Emily Blunt was much too quick an actress to play the flat-charactered fashion ditz in The Devil Wears Prada, and her grandiose new period piece, The Young Victoria, has the potential to allow her a part she deserves.
Reviewed: Kazan On Directing by Eliza Kazan
In addition to the ability to impose his will on his many collaborators – done with great cunning, wit and the occasional act of physical violence – Kazan’s conception of the director is that of a person who is constantly struggling to learn new things and improve himself.
Roman Polanski: Unwanted & Undesirable
By Matthew Caron Roman Polanski was arrested yesterday in Switzerland and faces a likely extradition back to the United States after fleeing from sentencing at the conclusion of a rape trial in Los Angeles that lasted from the spring of’77 into February of ‘79. Initially charged with rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious acts upon a child under 14 and furnishing a controlled substance – methaqualones, i.e. the ‘ludes he slipped into her champagne – to […]
The BQE
By Laura Macomber In 2007, Sufjan Stevens added yet another tag to his résumé as musician, composer, lyricist, poet, writer, and overall-creative-soul: filmmaker. His short film, entitled The BQE, is a self-described “visual travelogue” of New York City’s poorly planned stretch of outer-borough highway and its surrounding neighborhoods, shot in 16 mm and Super 8. The film first premiered at BAM in November 2007, with Stevens performing the accompanying score, which he composed, live; now, two years later, he is […]
What’s Your Favorite Patrick Swayze?
by Willa A. Cmiel “What’s your favorite Patrick Swayze movie?…Whatever your answer, it reveals a lot more about you than about Patrick Swayze.” So wisely states Barrelhouse in yesterday’s “The Swayze Question.” It’s true, everyone’s got a Swayze story, and Barrelhouse manages to ask it to a ton of people including Chuck Klosterman (Road House), Emmylou Harris (Ghost), and Malcolm Gladwell (Road House), among many others. Since I can remember, whenever the Swayze’s name has come up in conversation, I […]
The World Is Josh Harris’s Toilet, Especially The Internet Or: Thoughts that are freaking me out after viewing We Live In Public, a new film by Ondi Timoner
By Matthew Caron We Live In Public, the new documentary feature by Ondi Timoner, is a downright worrisome piece of work that will have you consider its implications long after you’ve left the theater. Here is the story of dotcom entrepreneur Joshua Harris, a man once worth $80 million who now resides in Ethiopia, safely removed from the American Express people who would very much like to discuss his outstanding credit card balance. Long before his exile in Africa, Harris […]
Reviewed: In Heaven Everything Is Fine by Josh Frank with Charlie Buckholtz
Free Press, Reviewed by Matthew Caron In Heaven Everything Is Fine examines the “unsolved life” of Peter Ivers, a man who was seemingly many things to many people and who managed to be at the center of several major scenes without managing to become a star in his own right. Although the book’s subtitle reads as The Unsolved Life Of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theater, Ivers is correctly identified early on as being best remembered […]
Absurdities of War, Inglourious Reviews
No, Basterds is not a Schindler’s List, a Thin Red Line, or a Casablanca. But we don’t need any more war movies like that. The emotional core, more tangible than in any of Tarantino’s other films, builds from and questions every single war movie that’s ever been made.