PREVIOUSLY: Near the end of The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson’s storybook cinematic fable of wasted potential, the character of Richie, a disgraced world-class tennis player with a dark secret, looks soulfully into the bathroom mirror. It’s impossible to say what he’s thinking–he looks scared, confused, angry, on the verge. A tensely strummed acoustic guitar spirals in the background, accompanying a hushed, faintly ominous vocal. It’s Elliott Smith’s “Needle in the Hay.” Richie picks up a scissors and methodically, if crudely, crops his shoulder-length tresses down to the scalp. He lathers up his lumberjack beard and shaves it clean. He stares […]
CINEMA: Less Than Zero
ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, 157 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I find myself in stone disbelief over a few of the things Hollywood is telling itself about three of the season’s high profile films: 1. The Hobbit’s “high-frame rate” process is preferable to film. 2. Django Unchained has important things to say about race and slavery. 3. Zero Dark Thirty is an apolitical look at C.I.A. torture and the capture of Osama bin Laden. It was surprising to hear so many characterize a film filled with sympathetic, good-looking actors carrying out a G-rated […]
CINEMA: Gangland Style
GANGSTER SQUAD (2013, directed by Ruben Fleischer, 113 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I’ve never been one to adopt the cry that stamping out violent media is the cure for reducing troubling crime rates but I’ve seen few films that seem as beholden to gun-culture fetishism than the would-be epic Gangster Squad. A lot of bullets fly in this paper-thin distillation of every gangster movie ever made, and while it is hard to imagine this film inspiring anything more than dismay, the film serves as a holy document of our nation’s absurd belief in the curative powers of […]
CINEMA: The Top 10 Films Of 2012
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It might come as no surprise to see The Master on a Best of 2012 list, but it is a surprise to me, someone who has always found Paul Thomas Anderson films to display a lot of craft masking simplistic or vague ideas. Exploring an odd, symbiotic relationship between religious charlatan and a shell-shocked ex-G.I. addict, Anderson’s latest is the most intimate of epics, a film that attempts to tell the story of the 20th century while most of its scenes take place in small rooms. The Master itself is not overloaded with action and Anderson seems less interested […]
CINEMA: Gaslandia
PROMISED LAND (2012, directed by Gus Van Sant, 106 minutes, U.S.) NOT FADE AWAY (2012, directed by David Chase, 112 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Matt Damon and John Kasinski co-wrote/co-produced and co-star in Promised Land, an “issue drama” that seems Hell-bent on allowing its flat-footed attempt at drama get by on its good-intentions alone. Based on a story idea by fellow do-gooder Dave Eggers, Promised Land aches of being a film whose anti-fracking message came long before they decided on a story to hang it on. Damon is Steve Butler, a servant of an energy company […]
REWIND 2012: The Year In Phawker Interviews
Talk is cheap, especially on the Internet, but at Phawker it’s totally free, baby — at least for you, dear reader. Trolling through the vast and dusty Phawker archives, we have dug up fat sack of conversations from the past year that are worth re-visiting: Dick Dale, King Of The Surf Guitar; graphic novelist Charles Burns, the Edgar Allan Poe of right now; photographer Joe Kazcmarek, who tirelessly chronicles the murder-scarred backstreets of North and West Philly; Jim Reid, lead singer of The Jesus And Mary Chain; Anton Newcombe, cult leader of The Brian Jonestown Massacre; Hardball host Chris Matthews; […]
THE SOPRANO: Q&A With Writer/Director David Chase
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Last week we sat down with Sopranos creator David Chase to talk about his new movie, Not Fade Away, a weedy coming-of-age dramedy about being young, horny and trying to be the Rolling Stones in the teenage wasteland of suburban New Jersey in the mid-’60s. There’s sex. There’s drugs. There’s rock n’ roll, in the form of an impeccably-curated soundtrack and convincing scenes of the band trying to kick out the jams in garages and basements. There’s James Gandolfini as the hey-you-kids-get-off-of-my-lawn father, shaking his fist at the longhairs from the wrong side of the generation […]
MEMORIAM: Jack Klugman, ‘Rubber-Mugged’ Everyman
NEW YORK TIMES: His features were large and mobile; his voice was a deep, earnest, rough-hewed bleat. He was a no-baloney actor who conveyed straightforward, simply defined emotion, whether it was anger, heartbreak, lust or sympathy. That forthrightness, in both comedy and drama, was the source of his power and his popularity. Never remote, never haughty, he was a regular guy, an audience-pleaser who proved well-suited for series television. Mr. Klugman was already a decorated actor in 1970 when he began co-starring in “The Odd Couple,” a sitcom adaptation of Neil Simon’s hit play about two divorced men — friends […]
CINEMA: The Shootist
DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012, directed by Quentin Tarantino, 165 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Discussing the trailer to Django Unchained before its release, I evoked a few chuckles from friends with the comment, “It looks like a Wayans brothers’ spoof of Tarantino films.” After seeing Django Unchained in its entirety, the film barely outruns that perception; in many ways Django Unchained is a Tarantino film almost to the point of parody. The only thing missing is the element of surprise, once the cornerstone of the Tarantino brand. Without surprise, what is left to define Tarantino? Explosive violence, profane exclamations, […]
INCOMING: Q&A w/ Sopranos Creator David Chase
We talk to Sopranos creator David Chase about his new movie,Not Fade Away, a weedy coming-of-age dramedy about being young, horny and trying to be the Rolling Stones in the teenage wasteland of suburban New Jersey in the mid-’60s. Discussed: Kolhack: The Night Stalker, Orson Welles’ Touch Of Evil, the meaning of the end of Antonioni’s Blow-Up, Jagger/Richards, Chinatown, The Sex Pistols, Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers, Dylan’s wig and why he will have to answer for making Journey cool again when he meets his maker. Look for it Friday on a Phawker near you! RELATED: David Chase & […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR When Christoph Waltz auditioned for the role of SS officer Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, he read the passage assigned for the audition, then kept going until he had gone through the entire role as Tarantino himself filled in for the other parts. “It was partly hilarious, partly just fabulous, partly scary,” Waltz tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “And we arrived at the end and then we parted and I said to the casting director, ‘If this should have been it, it was definitely worth it,’ and, well, then they called me back.” Waltz […]
CINEMA: Mr. Bilbo Rising
THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (2012, directed by Peter Jackson, 166 minutes, U.S/New Zealand) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The Matrix sequels, The Star Wars prequels, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Godfather III; there’s something about bad prequels that make us feel uniquely superior. We know how the story should be told, we’ve seen it told well before. But there it is, up on the screen, hitting every bump and taking every wrong turn. After topping the Lord of the Rings trilogy with a Best Picture Oscar in 2003, Peter Jackson returns to adapt J.R.R. […]
CINEMA: Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory
LINCOLN (2012, directed by Steven Spielberg, 150 minutes, U.S.)?? BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC As with the Civil War, it’s only a slight exaggeration to say Lincoln overstays its welcome. Not that I’m surprised. Could there be a prestige film like Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln with a running time of 90 minutes? Of course not. Tradition demands that Oscar-bait like this stretch out for well past the two-hour mark, all the better to give weight to this historical drama about the tortuous passage of the 13th Amendment which effectively ended slavery in this country for evermore. It’s a shame because […]