BY JONATHAN VALANIA To mark the 20th anniversary of A Crack Up At The Race Riots, his deliriously Dada attempt at writing, as he once put it, “the great American Choose Your Own Adventure novel,” we got the aging enfant terrible of American cinema on the horn. Discussed: Drugs, Tupac, apocalyptic Manson-ian race wars, why the Pamela Anderson sex tape is the greatest movie ever made, drugs, what band he wishes he could have been a member of, getting banned from Letterman for rifling through Meryl Streep’s purse in the Green Room, drugs, making a batshit insane video for […]
BREAD & CIRCUSES: The Os Mutantes Movie
The year is high in the mid-’60s. The place: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a country chafing under a brutal dictatorship. The setting: a swingin’ ’60s nightclub au-go-go straight out of Austin Powers. Lights flash and the music throbs as the camera zooms in and out to the beat. The club is filled with the hip, the young and the privileged, all dressed in mod Carnaby Street finery. Os Mutantes, Brazil’s rough-translation answer to the psychedelic-period Beatles, are set to take the stage. Suddenly, the music cuts out and the lights come up as the room fills with government storm troopers. […]
CINEMA: I Was A Teenage Gorehound
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Slaughter Tales — a feature-length horror movie written/directed by/starring a then-fourteen-year-old South Philly filmmaker Johnny Dickie — changed the way I look at movies. Let me explain: In the mid-1980s, during the rise of the video store, a film lover would be giddy about the freshly-bloomed reality of being able to watch films you would never see on TV or at your local theaters. I was in college studying film at the time, so it was an opportunity to see for the first time classics from Fritz Lang, Buster Keaton and Stanley Kubrick. Being […]
CINEMA: The Ends Of The Earth
OBLIVION (2013, directed by Joseph Kosinski, 124 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The hype seemed a little underwhelming in trumpeting the release of the epic sci-fi flick Oblivion. Arriving pre-blockbuster season and directed by the newcomer behind the underwhelming Tron: The Legacy, I’d be kidding if I said optimism was in bloom. Yet with spring, all possibilities are possible: Oblivion is a minor triumph of lowered expectations, sporting a fairly fresh premise and gorgeous production design, while serving as a somewhat sturdy vehicle for its middle-aged star to fire laser guns and fly space cruisers like a […]
CINEMA: Hard Boyled
TRANCE (2013, directed by Danny Boyle, 101 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC When you’re caught in the spell of the projectionist’s light, how much preposterousness is too much? We all know movie watchers who are proud to interrupt a film with the comment, “That could never happen!” but to embrace film means that you not only engage your imagination but exercise your gullibility with the idea “what if this could happen?” British director Danny Boyle has made a career assuming we’d fall for his outlandish plots, and more often than not he’s been right, making us a […]
CINEMA: The Banality Of Evil
EVIL DEAD (2013, directed by Fede Alvarez, 91 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It is not unusual for aging pop artists to remake their early hits to take advantage of new recording technology, a new publishing deal, or some lingering impulse of perfectionism. Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Rob Tappert, the director, star, and producer of the 1981 cult-horror hit The Evil Dead have come together again to produce this modern reboot of the demonic franchise, and it is far superior to the original in nuanced acting, realistic effects and production design. Yet unsurprisngly, this new Evil […]
CROSS-POSTED: Q&A With Tim Blake Nelson
How me met the Coen Brothers, making O Brother, working with Clooney on Syriana, working with Spielberg on Minority Report and Lincoln, studying classics at Brown, growing up Jewish offspring of Holocaust refugees in Tulsa and why Katherine Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty got bamboozled by craven politicos and cowardly liberals. All that and more. MORE RELATED: O Brother, Who Art Thou?
CINEMA: Girlz Gone Wild
SPRING BREAKERS (2012, directed by Harmony Korine, 94 minutes, U.S.) UPSIDE DOWN (2012, Juan Solanas, 100 minutes, Canada/France) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Comedian D.L. Hughley was on Real Time with Bill Maher a few years back, talking about the seductive fantasy of your standard issue rap video: a picture of convertible sports cars, hot tubs and rippling seas of bouncing booty. As successful as Hughley has been, he admitted those videos even made him feel like life might be passing him by. That fantasy idyll of compliant, scantily-clad young females, drinks a-flowing, and tunes a-blasting is a vision […]
CINEMA: The Stoker In The Wry
STOKER (2013, directed by Chan-wook Park, 98 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Few cinematic events this year were as titillating as the arrival of South Korean director Chan-wook Park on American shores, where the merciless creator of hard-hitting thrillers like Oldboy and Thirst has made his first English language film, Stoker. Park’s work has been so masterfully constructed up to now, a worried mind might travel back 20 years ago, when director John Woo capped off his string of action masterpieces with a drab misfire, Hard Target with Jean-Claude Van Damme. Co-produced by the Scott brothers, Ridley […]
CINEMA: The Wizard Of Blahs
SALON: Sam Raimi’s gazillion-dollar prequel to “The Wizard of Oz” features gorgeous production design – liberally quoting and pilfering from the beloved 1939 original – dazzling costumes (many of them draped on Rachel Weisz) and explosive, imaginative special effects. You can feel its good intentions, even when Michelle Williams isn’t on screen, glowing with the ethereal, saintly blondness of Glinda the Good Witch. Raimi and his collaborators have made an honest effort to capture the family-movie spirit of old Hollywood, while updating the action and humor to more contemporary standards. But saying that Raimi’s trip to Oz is adequate […]
CINEMA: How Pulp Fiction Got Made
VANITY FAIR: John Travolta was at that time as cold as they get,” says Mike Simpson, Tarantino’s agent at William Morris Endeavor. “He was less than zero.” Marred by a series of commercially successful but creatively stifling movies, culminating in the talking-baby series, Look Who’s Talking, Travolta’s career seemed past saving. So, when he was told that Tarantino wanted to meet with him, he went to the director’s address, on Crescent Heights Boulevard. Tarantino recalls, “I open the door, and he says, ‘O.K., let me describe your apartment to you. Your bathroom has this kind of tile, and da-da-da-da. The […]
TRAILER: The New Coen Brothers Movie
ROLLING STONE: Loosely based on the life of folk icon Dave Van Ronk, Inside Llewyn Davis follows Oscar Isaac as Llewyn Davis, a struggling, aspiring musician living in Greenwich Village at the height of folk scene in the 1960s. Aptly set to Bob Dylan‘s “Farewell,” the trailer shows Davis puttering and playing around the city, absorbing snarky insults from John Goodman and getting a vicious lesson on safe sex from love interest Jean Berkey, played by Carey Mulligan. MORE
CINEMA: Bowie/Iggy Biopic In The Works
THE GUARDIAN: “[This] is not a traditional rock biopic [because] no one dies at the end,” producer Egoli Tossell said. Tentatively titled Lust for Life, Range’s film will explore the period when Pop and Bowie had relocated to Germany, collaborating on 1977’s Low and the Stooges leader’s first two solo albums. It’s an era that Bowie himself has recently returned to, paying tribute to Potsdamer Platz and Nürnberger Strasse in his new single. “Berlin was the first time in years that I had felt a joy of life and a great feeling of release and healing,” Bowie told Uncut […]