Time is short, so I will cut to the chase: we have a handful of tix to see a special VIP screening of THE END OF THE TOUR, starring Jason Segel as novelist David Foster Wallace and Jesse Eisenberg as the magazine writer guy that followed him around on the book tour for Infinite Jest for an article that never published and then turned it into a book/movie after the author’s suicide in 2008 and thereby incurred the wrath of DFW disciples from here to Pluto. The screening is at 7:30 Wednesday night at The Prince Theater. To qualify […]
CINEMA: Truly, Madly Amy
FRESH AIR Comedian Amy Schumer is — by her own admission — an oversharer. Whether she’s talking about one-night stands or drinking habits, she has a tendency to bare all. In 2011, Schumer’s blend of honesty and humor caught the attention of director Judd Apatow, who heard her being interviewed on the radio by Howard Stern. “She was telling stories about her relationships and also stories about her dad, who has multiple sclerosis … and the stories were very dark and sad, but … they were really funny and warm at the same time,” Apatow tells Fresh Air’s Terry […]
CINEMA: Sonics Doc Makers Launch Indiegogo Fund
Yesterday award-winning director Jordan Albertsen (THE STANDARD) and producer Brian Scott Robinson launched their Indiegogo campaign for their feature documentary BOOM! A Film About The Sonics, which will chronicle this history of the Pacific Northwest proto-punk band’s rise, fall, and unlikely and triumphant return. At once both a completely unknown band and an enduring legendary influence, The Sonics are considered by many to be the Rosetta Stone of punk music. The Sonics were a clear influence on innumerable bands, including The Hives, Nirvana (“They’ve got the most amazing drum sound I’ve ever heard.” – Kurt Cobain), The Kinks (“A […]
Win Tix To A Special VIP Screening Of Trainwreck
If, like Esquire, we had an annual WOMEN WE LOVE issue, Amy Schumer would be at the top, the bottom and everywhere in between. But we don’t. Instead, we just hire women we love — women who rock, women who rant, women who make us wonder, women who make us worry, women who make milk shoot out our nose on a good day — which, to our mind, is progress. Anyway, let us get down off my Alan Alda soapbox and tell you what I came here to tell you: That we have 20 pairs of tickets to a […]
INCOMING: Natural Bourne Killers
Pretty badass movie poster by artist Jim Evans, aka T.A.Z. ( The Beastie Boys, The Wu Tang Clan, Rage Against The Machine, Pearl Jam, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Saw franchise) was unveiled at Comic Con for American Ultra, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, which, judging by the trailer, looks like The Manchurian Candidate meets The Big Lebowski. In theaters August 21st.
CONTEST: Win Tix To A Special Advance Screening Of The New Amy Winehouse Documentary
Amy Winehouse was a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. We all know the power and the grace of Back To Black and we all know about her harrowing decline and premature death. The new and rightfully acclaimed documentary Amy, which opens Friday at the Ritz, reveals the back story behind the music and the actual person behind the grotesque, strobe-flashed caricature the media depicted. The film makes the case that the very factors that fueled her bottomless ambition and stratospheric rise — the psychic wounds incurred in adolescence, the debilitating insecurity and self-loathing that triggered her bulimia and a […]
CINEMA: The Stanford Prison Experiment
What happens when a college psych study goes shockingly wrong? In this tense, psychological thriller based on the notorious true story, Billy Crudup stars as Stanford University professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who, in 1971, cast 24 student volunteers as prisoners and guards in a simulated jail to examine the source of abusive behavior in the prison system. The results astonished the world, as participants went from middle-class undergrads to drunk-with-power sadists and submissive victims in just a few days. Winner of two awards at the Sundance Film Festival, including Best Screenplay, and created with the close participation of Dr. Zimbardo […]
CINEMA: Tyrannosaurus Next
JURASSIC WORLD (2015, directed by Colin Trevorrow, 124 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC With Jurassic World, the thunder lizard franchise ties Jaws for Spielberg blockbusters that have stretched on now for four chapters. In 1987 this meant Jaws: The Revenge, where there was a half-hearted attempt to lure theatergoers back into the water with the star power of Lorraine Gary (Mrs. Brody in the original) and Michael Caine. Tepid splashing and mild interest ensued. Like Jaws: The Revenge, Jurassic World wants to hide its “Part 4” too but its sequel-y pedigree is too deep in its DNA […]
RIP: Chris Lee, Last Of The Aristrocratic Monsters
NEW YORK TIMES: Mr. Lee was 35 when his breakthrough film, Terence Fisher’s British horror movie “The Curse of Frankenstein,” was released in 1957. He played the creature. But it was a year later, when he played the title role in Mr. Fisher’s “Dracula,” that his cinematic identity became forever associated with Bram Stoker’s noble, ravenous vampire, who in Mr. Lee’s characterization exuded a certain lascivious sex appeal. When the film was reissued in 2007, Jeremy Dyson of The Guardian wrote, “Lee’s count is piercingly rapt, a fierce carnal evil burning behind his flashing eyes.” Even in his 70s […]
CINEMA: The Alpha Skaters
RELATED: Skaterdater, a 1965 American short film, was the first film on skateboarding. The film tells a story with no dialogue. The group of boy skaters are suddenly at a point when one of the boys sees a young girl, and becomes interested in her. This causes a rift with the other boys, who challenges him to a skating duel that goes down a hilly street. The young boy loses; however, he gets the girl, and shortly, a few other girls are seen and become interested in the boys, too. The surf rock-esque soundtrack was composed by Mike Curb […]
CINEMA: The Gym Class
RESULTS (2015, directed by Andrew Bujalski, 105 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Without name actors and with just the slenderest threads of plot, writer/director Andrew Bujalski has made four of the most smart and perceptive American comedies of our era. While his last, the 80s period piece Computer Chess, was his most ambitious, his latest, a small scale romantic comedy called Results, brings name actors into the mix for the first time. Just having Guy Pearce (unashamedly sporting an Australian accent) and Cobie Smulders from How I Met Your Mother starring in the film makes Results Bujalski’s most […]
Q&A: Talking Love & Mercy With Brian Wilson
Photo by MARK HANAUER via Rock Paper Photo BY JONATHAN VALANIA Brian Wilson is not a big talker. Music, glorious music, is his gift, not gab. He partnered with a lyricist for his greatest works — Tony Asher on Pet Sounds, Van Dyke Parks on Smile and Mike Love on “Good Vibrations.” He’s not one of those artists who like to use the celebrity interview format to deliver expansive ruminations about the world according to Brian Wilson. In fact, having interviewed him several times over the years, it is patently obvious that he sees talking to the press as a […]
CINEMA: To Live And Die In Twin Peaks
THE ADVOCATE: A Brooklyn, N.Y., filmmaker who previously told the story of a teen obsessed with porn is teaming up with the creator of the otherworldly film Tarnation to tell a strange story of a teen whose life revolved around the show Twin Peaks. But they need your help to do it.Travis Blue’s childhood in a small Washington town was turned upside down one day when he stumbled across a film crew shooting Northwest Passage, as the show was then called. Fascinated by the transformation of his hometown into a fictional world, Blue skipped school to watch the filming of […]