standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday night.
Tears streamed down the face of Della Porta, who plays the title character, and Sorrentino looked visibly moved as he addressed the crowd.
“For me, this movie is a celebration of the journey of my life,” he said. “I want to thank [Cannes general delegate] Thierry Fremaux for the beginning of my journey in cinema 20 years ago.”
His film “The Consequences of Love” premiered at Cannes two decades ago, and the Italian auteur has certainly made his mark on the festival since. He won the festival’s jury prize in 2008 for “Il Divo” and the prize of the ecumenical jury in 2011 for “This Must Be the Place.” Sorrentino has now had seven films compete for the prestigious Palme d’Or.
Tears streamed down the face of Della Porta, who plays the title character, and Sorrentino looked visibly moved as he addressed the crowd.
“For me, this movie is a celebration of the journey of my life,” he said. “I want to thank [Cannes general delegate] Thierry Fremaux for the beginning of my journey in cinema 20 years ago.”
His film “The Consequences of Love” premiered at Cannes two decades ago, and the Italian auteur has certainly made his mark on the festival since. He won the festival’s jury prize in 2008 for “Il Divo” and the prize of the ecumenical jury in 2011 for “This Must Be the Place.” Sorrentino has now had seven films compete for the prestigious Palme d’Or.
- 5/21/2024
- by Nick Vivarelli and Ellise Shafer
- Variety Film + TV
What a world Paolo Sorrentino creates. The Italian director called one of his movies – the one that won the Oscar for Best International Film – “The Great Beauty,” but that could have been the title of lots of them, definitely including “Parthenope,” which premiered on Tuesday in the Main Competition section of the Cannes Film Festival.
In this case, the great beauty could be the film’s title character, a stunning young woman named after a mythological siren inextricably linked with the city of Naples. It could also be the world she inhabits, a sun-drenched coastal city on the Tyrrhenian Sea in the Mediterranean. And it could just as well be the aura that Sorrentino’s movies create, languorous and exquisite and, much of the time, gloriously sad.
“Parthenope” isn’t a Sorrentino breakthrough by any means, but a recapitulation of many of his obsessions. His last film, 2021’s “The Hand of God,...
In this case, the great beauty could be the film’s title character, a stunning young woman named after a mythological siren inextricably linked with the city of Naples. It could also be the world she inhabits, a sun-drenched coastal city on the Tyrrhenian Sea in the Mediterranean. And it could just as well be the aura that Sorrentino’s movies create, languorous and exquisite and, much of the time, gloriously sad.
“Parthenope” isn’t a Sorrentino breakthrough by any means, but a recapitulation of many of his obsessions. His last film, 2021’s “The Hand of God,...
- 5/21/2024
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
It’s no secret that Paolo Sorrentino is profoundly obsessed with the topics of youth and great beauty. Such preoccupations — and several more! — are self-evident in films like “Youth” and “The Great Beauty,” two unbridled displays of Italian maximalism that are every bit as subtle as their titles suggest.
Following 2021’s achingly personal “The Hand of God,” in which the Neapolitan director filtered the agony and the ecstasy of his formative years through the same veil of Fellini-esque sacrilege that he’d previously cast over movies about Silvio Berlusconi and the fading splendor of Roman history, Sorrentino is back on his proverbial bullshit with another sprawling flesh parade that’s more consumed with abstract ideals than it is with the stuff of life itself. Once again, he returns with a rapturously sumptuous film that blurs the line between the sacred and the profane until sex feels like religion and religion feels like sex,...
Following 2021’s achingly personal “The Hand of God,” in which the Neapolitan director filtered the agony and the ecstasy of his formative years through the same veil of Fellini-esque sacrilege that he’d previously cast over movies about Silvio Berlusconi and the fading splendor of Roman history, Sorrentino is back on his proverbial bullshit with another sprawling flesh parade that’s more consumed with abstract ideals than it is with the stuff of life itself. Once again, he returns with a rapturously sumptuous film that blurs the line between the sacred and the profane until sex feels like religion and religion feels like sex,...
- 5/21/2024
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Paolo Sorrentino has done a wide range of films but until his most personal, The Hand of God two years ago (a prize winner in Venice), he had not returned to Naples, the land of his youth, except for the very first feature he made, 2001’s One Man Up. Since then though, he has been to Cannes with his films six times, and his impressive list of movies have included The Consequences of Love, Il Divo, Loro and his Oscar-winning The Great Beauty. There have been more mixed reactions for his starry English-language films like Youth and This Must Be the Place, but Italy seems to drive his creative mojo and may be closest to his heart in the current phase of his filmmaking career when he has found new inspiration by going back to his youth, first in Hand of God which closely reflected his own coming of age in Naples,...
- 5/21/2024
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
Paolo Sorrentino is back in Cannes for the seventh time with “Parthenope,” a love letter to his native Naples but also, as he puts it, a film about his “missed youth” that comes as a natural follow-up to his autobiographical “The Hand of God.” Perhaps more significantly, “Parthenope” – an epic spanning several decades – is Sorrentino’s first female-centric film. Why? “In thinking of a modern hero, it came naturally to me that it would be a heroine, not a man,” he tells Variety.
Let’s start with the film’s titular protagonist, Parthenope. Of course, Neapolitans in Italy are also known as “Parthenopeans.” My impression is that, after returning from Rome to Naples to make “The Hand of God,’ your native city drew you further back into its fold.
It’s a bit more complex, actually, not necessarily just linked to Naples. “Parthenope” was born from a series of long-simmering thoughts and emotional changes.
Let’s start with the film’s titular protagonist, Parthenope. Of course, Neapolitans in Italy are also known as “Parthenopeans.” My impression is that, after returning from Rome to Naples to make “The Hand of God,’ your native city drew you further back into its fold.
It’s a bit more complex, actually, not necessarily just linked to Naples. “Parthenope” was born from a series of long-simmering thoughts and emotional changes.
- 5/19/2024
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
There’s no point in hiring Nicolas Cage if you’re not going to let him rip with a wackadoodle, Ott performance, and he duly delivers in the sly psychological thriller The Surfer. Calibrating his character’s descent into mental and physical disarray so that it happens by evenly distributed degrees, Cage is in only moderately demented form overall here. That suits director Lorcan Finnegan (Without Name, Vivarium) and screenwriter Thomas Martin’s ambitions to call back to and yet also spoof vintage Australian New Wave films like Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout (1971), dreamtime stories about alienated outsiders.
Toxic masculinity, the Big Bad de nos jours, also seems to be on their mind although the performances and cinematic quirks (zooms, jump cuts, all that jazz) are so hammy and gestural there’s nothing subtle about the critique. But that’s what makes it fun.
Unfolding largely on a beach and its...
Toxic masculinity, the Big Bad de nos jours, also seems to be on their mind although the performances and cinematic quirks (zooms, jump cuts, all that jazz) are so hammy and gestural there’s nothing subtle about the critique. But that’s what makes it fun.
Unfolding largely on a beach and its...
- 5/18/2024
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Janet Landgard, who accompanied Burt Lancaster on a portion of his bizarre tour of backyard swimming pools in the acclaimed 1968 drama The Swimmer, has died. She was 75.
Landgard died this week after a very brief bout with brain cancer, actor Paul Petersen told The Hollywood Reporter. She recurred as his love interest on the final three seasons of the ABC family comedy The Donna Reed Show.
On Facebook, Petersen called her “the best TV girlfriend my alternate ego, Jeff Stone, ever had. Janet was gorgeous, inside and out … a flawless Scandinavian beauty that literally stunned jaded Hollywood types into silence. We were always close no matter the time or distance.”
In Columbia Pictures’ The Swimmer — directed by Frank Perry and adapted by his then-wife, Eleanor Perry, from a John Cheever short story in The New Yorker — Landgard was memorable as Julie Ann Hooper, who used to babysit Ned Merrill’s...
Landgard died this week after a very brief bout with brain cancer, actor Paul Petersen told The Hollywood Reporter. She recurred as his love interest on the final three seasons of the ABC family comedy The Donna Reed Show.
On Facebook, Petersen called her “the best TV girlfriend my alternate ego, Jeff Stone, ever had. Janet was gorgeous, inside and out … a flawless Scandinavian beauty that literally stunned jaded Hollywood types into silence. We were always close no matter the time or distance.”
In Columbia Pictures’ The Swimmer — directed by Frank Perry and adapted by his then-wife, Eleanor Perry, from a John Cheever short story in The New Yorker — Landgard was memorable as Julie Ann Hooper, who used to babysit Ned Merrill’s...
- 11/11/2023
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Take a bit of Kafka, throw in some Buñuelian realism, add a dose of John Cheever (circa The Swimmer) and then hand the recipe over to a first-time feature-making Swedish director with fond memories of a childhood spent in Ikea furniture stores, then put together an A-List cast, and you essentially have Mother, Couch.
A World Premiere this weekend at the Toronto Film Festival, this truly surreal, metaphysical mind trip will not be to everyone’s taste, but the cast, including a couple of Oscar winners, will make it go down easier even if some of it more closely resembles a thespian exercise at the Actor’s Studio, rather than a major motion picture. It certainly is watchable, and writer/director Niclas Larsson makes the most of his adaptation of Jerker Virdborg’s book, Mamma I Sofa which centers on a seemingly normal outing to a furniture store but turns...
A World Premiere this weekend at the Toronto Film Festival, this truly surreal, metaphysical mind trip will not be to everyone’s taste, but the cast, including a couple of Oscar winners, will make it go down easier even if some of it more closely resembles a thespian exercise at the Actor’s Studio, rather than a major motion picture. It certainly is watchable, and writer/director Niclas Larsson makes the most of his adaptation of Jerker Virdborg’s book, Mamma I Sofa which centers on a seemingly normal outing to a furniture store but turns...
- 9/10/2023
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
By 2017’s Thin Black Duke, Oxbow’s brand of sludge rock had blossomed into a grandiose blend of art rock, noise, neoclassical, and jazz. Like their uncompromisingly experimental brethren Swans, the San Francisco noise rockers experienced a resurgence in the autumn of their career, one made all the more remarkable by the pace of their output (the band had only released two other albums since 1996’s Serenade in Red).
Oxbow’s latest, Love’s Holiday, was inspired in part by the births of guitarist Niko Wenner’s two children and the death of his father, but that sentimental connection translates into something far removed from mawkish balladeering. Singer Eugene Robinson imbues the very concept of love with an element of foreboding on the album’s opening track, “Dead Ahead.” “Believe it, heed it/This god of love destroys and creates,” he yelps on the second verse.
Sonically, though, Love’s...
Oxbow’s latest, Love’s Holiday, was inspired in part by the births of guitarist Niko Wenner’s two children and the death of his father, but that sentimental connection translates into something far removed from mawkish balladeering. Singer Eugene Robinson imbues the very concept of love with an element of foreboding on the album’s opening track, “Dead Ahead.” “Believe it, heed it/This god of love destroys and creates,” he yelps on the second verse.
Sonically, though, Love’s...
- 7/17/2023
- by Fred Barrett
- Slant Magazine
Robert Gottlieb, the legendary editor at Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf and The New Yorker who helped shape the work of many of the world’s greatest writers over the past six decades, has died, according to Knopf and The New Yorker. He was 92.
A partial list of the literary talents whose work Gottlieb edited includes Nobel laureates such as Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul; bestselling novelists such as John le Carré, Michael Crichton and Ray Bradbury; Hollywood types such as Elia Kazan, Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, Nora Ephron and Lauren Bacall; Pulitzer Prize-winners such as John Cheever, Katharine Graham and Robert Caro; and even a president, Bill Clinton.
Gottlieb was featured in the documentary Turn Every Page, directed by his daughter Lizzie, which premiered at last year’s Tribeca Festival and was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics. The film focuses on Gottlieb and Caro as...
A partial list of the literary talents whose work Gottlieb edited includes Nobel laureates such as Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul; bestselling novelists such as John le Carré, Michael Crichton and Ray Bradbury; Hollywood types such as Elia Kazan, Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, Nora Ephron and Lauren Bacall; Pulitzer Prize-winners such as John Cheever, Katharine Graham and Robert Caro; and even a president, Bill Clinton.
Gottlieb was featured in the documentary Turn Every Page, directed by his daughter Lizzie, which premiered at last year’s Tribeca Festival and was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics. The film focuses on Gottlieb and Caro as...
- 6/14/2023
- by Tom Tapp
- Deadline Film + TV
The captivating opening sequence of Nanni Moretti’s A Brighter Tomorrow (Il Sol dell’Avvenire) watches as a dusty old Fiat passes Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome and pulls up next to the Tiber. A man with a can of red paint and a rope steps out and scoots halfway down the stone wall that hugs the riverbank, neatly painting the words of the title. The whimsical music instantly alludes to Fellini, an homage confirmed soon after by the arrival in town of a Hungarian circus, and for all intents and purposes, the film is Moretti’s Otto e mezzo. Or at least it wants to be.
More than 20 years after winning the Palme d’Or with his shattering grief drama The Son’s Room, Moretti is back with his 14th feature for his regular appointment with Cannes. But after decades of wildly varying success attempting to stretch beyond his signature auto-fictions,...
More than 20 years after winning the Palme d’Or with his shattering grief drama The Son’s Room, Moretti is back with his 14th feature for his regular appointment with Cannes. But after decades of wildly varying success attempting to stretch beyond his signature auto-fictions,...
- 5/24/2023
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
In competition at Cannes, the Italian director’s comedy-drama about a failing film-maker is full of non-comedy and anti-drama – a complete waste of time
Nanni Moretti is the Italian director who will always have a place in our hearts, not least for his masterly The Son’s Room (2001), in my view the greatest Cannes Palme d’Or winner of the century so far. And more recently his cinephile comedy Mia Madre (2015) was tremendous.
But his new film in competition is bafflingly awful: muddled, mediocre and metatextual – a complete waste of time, at once strident and listless. Everything about it is heavy-handed and dull: the non-comedy, the ersatz-pathos, the anti-drama.
It is effectively a film within a film, both as dull as each other. Moretti himself plays Giovanni, a high-minded film director with a failing marriage who is struggling to shoot his passion project about the Italian Communist party standing up to...
Nanni Moretti is the Italian director who will always have a place in our hearts, not least for his masterly The Son’s Room (2001), in my view the greatest Cannes Palme d’Or winner of the century so far. And more recently his cinephile comedy Mia Madre (2015) was tremendous.
But his new film in competition is bafflingly awful: muddled, mediocre and metatextual – a complete waste of time, at once strident and listless. Everything about it is heavy-handed and dull: the non-comedy, the ersatz-pathos, the anti-drama.
It is effectively a film within a film, both as dull as each other. Moretti himself plays Giovanni, a high-minded film director with a failing marriage who is struggling to shoot his passion project about the Italian Communist party standing up to...
- 5/24/2023
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The enthralling documentary “Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb” opens with white-on-black credits accompanied by the staccato pecks of a typewriter, which will be music to some viewers’ ears. Robert Caro, the author at the center of the documentary, writes towering books of nonfiction — “The Power Broker,” his 1,280-page study of how Robert Moses literally shaped the city of New York, and “The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” his four-volume biography that’s currently awaiting its fifth and final volume — but taps out these imperially detailed and captivating tomes on an old electric typewriter, X-ing out passages as he goes along, backing up each page with an extra sheet and a piece of carbon paper. You can’t get much more analog than that. As “Turn Every Page” reveals, Caro is still married to the methods of the last century; the digital revolution hasn’t touched him.
- 6/18/2022
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
It comes as no surprise that for her feature directorial debut Maggie Gyllenhaal would choose the challenging job of adapting Italian author Elena Ferrante’s searingly compact novel The Lost Daughter. The film just made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and next heads to Telluride this weekend.
The Last Daughter centers on the kind of strong but complicated and even haunted character Gyllenhaal has often drifted to in her own acting choices, and by landing Olivia Colman to play a woman alone on a seaside vacation experiencing moments of reckoning and dark memories for a life-altering choice made decades earlier, she has crafted a memorable first film that takes its own liberties with the book (the location is moved from Italy to Greece for starters) but is more importantly faithful in presenting a study of motherhood in all its raw complexity. It may be tough going for some audiences to accept,...
The Last Daughter centers on the kind of strong but complicated and even haunted character Gyllenhaal has often drifted to in her own acting choices, and by landing Olivia Colman to play a woman alone on a seaside vacation experiencing moments of reckoning and dark memories for a life-altering choice made decades earlier, she has crafted a memorable first film that takes its own liberties with the book (the location is moved from Italy to Greece for starters) but is more importantly faithful in presenting a study of motherhood in all its raw complexity. It may be tough going for some audiences to accept,...
- 9/3/2021
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
The star, Alexandra Daddario, the writer, Alan Trezza, and the director, Marc Meyers, of the terrific new film We Summon The Darkness walk us through some of their favorite movies.
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
We Summon The Darkness (2020)
Burying The Ex (2015)
The Little Mermaid (1989)
Moulin Rouge! (2001)
American Beauty (1999)
Strictly Ballroom (1992)
Ghostbusters (1984)
The Sound of Music (1965)
L.A. Story (1991)
Ghost Dad (1990)
Looney Tunes: Back In Action (2003)
Roxanne (1987)
The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather Part II (1974)
The Godfather Part III (1990)
Fargo (1996)
The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Psycho (1960)
Psycho (1998)
Defending Your Life (1991)
Modern Romance (1981)
The Jerk (1979)
Jaws (1975)
Notting Hill (1999)
Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994)
When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
Love Actually (2003)
Marley & Me (2008)
Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
World’s Greatest Dad (2009)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Raging Bull (1980)
Mandy (2018)
Heathers (1988)
Ed Wood (1994)
Hellzapoppin’ (1941)
Fletch (1985)
Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
Batman Returns (1992)
Warlock (1989)
Beetlejuice (1988)
Star Wars (1977)
Sixteen Candles (1984)
The Swimmer (1968)
Sherman’s March (1985)
Amadeus (1984)
Amarcord (1974)
Hugo Pool (1997)
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills...
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
We Summon The Darkness (2020)
Burying The Ex (2015)
The Little Mermaid (1989)
Moulin Rouge! (2001)
American Beauty (1999)
Strictly Ballroom (1992)
Ghostbusters (1984)
The Sound of Music (1965)
L.A. Story (1991)
Ghost Dad (1990)
Looney Tunes: Back In Action (2003)
Roxanne (1987)
The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather Part II (1974)
The Godfather Part III (1990)
Fargo (1996)
The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Psycho (1960)
Psycho (1998)
Defending Your Life (1991)
Modern Romance (1981)
The Jerk (1979)
Jaws (1975)
Notting Hill (1999)
Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994)
When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
Love Actually (2003)
Marley & Me (2008)
Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
World’s Greatest Dad (2009)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Raging Bull (1980)
Mandy (2018)
Heathers (1988)
Ed Wood (1994)
Hellzapoppin’ (1941)
Fletch (1985)
Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
Batman Returns (1992)
Warlock (1989)
Beetlejuice (1988)
Star Wars (1977)
Sixteen Candles (1984)
The Swimmer (1968)
Sherman’s March (1985)
Amadeus (1984)
Amarcord (1974)
Hugo Pool (1997)
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills...
- 4/14/2020
- by Kris Millsap
- Trailers from Hell
Netflix may get most of the attention, but it’s hardly a one-stop shop for cinephiles who are looking to stream essential classic and contemporary films. Each of the prominent streaming platforms caters to its own niche of film obsessives.
From chilling horror fare on Shudder, to the boundless wonders of the Criterion Channel, and esoteric (but unmissable) festival hits on Film Movement Plus and Ovid.tv, IndieWire’s monthly guide highlights the best of what’s coming to every major streaming site, with an eye towards exclusive titles that may help readers decide which of these services is right for them.
Here’s the best of the best for January 2020.
“Midsommar”
Despite its ritualistic terrors, slasher-inspired structure, and “Hostel”-like affinity for butchering self-obsessed American tourists, “Midsommar” is clearly a film that uses horror tropes as a means to an end. The sun-blasted story of a grieving young woman...
From chilling horror fare on Shudder, to the boundless wonders of the Criterion Channel, and esoteric (but unmissable) festival hits on Film Movement Plus and Ovid.tv, IndieWire’s monthly guide highlights the best of what’s coming to every major streaming site, with an eye towards exclusive titles that may help readers decide which of these services is right for them.
Here’s the best of the best for January 2020.
“Midsommar”
Despite its ritualistic terrors, slasher-inspired structure, and “Hostel”-like affinity for butchering self-obsessed American tourists, “Midsommar” is clearly a film that uses horror tropes as a means to an end. The sun-blasted story of a grieving young woman...
- 1/13/2020
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Burt Lancaster in Frank and Eleanor Perry's The Swimmer (1968), based upon the John Cheever short story. Courtesy of Film Forum.For decades, film critics and academics interested in the classical Hollywood cinema have been dutifully studying the canonized big stars—Cary Grant, Garbo, the Hepburns, Bogart and Bacall, Dietrich and Crawford and Monroe—while downplaying one of the most highly varied and fascinating careers of any studio actor: Burt Lancaster. Now, New York’s Film Forum is giving us a great excuse to revisit this actor’s towering body of work—emphasis on “body.” From big-name classics like Louis Malle’s Atlantic City (1980) and John Frankenheimer’s Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) to little-known masterpieces like Carol Reed’s Trapeze (1956) and Luchino Visconti’s late decadent chamber drama Conversation Piece (1974), a meaty, healthy range of Burt is on display for the next four weeks, between July 19 to August 15.Serious film talk...
- 7/23/2019
- MUBI
Monied suburbanites take another hit in this 1968 drama about the waterlogged journey of one man in search of an endless pool party. Directed by Frank Perry and based on a story by John Cheever, Burt Lancaster stars along with Janice Rule. Squabbles between star and director eventually put the troubled production in the hands of Sydney Pollack.
The post The Swimmer appeared first on Trailers From Hell.
The post The Swimmer appeared first on Trailers From Hell.
- 2/18/2019
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
Jordan Dreyer doesn’t have a good name for what he does. Midway through a recent conversation with Rolling Stone, the affable, unassuming 31-year-old — who fronts the beloved post-hardcore band La Dispute in a style that ranges from measured spoken word to an arresting half-scream, half-sob — explained why he shies away from the most obvious designation.
“I don’t think I’m a singer,” he says, sitting in the lobby of his Brooklyn hotel on a January afternoon near the start of his first-ever real-deal press tour. “I am certainly a vocalist,...
“I don’t think I’m a singer,” he says, sitting in the lobby of his Brooklyn hotel on a January afternoon near the start of his first-ever real-deal press tour. “I am certainly a vocalist,...
- 2/12/2019
- by Hank Shteamer
- Rollingstone.com
At its best, the land of writer-director Nicole Holofcener is a sly and invigorating place — wittier than life, full of human surprise, grounded in the ways that happiness and heartache dance together. Her movies can be deceptively light, but she crafts each one with acerbic affection, and in a highly personal and selective way. It’s my feeling, too, that she has only grown as an artist. “Friends with Money” (2006) presented a slew of characters so weirdly sympathetic in their middle-class avarice that they popped off screen, and in “Enough Said” (2013), Holofcener figured out how to do what no previous filmmaker had: She got James Gandolfini to give a marvelous performance that shed any last vestige of his Tony Soprano aura.
Holofcener’s new movie, “The Land of Steady Habits,” is the first one she has made based on material that she didn’t originate herself. You can see why:...
Holofcener’s new movie, “The Land of Steady Habits,” is the first one she has made based on material that she didn’t originate herself. You can see why:...
- 9/13/2018
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
- 7/26/2017
- by Zac Posen
- Vulture
Warren Frost, the late-blooming actor who played the dependable town physician Will "Doc" Hayward on Twin Peaks, has died. He was 91.
Frost died Friday morning at his home in Middlebury, Vt., after a lengthy illness, according to his son, Mark Frost, who created the surreal 1990s ABC show with David Lynch.
Warren Frost also is known for his stint as Mr. Ross, the father of George Costanza's fiancee Susan Ross, on NBC's Seinfeld. His character had an affair with the author John Cheever; his house was burned down by Kramer's Cuban cigar; and his daughter was poisoned to death...
Frost died Friday morning at his home in Middlebury, Vt., after a lengthy illness, according to his son, Mark Frost, who created the surreal 1990s ABC show with David Lynch.
Warren Frost also is known for his stint as Mr. Ross, the father of George Costanza's fiancee Susan Ross, on NBC's Seinfeld. His character had an affair with the author John Cheever; his house was burned down by Kramer's Cuban cigar; and his daughter was poisoned to death...
- 2/18/2017
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
This article was published in response to Tales of Cinema: The Films of Hong Sang-soo, a complete retrospective at New York's Museum of the Moving Image. On June 23rd, Hong Sang-soo's Golden Leopard winning Right Now, Wrong Then will receive a theatrical release from Grasshopper Film. You can also read Christopher Small and Daniel Kasman's interview with Hong Sang-soo from the Locarno Film Festival here.With her back to the camera, pencil-like frame aping the posture of a nearby lighthouse that guards the border with the sea, Isabelle Huppert’s atypical protagonist in In Another Country (2012), while dozily imagining yet another iteration of the story's romantic dynamics, becomes a typical image by Hong Sang-soo: a character whose momentary break from their own dreamy game of interchangeable personalities we are suddenly, inexplicably privy to. It’s a day-dream moment that can only be reversed by a structural shift in the story; when Anne's lover,...
- 7/5/2016
- MUBI
Some films are an enigma. Some movies will not give up their secrets no matter how many times they are viewed. Parts of the puzzle are missing, all the pieces are not present so we can make an accurate determination as to what we are witnessing. And quite frankly I like that, done properly I love it. When you watch as many movies as I have the linear progression from point A to B and then to C and then the final credits can be a bit mundane after a while. I like movies that do not tell us everything, again, done properly I love them. Movies of this type expect you to stretch, to get outside your safety zone, you are expected to think about what you are seeing and feeling, there is some mystery just out of camera range.
Among the more enigmatic and puzzling movies I have...
Among the more enigmatic and puzzling movies I have...
- 8/17/2015
- by Sam Moffitt
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
'Mad Men' Creator Matthew Weiner On the Finale's Secrets and Why He Thinks Binge-Viewing is Bad News
Nearly a week after "Mad Men" aired its 92nd and final episode, creator Matthew Weiner sat down with writer A.M. Homes at the New York Public Library to reflect on the acclaimed AMC drama. It's the first talk he's given since the much-discussed "Person to Person," aired last Sunday. Read More: Review: 'Mad Men' Series Finale, Season 7 Episode 14, 'Person to Person' Ends an Era with Empathy Although the chat covered some familiar territory, Weiner spoke about his literary influences -- John Cheever's short stories and Frank O'Hara's poetry, his feelings about the current state of television, and gave some insight on some of the show's most beloved characters. Yes, that includes Betty. Below are some highlights from the chat, which is also available for your listening and viewing pleasure. Matthew Weiner doesn't like ambiguity for ambiguity's sake Without getting too spoiler-y, Weiner discussed "Mad Men's" final scene,...
- 5/22/2015
- by Eric Eidelstein
- Indiewire
"I have always been able to live with ambiguities. I don't really understand a lot of things that regular people understand, that's part of it. So holding those things in my head, (someone might ask), 'Well, which is it?' Why does it have to be one or the other?" This was Matthew Weiner early in his conversation tonight at the New York Public Library with novelist Am Homes, which he had promised would be the only public comments he makes for a very long time about the end of "Mad Men." Those who came to the event (or watched the live-stream) expecting Weiner to run through a point-by-point explanation of the series finale — and particularly of his intentions for the final sequence, which implied that Don Draper had dreamed up the legendary "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" ad — likely came away disappointed. Homes seemed only casually...
- 5/21/2015
- by Alan Sepinwall
- Hitfix
First footage emerges of Malick’s new film starring Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett, suggesting it will be a fable of Hollywood decadence and disillusion
Terrence Malick rides into Berlin film festival with Knight of Cups
Terrence Malick reaches settlement over unfinished film Voyage of Time
Having just announced that its world premiere will be at the Berlin film festival, Knight of Cups – the new film from Terrence Malick – has had a little flesh put on its bones in the form of its first trailer.
Other than its principal cast, the only previous detail of the film’s content was that it was about “celebrities and excess”. The trailer, in its elliptical way, expands on that, by showing Christian Bale – playing what is presumably a film maker of some kind – brooding moodily on the trappings of his success. His voiceover – typically breathy, in the now traditional Malick manner – has him announcing,...
Terrence Malick rides into Berlin film festival with Knight of Cups
Terrence Malick reaches settlement over unfinished film Voyage of Time
Having just announced that its world premiere will be at the Berlin film festival, Knight of Cups – the new film from Terrence Malick – has had a little flesh put on its bones in the form of its first trailer.
Other than its principal cast, the only previous detail of the film’s content was that it was about “celebrities and excess”. The trailer, in its elliptical way, expands on that, by showing Christian Bale – playing what is presumably a film maker of some kind – brooding moodily on the trappings of his success. His voiceover – typically breathy, in the now traditional Malick manner – has him announcing,...
- 12/16/2014
- by Guardian film
- The Guardian - Film News
Novelist Tom Dolby's debut as a writer/director hits theaters at the end of August, and he isn't waiting around to delve deeper into the film business. Dolby, whose Patricia Clarkson-starring film “Last Weekend” is being released by Sundance Selects, has formed Water's End Productions and optioned several scripts and stories already, he told TheWrap on Thursday. Those projects include an adaptation of the famed John Cheever short story, “Goodbye, My Brother,” which will be scripted by “Mad Men” and “Hannibal” writer Jason Grote. Also read: Patricia Clarkson Heads ‘Last Weekend’ Cast Water's End has also commissioned screenwriter...
- 7/17/2014
- by Jordan Zakarin
- The Wrap
Louie defies easy formal analysis because it doesn’t quite have an easily definable form. The most basic fact that everyone who cares about Louie knows about Louie is that the show is entirely Louis C.K.: Directed by, written by, edited by, starring. Back in 2010, it was still possible to understand the show as a sitcom, albeit an extremely precise kind of sitcom. Classically, situation comedies were collaborations: Ensemble casts, writing staffs, studio audience. Louie gave the form an auteurist twist, but you could watch the first season and see echoes of Curb Your Enthusiasm (handheld camera, inside-baseball showbiz comedy,...
- 6/3/2014
- by Darren Franich
- EW.com - PopWatch
Sneak Peek the newly restored, high definition Blu-ray/DVD release of director Frank Perry's 1968 indie classic "The Swimmer", starring actor Burt Lancaster, from Sony/Columbia and Sage Stallone's Grindhouse Releasing:
"...'Ned Merrill' (Lancaster) is a man who confronts his destiny by swimming home, pool by pool, through the suburban nightmare of upper-class East Coast society..."
Bonus features include "The Story Of The Swimmer", a 2 1/2 hour documentary by Oscar winner Chris Innis including interviews with cast actors including Janet Landgard, Joan Rivers and Marge Champion, composer Marvin Hamlisch, film editor Sidney Katz, assistant directors Michael Hertzberg and Ted Zachary, UCLA swim coach Bob Horn and Joanna Lancaster.
The Blu-ray also includes a rare vintage audio recording of author John Cheever reading his original "New Yorker" short story, a 12-page booklet with liner notes by director Stuart Gordon ("Re-Animator'), rare production stills from lost alternate scenes, an extensive still galleries,...
"...'Ned Merrill' (Lancaster) is a man who confronts his destiny by swimming home, pool by pool, through the suburban nightmare of upper-class East Coast society..."
Bonus features include "The Story Of The Swimmer", a 2 1/2 hour documentary by Oscar winner Chris Innis including interviews with cast actors including Janet Landgard, Joan Rivers and Marge Champion, composer Marvin Hamlisch, film editor Sidney Katz, assistant directors Michael Hertzberg and Ted Zachary, UCLA swim coach Bob Horn and Joanna Lancaster.
The Blu-ray also includes a rare vintage audio recording of author John Cheever reading his original "New Yorker" short story, a 12-page booklet with liner notes by director Stuart Gordon ("Re-Animator'), rare production stills from lost alternate scenes, an extensive still galleries,...
- 3/22/2014
- by Michael Stevens
- SneakPeek
Lester Johnson: Dark Paintings Stephen Harvey Fine Art Projects Through November 17, 2013
To create oneself through the process of making an object is an ethical act of decision making and passion, thought the painter Barnett Newman, who in 1947 outlined this philosophical position in a short essay titled "The First Man Was an Artist." Newman wrote that early Homo sapiens had become something more, something human, by asserting themselves not through the making of objects for some use, but through the creation of objects for poetic, aesthetic expression, which he said was the purer, superior act. "Man’s hand," he said, "traced the stick through the mud to make a line before he learned to throw the stick as a javelin." It is therefore more human, from Newman's point of view, to draw a line in aesthetic wonder, as it demonstrates Man's tragic separateness from others in the world through so doing.
To create oneself through the process of making an object is an ethical act of decision making and passion, thought the painter Barnett Newman, who in 1947 outlined this philosophical position in a short essay titled "The First Man Was an Artist." Newman wrote that early Homo sapiens had become something more, something human, by asserting themselves not through the making of objects for some use, but through the creation of objects for poetic, aesthetic expression, which he said was the purer, superior act. "Man’s hand," he said, "traced the stick through the mud to make a line before he learned to throw the stick as a javelin." It is therefore more human, from Newman's point of view, to draw a line in aesthetic wonder, as it demonstrates Man's tragic separateness from others in the world through so doing.
- 11/14/2013
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
What do Beethoven, Capote and Auden have in common? Seb Emina discovers the strange daily rituals of our artistic heroes
During the late 1940s, John Cheever worked to an unconventional routine. In the morning he would put on his business suit, leave his apartment, and catch the lift downstairs with any commuters. Then, when they reached the ground floor, he would keep going, down to the basement, where he'd walk to his favourite storage room, strip down to his boxer shorts and spend the morning writing. At noon he put his suit back on and headed back upstairs. Lunch followed, then a leisurely afternoon.
It worked for him. Or rather, it worked for his work. Despite their drudging reputation, fixed routines have proved an indispensable tool to artists of all kinds, from George Sand (who wrote through the night supported by chocolate and tobacco) to David Lynch (who no longer...
During the late 1940s, John Cheever worked to an unconventional routine. In the morning he would put on his business suit, leave his apartment, and catch the lift downstairs with any commuters. Then, when they reached the ground floor, he would keep going, down to the basement, where he'd walk to his favourite storage room, strip down to his boxer shorts and spend the morning writing. At noon he put his suit back on and headed back upstairs. Lunch followed, then a leisurely afternoon.
It worked for him. Or rather, it worked for his work. Despite their drudging reputation, fixed routines have proved an indispensable tool to artists of all kinds, from George Sand (who wrote through the night supported by chocolate and tobacco) to David Lynch (who no longer...
- 10/8/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
Nick and Meg go to Paris for their 30th anniversary and confront some tricky questions. In his new film, Le Week-End, Hanif Kureishi meditates on the old problem of marriage and desire
Marriage as a problem, and as a solution, has always been the central subject for drama, the novel and the cinema, just as it has been at the centre of our lives. Most of us have come from a marriage, and, probably, a divorce, of some sort. And the kind of questions that surround lengthy relationships – what is it to live with another person for a long time? What do we expect? What do we need? What do we want? What is the relation between safety and excitement, for each of us? – are the most important of our lives. Marriage brings together the most serious things: sex, love, children, betrayal, boredom, frustration, and property.
Le Week-End is a...
Marriage as a problem, and as a solution, has always been the central subject for drama, the novel and the cinema, just as it has been at the centre of our lives. Most of us have come from a marriage, and, probably, a divorce, of some sort. And the kind of questions that surround lengthy relationships – what is it to live with another person for a long time? What do we expect? What do we need? What do we want? What is the relation between safety and excitement, for each of us? – are the most important of our lives. Marriage brings together the most serious things: sex, love, children, betrayal, boredom, frustration, and property.
Le Week-End is a...
- 10/4/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
Top 10 Den Of Geek Dec 21, 2012
We've polled our writers, tallied the results, and drawn up a list of Den of Geek’s official top ten TV episodes of 2012…
Contains spoilers for certain episodes.
A fortnight ago, the call went out to our writers to select their top TV episodes of 2012 (barring anything broadcast after mid-December to give us time to collate the votes). Each writer could select up to five episodes, and their ranked lists were then weighted, and the episode tallies stacked up accordingly.
In a mark of unusual concurrence from the site's writers, very soon, a few titles established themselves as clear frontrunners. Having limited ourselves to including just one episode per show on the final list, a certain amount of jostling then went on between episodes from the same series over the two weeks of voting (particularly in the case of two BBC programmes that share a certain showrunner). Eventually though,...
We've polled our writers, tallied the results, and drawn up a list of Den of Geek’s official top ten TV episodes of 2012…
Contains spoilers for certain episodes.
A fortnight ago, the call went out to our writers to select their top TV episodes of 2012 (barring anything broadcast after mid-December to give us time to collate the votes). Each writer could select up to five episodes, and their ranked lists were then weighted, and the episode tallies stacked up accordingly.
In a mark of unusual concurrence from the site's writers, very soon, a few titles established themselves as clear frontrunners. Having limited ourselves to including just one episode per show on the final list, a certain amount of jostling then went on between episodes from the same series over the two weeks of voting (particularly in the case of two BBC programmes that share a certain showrunner). Eventually though,...
- 12/20/2012
- by louisamellor
- Den of Geek
Brat pack sweetheart Molly Ringwald talks about her new novel, jazz and her surreal life since the Breakfast Club days
Molly Ringwald peruses the rack of designer clothing pulled in as potential attire for her imminent photoshoot, noting to the photographer that she'd prefer to avoid anything that might come off as being "too glamorous". She immediately gravitates towards a lovely pink silk-shantung sweetheart-neckline number, reaching out to grab it.
"That one's really pretty," offers the stylist.
"But it's pink," murmurs Molly.
"Got it," the stylist smiles.
"No pink for you these days?" I ask.
"I've kind of had enough pink in my life," Molly deadpans, clacking the dress hanger down in the reject section without a second thought.
Everyone laughs, everyone gets it. That chapter has long since closed.
Many novelists might not mind an extra dose of glamour, and surely few would have such a knee-jerk aversion to...
Molly Ringwald peruses the rack of designer clothing pulled in as potential attire for her imminent photoshoot, noting to the photographer that she'd prefer to avoid anything that might come off as being "too glamorous". She immediately gravitates towards a lovely pink silk-shantung sweetheart-neckline number, reaching out to grab it.
"That one's really pretty," offers the stylist.
"But it's pink," murmurs Molly.
"Got it," the stylist smiles.
"No pink for you these days?" I ask.
"I've kind of had enough pink in my life," Molly deadpans, clacking the dress hanger down in the reject section without a second thought.
Everyone laughs, everyone gets it. That chapter has long since closed.
Many novelists might not mind an extra dose of glamour, and surely few would have such a knee-jerk aversion to...
- 8/11/2012
- by Observer
- The Guardian - Film News
Directed by: Wes Anderson
Written by: Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola
Featuring: Kara Hayward, Jared Gilman, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel
Wes Anderson is one of those polarizing filmmakers. Like Woody Allen, Kevin Smith and Whit Stillman, he's often accused of making the same film over and over again, and whether or not you like Anderson's latest flick probably depends on how much you liked Anderson's previous flick.
If you're one of those people on the fence about Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom might be the film to finally convert you into a fan. The director's new movie contains all the Anderson-isms people love or hate or love to hate — the self-conscious camera moves, the over-decorated frames, the heavily curated soundtrack — but there's a freedom at play here not usually associated with Anderson, a filmmaker who it seems might be more comfortable working...
Written by: Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola
Featuring: Kara Hayward, Jared Gilman, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel
Wes Anderson is one of those polarizing filmmakers. Like Woody Allen, Kevin Smith and Whit Stillman, he's often accused of making the same film over and over again, and whether or not you like Anderson's latest flick probably depends on how much you liked Anderson's previous flick.
If you're one of those people on the fence about Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom might be the film to finally convert you into a fan. The director's new movie contains all the Anderson-isms people love or hate or love to hate — the self-conscious camera moves, the over-decorated frames, the heavily curated soundtrack — but there's a freedom at play here not usually associated with Anderson, a filmmaker who it seems might be more comfortable working...
- 7/2/2012
- by Theron
- Planet Fury
David Cronenberg has made a riveting urban road movie of Don DeLillo's prophetic novel
David Cronenberg made his name directing body horror movies of an often emetic kind that seemed aimed at drive-in audiences. But underneath the urge to shock there has always been as great an interest in mental transformations as in physical ones, and his movies nowadays seem closer to the art house than the grind house. Following his versions of William Burroughs's Naked Lunch, Jg Ballard's Crash and Patrick McGrath's Spider, his elegant, eloquent adaptation of Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis is the fourth time he's brought a work of literary fiction to the screen. And once again, it's both faithful to the text and a film that's very much Cronenberg's own.
Cosmopolis was published in 2003, and although on its first page DeLillo specifically states that the setting is April 2000, it was read at the time as a post-9/11 novel.
David Cronenberg made his name directing body horror movies of an often emetic kind that seemed aimed at drive-in audiences. But underneath the urge to shock there has always been as great an interest in mental transformations as in physical ones, and his movies nowadays seem closer to the art house than the grind house. Following his versions of William Burroughs's Naked Lunch, Jg Ballard's Crash and Patrick McGrath's Spider, his elegant, eloquent adaptation of Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis is the fourth time he's brought a work of literary fiction to the screen. And once again, it's both faithful to the text and a film that's very much Cronenberg's own.
Cosmopolis was published in 2003, and although on its first page DeLillo specifically states that the setting is April 2000, it was read at the time as a post-9/11 novel.
- 6/16/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Director Joshua Sanchez
Director: Joshua Sanchez
Festival Entry: Four
Narrative Competition
Over the course of a steamy 4th of July night, a father and daughter, each trapped in loneliness, reach out for sexual connection — he with a self-hating teenage boy, she with a smooth-talking wannabe homeboy — in this psychologically complex, beautifully acted drama.
Directed By: Joshua Sanchez
Executive Producer: Neil Labute
Producer: Christine Giorgio
Screenwriter: Joshua Sanchez
Cinematographer: Gregg Conde
Editor: David Gutnik
Music: Bryan Senti
Cast: Wendell Pierce, Emory Cohen, Aja Naomi King, Ej Bonilla
We asked Four director Josh Sanchez about everything from his inspirations to his challenges while making his Festival entry film. Here’s what he had to say:
Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Josh Sanchez. I make films, I write and I make art.
Who were your early mentors in filmmaking?
The filmmaker Lodge Kerrigan really made me understand film in a whole new way.
Director: Joshua Sanchez
Festival Entry: Four
Narrative Competition
Over the course of a steamy 4th of July night, a father and daughter, each trapped in loneliness, reach out for sexual connection — he with a self-hating teenage boy, she with a smooth-talking wannabe homeboy — in this psychologically complex, beautifully acted drama.
Directed By: Joshua Sanchez
Executive Producer: Neil Labute
Producer: Christine Giorgio
Screenwriter: Joshua Sanchez
Cinematographer: Gregg Conde
Editor: David Gutnik
Music: Bryan Senti
Cast: Wendell Pierce, Emory Cohen, Aja Naomi King, Ej Bonilla
We asked Four director Josh Sanchez about everything from his inspirations to his challenges while making his Festival entry film. Here’s what he had to say:
Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Josh Sanchez. I make films, I write and I make art.
Who were your early mentors in filmmaking?
The filmmaker Lodge Kerrigan really made me understand film in a whole new way.
- 6/13/2012
- by Film Independent
- Film Independent
“I want to want you,” says the cripplingly depressed Miranda (Selma Blair) to her suitor with excruciating honesty. The coddled, overweight Abe (Jordan Gelber), a compulsive collector who still lives at home with his parents (Mia Farrow and Christopher Walken), will take what he can get. “That’s enough for me,” he breathes. In Todd Solondz’s Dark Horse, the queasy tale of a 35-year-old man-child who decides to add a wife to his possessions, the writer-director’s dialogue is as sharp as ever, each line an arrow poisoned with sincerity.
Known for colorful, stylized, cynical films including Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), Happiness (1998), Storytelling (2001), Palindromes (2004) and the masterful Life During Wartime (2009), Solondz makes movies populated by anti-heroes and -heroines that include bullies, pedophiles, and housewives. He has the ability to zero in on the insecurities, weaknesses and existential loneliness of a Robert Altman-like stable of characters with merciless X-ray vision.
Known for colorful, stylized, cynical films including Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), Happiness (1998), Storytelling (2001), Palindromes (2004) and the masterful Life During Wartime (2009), Solondz makes movies populated by anti-heroes and -heroines that include bullies, pedophiles, and housewives. He has the ability to zero in on the insecurities, weaknesses and existential loneliness of a Robert Altman-like stable of characters with merciless X-ray vision.
- 6/7/2012
- by Livia Bloom
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Joshua Sanchez, a native of Houston, Tejas graduated from Columbia University’s Mfa Film Program with several internationally screened short films under his belt along with the HBO Films Young Producer’s Development Award. His feature debut, Four, based on a play written by Christopher Shinn, participated in the Tribeca All Access program at the Tribeca Film Festival and after a few false starts and delays, Joshua cast Wendell Pierce ('The Wire', 'Treme'), Emory Cohen ('Afterschool', TV's 'Smash'), Aja Naomi King ('Blue Bloods') and Ej Bonilla ('Mamitas', 'Don't Let Me Drown') as his "Four". Once in the can he was able to complete the post production when he became the recipient of the Jerome Foundation’s Film and Video grant. Adding his favorite New York bands to the soundtrack as icing on the cake, Joshua is ready to world premiere the film at the Los Angeles Film Festival on June 15th.
LatinoBuzz: Four is based on a play by Christopher Shinn - What drew you to adapting it for the screen and how much did race factor in your desire to tell this story? Was there ever an urge to stray from the original story?
Joshua Sanchez: I saw one of Chris' other plays called Where Do We Live at the Vineyard Theatre in New York in 2004, right around the time I finished film school. The play had such a fresh voice that spoke to me, so I sought out Shinn's other work. Of all of his plays up to that time, Four really floored me mostly because it felt like experiences that I had in my adolescence, growing up as a closeted gay Mexican-American kid in a conservative suburb in Houston, Texas. The play also felt very cinematic and contained in that it takes place over one night and sort of roves around the city. It really could be any American city, which is how we shot it, although the play takes place in Hartford. I could see and feel the story so clearly right after I read, which is a good sign if you're thinking about whether a play could make a good movie.
I definitely appreciate the way race was dealt with in the play and it made me want to do the film more, although I probably initially responded more to the gay aspect of it. I'm Mexican-American and grew up in Texas but I don't speak Spanish, regrettably because I think it was sort of frowned upon in my generation of trying to assimilate into being an American. I think that sad aspect of my upbringing helped me deal with the race aspect of Four because I think that the story is so unconventional in its dealing with the race of the characters. Race in my life was never a 'normal' thing to deal with and I think the way it plays into the characters lives in Four is very complex as well.
This version of Four does stray away from the original story to some degree, which I think you'll pick up on if you read the play and see the movie. But I think the initial core of the characters and their arc in the story remains true to what Shinn wrote. We tried to make this as much of a cinematic experience as possible. But this is my interpretation of this story. I'm sure there will be others in the future.
LatinoBuzz: From your '04 short film Kill or Be Killed to your feature film Four - you've shown characters who are searching for something to fill an emotional void. What's Joshua Sanchez looking for?
Joshua Sanchez: When I first stared to watch movies seriously as an adolescent, I wanted them to echo back to me what I felt inside.I think a lot of where Kill or Be Killed and Four were coming from for me personally was the loneliness and isolation I felt as a kid trying to make sense of the intense dysfunction of my family life and the fact that my sexuality made me very different from what was in any way desirable to the people around me as a child.
A lot of time has passed between the time I directed Kill or Be Killed and now. A lot of that time for me creatively was spent trying to get Four off the ground. I've gone through a lot of changes as a person in that period. I would say at this point in my life, I value the people that I'm close to. I have wonderful friends and a wonderful partner that I'm so blessed to have in my life. My main priority in life is to practice trying to love them and to love myself every day and to balance that with trying to make work that is meaningful and fulfilling to me.
I think film can be a really powerful vehicle to share and be witness to the experiences that we go through in our daily lives. Film really helped me when I was a kid and had nobody to turn to. I know they work that way for others and I feel a certain responsibility to myself and to any audience that watches my work to be as honest as possible.
And I still have a lot to learn as well. This is my first feature film, so I'm looking forward to pushing the boundaries of what I've learned and what I'm capable of in this medium.
LatinoBuzz: Is there a songwriter you've admired that had they gone that route would have made amazing filmmakers? (and why?)
Joshua Sanchez:I would like to have seen what Elliott Smith would have done with film. He was such a clever lyricist and inventive musician. I actually taught myself how to play guitar from listening to Either/Or and his self-titled album. 'Needle in the Hay' was the first song I learned. He's a weird player to learn from because his tunings are so off and he used a lot of strange variations and chord progressions that are really not normal, but it really opens up your mind to what is capable on a guitar. I learned the basic chords of guitar with my guitar tuned a step down because that's how a lot of his songs are tuned. I didn't know it for a long time that it wasn't the standard tuning. He had such an evolved sense of imagery and metaphor. When I hear 'Say Yes' I can almost see the movie in my head.
LatinoBuzz: Do Latino filmmakers have a responsibility on the images we convey to the broader audience? Or should we have the freedom as artists?
Joshua Sanchez: I think it's more important to maintain authenticity and honesty than it is to portray a certain PC image of what it means to be Latino. I've always felt somewhat out of place as a Latino since I don't speak Spanish very well and I'm fairly light skinned. I was essentially a shy skateboard, punk rock, lower middle class kid from the suburbs and that is really my perspective and where I come from. I appreciate it when I see work that challenges me to look at the world through different eyes. It's more important that Latinos feel free to express their own individual realities, rather than an accepted version of Latinoness.
LatinoBuzz: Which of the following villians best describes you as a director on set? Rasputin? Dick Dastardly? The Guy from Caligula? or Han from 'Enter The Dragon'?
Joshua Sanchez: Probably Rasputin if I had to pick one. He was a mystic.
LatinoBuzz: You've written short stories too as well as short films - Where do you draw your stories from?
Joshua Sanchez: The stories I write are usually somewhat autobiographical, or contain aspects of my observations and experiences. I started writing short stories in the middle of making Four actually, which took almost six years. Partially, I wrote these because I wanted to practice storytelling and keep my mind sharp in this realm. But in general, I love to write them because they are very low pressure to me. It's really fun to keep my mind working as a writer and to be able to practice turning my observations into story. I am inspired a lot by the short stories of John Cheever, who is probably my favorite fiction writer of all time.
LatinoBuzz: Ok -- For this interviews sake only -- Your life has spiraled out of control, You've hit rock bottom -- You are offered a second chance. Butyou have to direct a film based on a childhood game (Board or Video game). Anyone. Michael Bay is producing so you are in Great hands. Pick one. And who stars in it?
Joshua Sanchez: Definitely 'The Legend of Zelda'.
Bradford Cox from the band Deerhunter had a great idea that he posted on his blog of making one of their music videos about a lonely boy who is playing the original Nintendo 'Legend of Zelda' and the hero of the video game is echoing the kid's feeling of loneliness, walking aimlessly around these dark landscapes in the game. Then his abusive, drunk father comes in and starts beating him, and it's the beginning of a story about how the kid is escaping into playing the video game and how he transcends his abusive surroundings.
I would want to collaborate with Bradford and Michael Bay about turning this into a feature film version of 'Zelda' starring Justin Bieber. This is a movie I would definitely want to see.
LatinoBuzz: You went to Columbia Film School. There's the endless discussion of Film School versus skipping it and just making a film -- Both sides have great arguments. How do you feel about some of these short films with outrageous budgets when some people are trying to make features with the same amount?
Joshua Sanchez: I think it's less about the budgets of these films and more about whether they work as films at all. A few of my film school classmates went really overboard making their shorts that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, and trying to be the star of the class or win an award right out of the gate. I think it's wiser to think of making films as a progression through a body of work. Your budget can be small, but if you have a great idea that is well executed, this will always win out in the end. There are also really great short filmmakers that don't transition well into feature films.
For me film school was beneficial in the sense that it got me out of Texas and forced me into a situation where I had to learn how to tell stories and work on the basics of narrative filmmaking. But in retrospect, the most beneficial aspect of the whole film school experience was being in New York City and beginning to take advantage of all the resources that are here. So much of that was outside of film school for me. It wasn't really until I started going out downtown and moved to Brooklyn that things began to change for me. I was meeting other artists and having experiences that made me want to keep working and coming up with ideas.
The downsides are that it left me with a lot of debt and the environment of film school itself can be somewhat unbearable and suffocating. It's competitive and can often times can be a difficult place to find support and inspiration.
When I started film school it was in the late 90's. The equipment was terrible and there was a very old model of distribution and exhibition in place for up-and-coming filmmakers. Now, anyone can by a 5D and Final Cut and make something that looks fantastic.
I don't think film school is right for everyone and would encourage filmmakers that are interested in doing it to weigh their options very carefully. At the end of the day what you buy is a sort of entrance into the film world, but if you don't have an interesting perspective to back it up, you can get lost in the shuffle.
LatinoBuzz: Any particular films or filmmakers that inspired the aesthetic of your vision for 'Four'?
Joshua Sanchez: The two films I kept coming back to with Four were John Cassavetes' Faces and Larry Clark's Kids. They are both films that take place over a day or a night and both have a sort of intimacy in style that I found fit well with the story and characters of Four. I wanted the film to have the sort of Americana feel of say American Graffiti, mixed with the emotional rawness of Kids or Faces. I also watched a lot of Two Lane Blacktop and the film Over The Edge, which is about a teen rebellion in a small American suburban town.
LatinoBuzz: Anything as a filmmaker so far you wish you had done differently?
Joshua Sanchez:I think there are always things that you wished you'd done differently, but there is really nothing I regret in terms of my career as a filmmaker. It's a long road for anyone that wants to do this and it certainly has been for me as well. But I came to the conclusion a long time ago that I was only interested in doing the films that I feel passionate about partially because it's so much work and sacrifice. You really have to believe in what you are doing to make it worth your time. I'm proud of the body of work I've produced and hope I can continue to do it!
Joshua's website is http://www.joshuasanchez.net
his twitter world is: www.twitter.com/joshuasanchez76
and his Facebook face is: www.Facebook.com/joshuasanchez76.
And Click Here for the latest on Four
Written by Juan Caceres and Vanessa Erazo, LatinoBuzz is a weekly feature on SydneysBuzz that highlights emerging and established Latino indie talent and upcoming trends in the Latino film world with the specific objective of presenting a broad range of Latino voices. Follow @LatinoBuzzon twitter.
LatinoBuzz: Four is based on a play by Christopher Shinn - What drew you to adapting it for the screen and how much did race factor in your desire to tell this story? Was there ever an urge to stray from the original story?
Joshua Sanchez: I saw one of Chris' other plays called Where Do We Live at the Vineyard Theatre in New York in 2004, right around the time I finished film school. The play had such a fresh voice that spoke to me, so I sought out Shinn's other work. Of all of his plays up to that time, Four really floored me mostly because it felt like experiences that I had in my adolescence, growing up as a closeted gay Mexican-American kid in a conservative suburb in Houston, Texas. The play also felt very cinematic and contained in that it takes place over one night and sort of roves around the city. It really could be any American city, which is how we shot it, although the play takes place in Hartford. I could see and feel the story so clearly right after I read, which is a good sign if you're thinking about whether a play could make a good movie.
I definitely appreciate the way race was dealt with in the play and it made me want to do the film more, although I probably initially responded more to the gay aspect of it. I'm Mexican-American and grew up in Texas but I don't speak Spanish, regrettably because I think it was sort of frowned upon in my generation of trying to assimilate into being an American. I think that sad aspect of my upbringing helped me deal with the race aspect of Four because I think that the story is so unconventional in its dealing with the race of the characters. Race in my life was never a 'normal' thing to deal with and I think the way it plays into the characters lives in Four is very complex as well.
This version of Four does stray away from the original story to some degree, which I think you'll pick up on if you read the play and see the movie. But I think the initial core of the characters and their arc in the story remains true to what Shinn wrote. We tried to make this as much of a cinematic experience as possible. But this is my interpretation of this story. I'm sure there will be others in the future.
LatinoBuzz: From your '04 short film Kill or Be Killed to your feature film Four - you've shown characters who are searching for something to fill an emotional void. What's Joshua Sanchez looking for?
Joshua Sanchez: When I first stared to watch movies seriously as an adolescent, I wanted them to echo back to me what I felt inside.I think a lot of where Kill or Be Killed and Four were coming from for me personally was the loneliness and isolation I felt as a kid trying to make sense of the intense dysfunction of my family life and the fact that my sexuality made me very different from what was in any way desirable to the people around me as a child.
A lot of time has passed between the time I directed Kill or Be Killed and now. A lot of that time for me creatively was spent trying to get Four off the ground. I've gone through a lot of changes as a person in that period. I would say at this point in my life, I value the people that I'm close to. I have wonderful friends and a wonderful partner that I'm so blessed to have in my life. My main priority in life is to practice trying to love them and to love myself every day and to balance that with trying to make work that is meaningful and fulfilling to me.
I think film can be a really powerful vehicle to share and be witness to the experiences that we go through in our daily lives. Film really helped me when I was a kid and had nobody to turn to. I know they work that way for others and I feel a certain responsibility to myself and to any audience that watches my work to be as honest as possible.
And I still have a lot to learn as well. This is my first feature film, so I'm looking forward to pushing the boundaries of what I've learned and what I'm capable of in this medium.
LatinoBuzz: Is there a songwriter you've admired that had they gone that route would have made amazing filmmakers? (and why?)
Joshua Sanchez:I would like to have seen what Elliott Smith would have done with film. He was such a clever lyricist and inventive musician. I actually taught myself how to play guitar from listening to Either/Or and his self-titled album. 'Needle in the Hay' was the first song I learned. He's a weird player to learn from because his tunings are so off and he used a lot of strange variations and chord progressions that are really not normal, but it really opens up your mind to what is capable on a guitar. I learned the basic chords of guitar with my guitar tuned a step down because that's how a lot of his songs are tuned. I didn't know it for a long time that it wasn't the standard tuning. He had such an evolved sense of imagery and metaphor. When I hear 'Say Yes' I can almost see the movie in my head.
LatinoBuzz: Do Latino filmmakers have a responsibility on the images we convey to the broader audience? Or should we have the freedom as artists?
Joshua Sanchez: I think it's more important to maintain authenticity and honesty than it is to portray a certain PC image of what it means to be Latino. I've always felt somewhat out of place as a Latino since I don't speak Spanish very well and I'm fairly light skinned. I was essentially a shy skateboard, punk rock, lower middle class kid from the suburbs and that is really my perspective and where I come from. I appreciate it when I see work that challenges me to look at the world through different eyes. It's more important that Latinos feel free to express their own individual realities, rather than an accepted version of Latinoness.
LatinoBuzz: Which of the following villians best describes you as a director on set? Rasputin? Dick Dastardly? The Guy from Caligula? or Han from 'Enter The Dragon'?
Joshua Sanchez: Probably Rasputin if I had to pick one. He was a mystic.
LatinoBuzz: You've written short stories too as well as short films - Where do you draw your stories from?
Joshua Sanchez: The stories I write are usually somewhat autobiographical, or contain aspects of my observations and experiences. I started writing short stories in the middle of making Four actually, which took almost six years. Partially, I wrote these because I wanted to practice storytelling and keep my mind sharp in this realm. But in general, I love to write them because they are very low pressure to me. It's really fun to keep my mind working as a writer and to be able to practice turning my observations into story. I am inspired a lot by the short stories of John Cheever, who is probably my favorite fiction writer of all time.
LatinoBuzz: Ok -- For this interviews sake only -- Your life has spiraled out of control, You've hit rock bottom -- You are offered a second chance. Butyou have to direct a film based on a childhood game (Board or Video game). Anyone. Michael Bay is producing so you are in Great hands. Pick one. And who stars in it?
Joshua Sanchez: Definitely 'The Legend of Zelda'.
Bradford Cox from the band Deerhunter had a great idea that he posted on his blog of making one of their music videos about a lonely boy who is playing the original Nintendo 'Legend of Zelda' and the hero of the video game is echoing the kid's feeling of loneliness, walking aimlessly around these dark landscapes in the game. Then his abusive, drunk father comes in and starts beating him, and it's the beginning of a story about how the kid is escaping into playing the video game and how he transcends his abusive surroundings.
I would want to collaborate with Bradford and Michael Bay about turning this into a feature film version of 'Zelda' starring Justin Bieber. This is a movie I would definitely want to see.
LatinoBuzz: You went to Columbia Film School. There's the endless discussion of Film School versus skipping it and just making a film -- Both sides have great arguments. How do you feel about some of these short films with outrageous budgets when some people are trying to make features with the same amount?
Joshua Sanchez: I think it's less about the budgets of these films and more about whether they work as films at all. A few of my film school classmates went really overboard making their shorts that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, and trying to be the star of the class or win an award right out of the gate. I think it's wiser to think of making films as a progression through a body of work. Your budget can be small, but if you have a great idea that is well executed, this will always win out in the end. There are also really great short filmmakers that don't transition well into feature films.
For me film school was beneficial in the sense that it got me out of Texas and forced me into a situation where I had to learn how to tell stories and work on the basics of narrative filmmaking. But in retrospect, the most beneficial aspect of the whole film school experience was being in New York City and beginning to take advantage of all the resources that are here. So much of that was outside of film school for me. It wasn't really until I started going out downtown and moved to Brooklyn that things began to change for me. I was meeting other artists and having experiences that made me want to keep working and coming up with ideas.
The downsides are that it left me with a lot of debt and the environment of film school itself can be somewhat unbearable and suffocating. It's competitive and can often times can be a difficult place to find support and inspiration.
When I started film school it was in the late 90's. The equipment was terrible and there was a very old model of distribution and exhibition in place for up-and-coming filmmakers. Now, anyone can by a 5D and Final Cut and make something that looks fantastic.
I don't think film school is right for everyone and would encourage filmmakers that are interested in doing it to weigh their options very carefully. At the end of the day what you buy is a sort of entrance into the film world, but if you don't have an interesting perspective to back it up, you can get lost in the shuffle.
LatinoBuzz: Any particular films or filmmakers that inspired the aesthetic of your vision for 'Four'?
Joshua Sanchez: The two films I kept coming back to with Four were John Cassavetes' Faces and Larry Clark's Kids. They are both films that take place over a day or a night and both have a sort of intimacy in style that I found fit well with the story and characters of Four. I wanted the film to have the sort of Americana feel of say American Graffiti, mixed with the emotional rawness of Kids or Faces. I also watched a lot of Two Lane Blacktop and the film Over The Edge, which is about a teen rebellion in a small American suburban town.
LatinoBuzz: Anything as a filmmaker so far you wish you had done differently?
Joshua Sanchez:I think there are always things that you wished you'd done differently, but there is really nothing I regret in terms of my career as a filmmaker. It's a long road for anyone that wants to do this and it certainly has been for me as well. But I came to the conclusion a long time ago that I was only interested in doing the films that I feel passionate about partially because it's so much work and sacrifice. You really have to believe in what you are doing to make it worth your time. I'm proud of the body of work I've produced and hope I can continue to do it!
Joshua's website is http://www.joshuasanchez.net
his twitter world is: www.twitter.com/joshuasanchez76
and his Facebook face is: www.Facebook.com/joshuasanchez76.
And Click Here for the latest on Four
Written by Juan Caceres and Vanessa Erazo, LatinoBuzz is a weekly feature on SydneysBuzz that highlights emerging and established Latino indie talent and upcoming trends in the Latino film world with the specific objective of presenting a broad range of Latino voices. Follow @LatinoBuzzon twitter.
- 6/6/2012
- by Juan Caceres
- Sydney's Buzz
Don't read on unless you've seen "Lady Lazarus," Sunday's Season 5 episode of "Mad Men."
A strange sense of anti-climax pervaded this episode, which felt like a bridge between earlier events and themes and what's to come. I couldn't help but feel during the entire hour that a big explosion or a major event was on its way, but it ended with Don merely picking up the needle on a Beatles record and walking out of an empty room.
Emptiness, missed connections, lies and not getting what you want -- those were the recurring ideas, but overriding all that was the sense that someone was going to die or something terrible was going to happen. But nothing did (unless we saw Don begin to truly fall out of love with Megan?). It was all pretty ambiguous, and I spent much of the hour waiting for a confrontation that never came.
Not surprisingly,...
A strange sense of anti-climax pervaded this episode, which felt like a bridge between earlier events and themes and what's to come. I couldn't help but feel during the entire hour that a big explosion or a major event was on its way, but it ended with Don merely picking up the needle on a Beatles record and walking out of an empty room.
Emptiness, missed connections, lies and not getting what you want -- those were the recurring ideas, but overriding all that was the sense that someone was going to die or something terrible was going to happen. But nothing did (unless we saw Don begin to truly fall out of love with Megan?). It was all pretty ambiguous, and I spent much of the hour waiting for a confrontation that never came.
Not surprisingly,...
- 5/7/2012
- by Maureen Ryan
- Aol TV.
Don't read on unless you've seen Season 5, Episode 8 of "Mad Men," entitled "Lady Lazarus."
A strange sense of anti-climax pervaded this episode, which felt like a bridge between earlier events and themes and what's to come. I couldn't help but feel during the entire hour that a big explosion or a major event was on its way, but it ended with Don merely picking up the needle on a Beatles record and walking out of an empty room.
Emptiness, missed connections, lies and not getting what you want -- those were the recurring ideas, but overriding all that was the sense that someone was going to die or something terrible was going to happen. But nothing did. (Unless we saw Don begin to truly fall out of love with Megan?) It was all pretty ambiguous, and I spent much of the hour waiting for a confrontation that never came.
Not surprisingly,...
A strange sense of anti-climax pervaded this episode, which felt like a bridge between earlier events and themes and what's to come. I couldn't help but feel during the entire hour that a big explosion or a major event was on its way, but it ended with Don merely picking up the needle on a Beatles record and walking out of an empty room.
Emptiness, missed connections, lies and not getting what you want -- those were the recurring ideas, but overriding all that was the sense that someone was going to die or something terrible was going to happen. But nothing did. (Unless we saw Don begin to truly fall out of love with Megan?) It was all pretty ambiguous, and I spent much of the hour waiting for a confrontation that never came.
Not surprisingly,...
- 5/7/2012
- by Maureen Ryan
- Aol TV.
AMC Scene from “Mad Men.”
Editor’s note: Every Sunday after the newest episode of “Mad Men,” lawyer and Supreme Court advocate Walter Dellinger will host an online dialogue about the show. The participants include Columbia University history professor Alan Brinkley, Stanford Law Professor Pam Karlan, and Columbia theater and television professor Evangeline Morphos. Dellinger will post his thoughts shortly after each episode ends at 11 p.m., and the others will add their commentary in the hours and days that follow.
Editor’s note: Every Sunday after the newest episode of “Mad Men,” lawyer and Supreme Court advocate Walter Dellinger will host an online dialogue about the show. The participants include Columbia University history professor Alan Brinkley, Stanford Law Professor Pam Karlan, and Columbia theater and television professor Evangeline Morphos. Dellinger will post his thoughts shortly after each episode ends at 11 p.m., and the others will add their commentary in the hours and days that follow.
- 5/7/2012
- by Walter Dellinger
- Speakeasy/Wall Street Journal
DC Comics The cover of the coming comic “Before Watchmen.”
DC Comics is publishing seven new mini-series based on the characters and setting found in the graphic novel “Watchmen,” by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. First serialized from 1986 to 1987, “Watchmen” is as close to a masterpiece as the superhero comic form has seen.
So let’s get this out of the way – DC is shamelessly pillaging a classic, and the fan backlash is inevitable and not unwarranted. But the anger is misplaced.
DC Comics is publishing seven new mini-series based on the characters and setting found in the graphic novel “Watchmen,” by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. First serialized from 1986 to 1987, “Watchmen” is as close to a masterpiece as the superhero comic form has seen.
So let’s get this out of the way – DC is shamelessly pillaging a classic, and the fan backlash is inevitable and not unwarranted. But the anger is misplaced.
- 2/2/2012
- by Austin Grossman
- Speakeasy/Wall Street Journal
Revenge Review, Season 1, Episode 12, “Infamy”
Written by Dan Dworkin & Jay Beattie
Directed by Matt Earl Beesley
Cléa Major: With the Tyler storyline wrapped up last week, “Infamy” marked a return to Revenge‘s trusty Ruined-Life-of-the-Week formula, in which we are introduced to the episode’s vengeance target early in the episode, their connection to David Clarke is explained through a series of flashbacks, and Emily devastates them most thoroughly by the end of the hour. Formulaic, yes, but the subject of this week’s life-ruining was exceptionally delightful. Roger Bart plays Mason Treadwell, a simpering and pompous writer of nonfiction, who published a juicy book about Clarke’s crime. In exchange for his packing the book with lies, the Graysons set him on the path to fame and fortune.
Emily vividly remembers Mason interviewing her as a child, promising to use his journalistic chops to get out the truth about...
Written by Dan Dworkin & Jay Beattie
Directed by Matt Earl Beesley
Cléa Major: With the Tyler storyline wrapped up last week, “Infamy” marked a return to Revenge‘s trusty Ruined-Life-of-the-Week formula, in which we are introduced to the episode’s vengeance target early in the episode, their connection to David Clarke is explained through a series of flashbacks, and Emily devastates them most thoroughly by the end of the hour. Formulaic, yes, but the subject of this week’s life-ruining was exceptionally delightful. Roger Bart plays Mason Treadwell, a simpering and pompous writer of nonfiction, who published a juicy book about Clarke’s crime. In exchange for his packing the book with lies, the Graysons set him on the path to fame and fortune.
Emily vividly remembers Mason interviewing her as a child, promising to use his journalistic chops to get out the truth about...
- 1/13/2012
- by Louis Godfrey
- SoundOnSight
Chicago – Alcohol mixed with the American Dream sometimes becomes a destructive chemistry. With every individual’s reaction to ethyl alcohol like a fingerprint, the general image of the party animal can easily morph into what John Cheever called ‘The Sorrows of Gin.” These sorrows are explored through Will Ferrell in “Everything Must Go.”
Rating: 3.5/5.0
Ferrell puts on his every man suit as he dies as a salesman. His performance is stoic, almost ironic, and the rest of his character’s world catches up to it in various reactive ways. The wonder of the film is that it has a marquee star demonstrating the wages of excessive sin, a subject that is not usually explored in the context of the half-million-per-home suburban streets.
Nick (Will Ferrell) is fired from his lucrative sales job because he has fallen off the wagon and embarrassed himself at a company celebration. He reacts to this...
Rating: 3.5/5.0
Ferrell puts on his every man suit as he dies as a salesman. His performance is stoic, almost ironic, and the rest of his character’s world catches up to it in various reactive ways. The wonder of the film is that it has a marquee star demonstrating the wages of excessive sin, a subject that is not usually explored in the context of the half-million-per-home suburban streets.
Nick (Will Ferrell) is fired from his lucrative sales job because he has fallen off the wagon and embarrassed himself at a company celebration. He reacts to this...
- 5/13/2011
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
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