The thing about hating your job and not giving a shit is that it can happen to anyone, anytime — it might even explain the longueurs late in most two-term presidencies. In Talya Lavie’s bored, biting comedy Zero Motivation, aggrieved ennui hits right in the heart of the Intifada. Not…
The original Broadway Annie was a kiddie musical that wasn’t for kids. It was a period piece about the Great Depression — both a hooray for Warbucksian success and an elbow-jab making clear that rich folk need to share — with a detour into a Hooverville and a key cameo…
We begin this week’s Voice Film Club podcast with a Thomas Pynchon story, before hosts Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice, and Amy Nicholson of LA Weekly, move onto Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie adaption of his novel, Inherent Vice. It’s “in some ways a godawful mess, indulgent…
If we’re honest with ourselves, the teaser-trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens looks better than the original Star Wars movies. That’s how this week’s Voice Film Club podcast opens, with your hosts Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice and Amy Nicholson of LA Weekly…
Bill Cosby’s present is secure. Despite the 17 women (so far) who have publicly come forward with notably similar allegations of drug-enabled sexual assault, the comedian received standing ovations for his stand-up performances in the Bahamas and in Florida recently. His comeback tour likely will continue over the next few…
Hospitals are depressing. Until recently, medical shows glossed over this basic fact of life by focusing on the most glamorous clique within them: doctors. For the past two decades, the upwardly mobile audience identification integral to most TV shows taught us to look away from the bedpans and sheaves of…
“Politics really isn’t my specialty,” shrugs Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) to a naval commander (Charles Dance) in an early job interview scene in Morten Tyldum’s choppy biopic The Imitation Game. Yet no less than Winston Churchill would credit Turing as the main cause of the Allies’ victory over the Nazis…
Whatever it is Americans want out of life — and it’s not even something we can precisely define ourselves — it was nowhere in evidence on December 3, when a grand jury failed to indict the police officer whose chokehold killed Eric Garner in July. We all know we live…
Whatever it is Americans want out of life — and it’s not even something we can precisely define ourselves — it was nowhere in evidence on December 3, when a grand jury failed to indict the police officer whose chokehold killed Eric Garner in July. We all know we live…
Welcome to December, a.k.a. awards season, when the movie studios release their best and brightest and Benedictiest into the wild (including, ahem, Wild) and onto cineplex screens across the country. Here’s what to head to the theater for this month, from likely blockbusters and breakthroughs to indies and what might…
Garfield creator Jim Davis is well aware of the internet’s cat obsession. In fact, he’s got an upcoming strip about it. “But if I told you the joke, I’d have to kill you,” he deadpans, before cracking his paternal composure with a chuckle. (He did tell me, and I’ve chosen…
If we’re honest, most of us who relish a good horror film don’t actually hope to feel something like horror. The appeal is, instead, that of shock and surprise, all candied up, the crowd-pleasing bits staged with the kind of extended setup/payoff patience that the makers of comedies have long…
For reasons that are perhaps understandable, stories about women finding themselves — or their voices, or their inner courage, or any number of things that are apparently very easy to mislay — are big business. But even if Cheryl Strayed’s hugely successful 2012 memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on…
The du Pont family made its fortune selling gunpowder during the War of 1812, and soldiered on to invent everything ever worn by a cop: Kevlar, nylon, polyester, synthetic rubber. If you’ve cooked on Teflon pans, that money’s theirs, too. That means you’ve supported American patriotism, or at least heir…
UPDATE: Cary Elwes’ December 2 book signing has been postponed. Changing Hands has not announced a new date as of this writing, but tickets purchased for the December 2 event will be honored on the new date. I was elated when I found out that actor Cary Elwes had written…
Can The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 keep up with the first two films? Why was the final book split into two movies? Does Katniss even want to be part of this revolution? On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, we discuss all things Hunger Games before moving onto a…
When I was a kid in upstate New York, I’d hear Petula Clark’s “Downtown” on the radio — a song about the promise of glittering lights, “movie shows,” and all the excitement and dazzle adult life had to offer — and revel in the anywhere-but-hereness of it all. That’s not…
Quick, name the most expensive housing market in America. If you said New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco, you couldn’t be farther from the truth — literally. Each is over 1,500 miles away from Williston, North Dakota, a monochrome town you can drive end-to-end in 15 minutes. In four…
The third-greatest scourge of the earth, right after online comments sections and bedbugs, is the unfunny comedy sequel, which may be why you think you should skip Horrible Bosses 2. The miraculous surprise is that Horrible Bosses 2 isn’t terrible at all. It’s looser, breezier, more confident than its 2011…
All right, all you Tributes and Panemaniacs, we know you’re freaking out right now. You have a right to be. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part I is coming to theaters Friday, November 21, and it is a big deal. But in all this excitement, don’t forget to make plans…
It’s a special The Daily Show edition of the Voice Film Club podcast, as we talk about Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher (starring Steve Carell) and move onto Rosewater, the movie Jon Stewart left The Daily Show for three months in 2013 to direct. Both are in theaters starting November 14…
In the mid 1990s, self-appointed cultural gatekeepers used to wield Peter and Bobby Farrelly’s Dumb and Dumber as proof of the deterioration of film artistry. Those people hadn’t, of course, actually bothered to see the movie, and thus had no sense of its peculiar, sweet-spirited, un-toilet-trained brilliance. Times have changed,…
