We’ve entered an age in which people have no idea how old they are. Fifty-year-olds lament, “I still feel 30 in my mind,” and sometimes dress like it. Some 30-year-olds may cling to the destructive habits of their 20s, but plenty more march dutifully into full-on family-and-career–building mode, perhaps acting…
Art may not be more important than human lives. But on the list of things that mean something to human lives, across centuries, it ranks pretty high. That’s what’s so compelling about the story of the Monuments Men, a group of people from 13 nations who volunteered to protect cultural…
Consider the Lego, the toy of contradiction. With one — well, with hundreds of them — you can build anything: houses, airplanes, house-airplanes. You can even build something that will change the world, as Larry Page and Sergey Brin did in 1996 when they housed the server for their new…
“Goodbye, Facebook; goodbye iPhone; hello, Saint Vladimir’s,” groans drop-out Rose Hathaway (Zoey Deutch) when she and her best friend, Lissa (Lucy Fry), are dragged back to the titular school they ditched when they ran away to live normal-ish lives in Portland. Despite their year outside the gates, human culture remains…
It’s a little sad that Colin Farrell has outgrown roles that require him to wear raggedy sweaters and say things like “For fook’s sake!” It had to happen, though. Farrell has always made a terrific bad boy, but he clearly knows he couldn’t be a scamp forever, and he seems…
How retrograde are many of the core tenets of the Disney princess? Consider this: My daughter owns a book called Snow White’s Secret, in which Disney’s royal archetype reveals her devilish hidden life: When the Dwarfs are working at the mine, she sneaks into their cottage and joyfully cleans the…
Deemed the “Mozart of psychotherapy” and the grandfather of modern hypnosis, psychiatrist Milton H. Erikson’s methods and findings are well-known parts of therapy now. However, unlike Sigmund Freud and other pioneers in his field, his name remains relatively unknown. That’s why Alexander Vesely, in conjunction with the Milton H. Erikson…
HGTV’s Scoring the Deal stars real estate partners Jason Abrams and Kristen Cook and the show’s second season première airs tonight at 11 p.m. ET/PT. The show features Abrams and Cook of Scottsdale’s Abrams International as they help professional athletes find their dream homes, and there’s usually a significant time…
If you’re looking to flex your filmmaking muscles or catch some of the Valley’s up-and-coming movie talent, look no further than the Almost Famous Film Festival. The local nonprofit, founded by brothers Jae and Kai Staats, is celebrating its 10th year in challenging local film teams to make movies in…
The single-screen cinema, with its balconies and ushers and double features, has joined vaudeville and silent pictures in our hazy American memory. And yet those of us intent on sanctimonious navel-gazing must whine, occasionally, about the good old days, when one saw two carefully paired feature-length films and a couple…
For Robert Redford, Sundance’s opening day was a bummer. He woke up to learn the Academy had snubbed him for a (deserved) Best Actor nod for the sparse yachting drama All Is Lost, and he had to spend his typically triumphant morning press conference swatting down questions about being sad…
While our ingenues scurry toward teen bestsellers and David O. Russell flicks, here’s the next generation of talented leading men swaggering into a dude-bro Sex and the City. At night, best friends played by Zac Efron, Miles Teller, and Michael B. Jordan — a.k.a. the player, the goof, and the…
A favorite pastime of critics and serious filmgoers — perhaps the most idiotic and fruitless one — is to complain about how bad the movies have gotten. The complaint is meaningless, because no matter how “bad” the movies get, there are always actors. There’s no such thing as a golden…
On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast, this paper’s film critics kick things off with something of a “potpourri segment,” to borrow a phrase from Voice film editor Alan Scherstuhl. Echoing a common sentiment in the movie world, Scherstuhl describes the month of January as a “grim, featureless landscape…that long,…
Quick, somebody check Jason Reitman’s house to see if the real man has been turned into dust by a body snatcher. Though his name’s on the poster, it’s impossible to believe that the sardonic boy wonder of Juno, Thank You for Smoking, and Young Adult would direct this stilted romance…
For some, the first things that come to mind when thinking of gay cinema are films like Brokeback Mountain and Blue Is the Warmest Color. While these flicks have their merits, they barely scratch the surface of LGBT film. The fifth annual Desperado Film Festival is here to broaden viewers’…
Let’s start with the ending: the closing credits disclaimer that insists that none of the lead actors in Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac filmed penetrative sex. If there is real sex in the movie, and it sure looks like there is, it must have been done by one of the eight…
The publicity campaign for Big Bad Wolves, a nasty little revenge thriller from Israeli filmmakers Navot Papushado and Aharon Keshales, quotes Quentin Tarantino’s decree that it’s the “best film of the year.” Tarantino saw Big Bad Wolves at last year’s Busan Film Festival, where he reportedly showed up at a…
Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi solidifies his status as one of cinema’s finest living dramatists with The Past, a superb follow-up to 2011’s Oscar-winning A Separation that again situates audiences amid interpersonal, familial, and household crises. Working from a script that incisively plumbs a thicket of logistical and emotional complications, Farhadi’s…
New Zealand stuntwoman-turned-actress Zoë Bell is fully aware of her unique position as an action star who also does her own stunts. After working as Lucy Lawless’ stunt double on Xena: Warrior Princess, Bell was discovered by Quentin Tarantino on the set of Kill Bill. After that, Bell has enjoyed…
So many ideas in our country begin with the best of intentions and end up completely corrupted. From Lindsay Lohan’s acting career to the once-noble filibuster, well-meaning stuff sometimes just gets out of hand here. But has it caught up with Kickstarter, too? Launched in 2009, this crowd-funding platform seemed,…
There are four good things we can say about I, Frankenstein, another muscles-and-rubble comic book adaptation just un-terrible enough not to alienate its core audience, yet never consistently grand or surprising enough to win over anyone else. First, Aaron Eckhart brings it, scowling like a champ beneath his jigsawed scar…
