It’s Nicholas Sparks’ world; we just live in it. Sparks, in case you haven’t scanned the paperback racks lately, is the former pharmaceutical salesman who’s written 16 bestsellers since 1995, when The Notebook was plucked from the slush pile by a wily publisher. The 2004 movie version of The Notebook…
Back with his first film in 14 years, Whit Stillman still operates in a world of his own. It’s true both in respect to the singularity of his deadpan dialogic style, as well as to his hermetic milieu. With Damsels in Distress, Stillman’s follow-up to 1998’s The Last Days of…
I spotted a bottle of something called Marley’s Mellow Mood, “a new line of 100 percent natural relaxation beverages,” in my neighborhood deli just a few hours after seeing Kevin Macdonald’s documentary on the reggae and Rasta emissary — a reminder of just how crassly the Jamaican legend, who died…
When mob heiress Karen Gravano was in her late teens, her father Salvatore “Sammy The Bull” Gravano, who was second in command in the Gambino crime family, became an FBI informant and fed juicy bits of mafia info to hungry agents that eventually took down boss John Gotti. And apart…
You have to hand it to the marketing team behind The Cabin in the Woods.No movie has had such a successful hush-hush campaign since 1992’s The Crying Game, when critics went so far as to eschew protocol in taking out all gender-specific pronouns (and leaving us to discover on our…
At the end of The Cabin in the Woods, theworld is destroyed by an apocalyptic hand of fate — an actual hand, mind you — yet that is not a spoiler, not really. The real spoilers in the film are in the tricky mechanics crafted by writers Joss Whedon and…
In 2010, the internationally celebrated Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was arrested at his home. A neorealist who has been a vocal opponent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime, Panahi was accused of “[participating] in a gathering and carrying out propaganda against the system,” sentenced to six years in prison, and banned from…
The reports of the death of 3D may be slightly exaggerated. The recent re-launch of Titanic in all its schmaltzy glory is further proof that the technology is going to just keep “Comin’ At Ya!”Despite box office flop after flop, Hollywood studios are convinced that the movie-going world wants the…
FDR: American Badass has more random similes than a roast of Rob Schneider co-hosted by the Family Guy-writing manatees and Saturday Night Live’s Stefon. Which is to say, there are a lot. The unapologetically absurd spoof – brought to you by the writer/director team of the equally ridiculous parody Poolboy:…
The news came late yesterday that Bully – the controversial documentary about bullying in America’s schools that launched a nationwide debate when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) granted it an R rating – has been re-cut to earn a PG-13 rating. This revision comes in anticipation of its…
Here’s the thing about American film ratings systems: They’ve never been particularly consistent or logical. Consider Kate Winslet’s breasts, which will be revisiting a theatre near you beginning this week in James Cameron’s 3D reinvention of Titanic. Access to a teenage audience (of the sort who could best appreciate Leonardo…
Watch any 11-minute episode of Adult Swim’s warped, experimental sketch series Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, and then try to explain what Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim — the show’s stars and creative engine — do for a living. “‘Comedians’ never seems the right word for it, does…
A historical romance with a then-unheard-of price tag, James Cameron’s 1997 Titanic was the nearest thing to a Gone With the Wind-style cinematic event that the millennials could call their own. Now Titanic has bobbed to the surface yet again in a 3-D re-release, making a play for an audience…
Sometimes a movie screens for one night only, and sometimes it shows for weeks — months even. That’s why when it comes to catching an independent or limited-release film at a local theater, planning ahead is crucial. Planners that we are, we’ve selected five must-see flicks screening in the Valley…
For some, The Woman in the Fifth is like the lullaby you hear before a nightmare: dark, foreboding, but still alarmingly beautiful. For others, it is like the lullaby you hear before you slip, confused, into a midday nap in your theater seat. Written and directed by award-winning Polish filmmaker…
Monster Brawl is the kind of idea that you and your friends come up with at around 2:30 in the morning, when the collective genius is stifled only intermittently by handfuls of pizza-flavored Goldfish. The setting: a wrestling ring in the middle of a spooky graveyard. Eight movie monsters –…
Zhang Yimou was an ideal choice to be chief director of the 2008 Beijing Olympics’s opening and closing ceremonies. With recent movies like House of Flying Daggers and Hero, the Chinese filmmaker of Raise the Red Lantern lately has proved to be a man more enamored of spectacle than characters…
Yes, really. Thanks to The Online Musical (and our friends at Changing Hands for sharing the link), we can now (over)indulge in our Hunger Games obsession with the introduction of the Beanie Baby Hunger Games, officially described as “a parody of the melodrama of The Hunger Games and of the…
The Phoenix Film Festival starts this week. Whether you’re an aspiring filmmaker, a connoisseur of cinema, or just someone who enjoys festivals where your primary activity involves sitting down, you’ll definitely want to check out this eight-day movie marathon from March 29 to April 5.The festival offers a variety of…
After what seems like an eternity, AMC’s sytlized drama Mad Men will return for its fifth season with a two-hour premiere this Sunday at 9 p.m. after nearly a year and a half off the air. And for mega fans (which we will absolutely cop to being) that means going…
“If no one watches, then they don’t have a game,” a teenager says in this faithful if cautious adaptation of the first volume of Suzanne Collins’ astronomically successful dystopic YA trilogy. A withering indictment of omnipresent screens, endless spectacle, and debased celebrity culture, The Hunger Games was inspired, the author…
In the first scene of 2012 Israel’s Best Foreign Language Oscar nominee, Footnote, Uriel Shkolnik (Lior Ashkenazi) — a 40-something Talmudic scholar whose research has earned adulation while his 60-something father’s has mostly been ignored — accepts an honor with an obliviously glib speech built around a childhood anecdote about…
