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 […]
EXCERPT: The Playboy Interview With Quentin Tarantino
“I just don’t want to be an old-man filmmaker. I want to stop at a certain point. Directors don’t get better as they get older. Usually the worst films in their filmography are those last four at the end. I am all about my filmography, and one bad film f*cks up three good ones … When directors get out-of-date, it’s not pretty,” says filmmaker Quentin Tarantino. Playboy’s November Interview sits down with the maverick director to talk about Django Unchained, facing 50 and why he’s no longer a Hollywood outsider (issue on newsstands and i.Playboy.com Tuesday, November 20, with the […]
CINEMA: The Sky Is Falling
SKYFALL (2012, directed Sam Mendes, 143 minutes, U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Hard to believe such a specific fantasy can maintain itself for 50 years, but secret agent “Bond, James Bond” returns, Aston Martin, shaken-not-stirred, twangy theme song and all. Skyfall, the 23rd official Bond film, makes a point of hitting every little cliché from the original series but this time it seems oddly fitting. With its apocalyptic showdown with the MI6 and an unexpected look at the roots of our trained killer, Skyfall feels like a final farewell to the character who has defined blockbuster action films […]
BIG STAR DOC: Nothing Can Hurt Me Now
BIG STAR: NOTHING CAN HURT ME is a feature-length documentary about legendary Memphis band Big Star. While mainstream success eluded them, Big Star’s three albums have become critically lauded touchstones of the rock music canon. A seminal band in the history of alternative music, Big Star has been cited as an influence by artists including REM, The Replacements, Belle & Sebastian, Elliot Smith and Flaming Lips, to name just a few. With never-before-seen footage and photos of the band, in-depth interviews and a rousing musical tribute by the bands they inspired, BIG STAR: NOTHING CAN HURT ME is a story […]
CINEMA: Film Fest Highs And Lows
BY DAN BUSKIRK It’s the last weekend of the Philadelphia Film Festival, whose films stretch on through its closing this Sunday night. In my overview. there was a shocking lack of lowlights. While the festival has cut the number films to nearly a third of the massive number that played in its pre-crash years, it seems like the ratio of excellence in their selection has gone through the roof. I was a little underwhelmed by David Chase’s Not Fade Away. It had all the great character detail you loved from Chase’s The Sopranos (including Tony Soprano himself, James Gandolfini […]
CINEMA: Philadelphia Film Fest Picks
Hyde Park On Hudson, starring Bill Murray as F.D.R. and Laura Linney as Eleanor, screens 7:30 PM Thursday @ The Prince BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It is time for the 21st annual Philadelphia Film Festival, delivering a slate of over one hundred films from around the country and around the world, from now until October 28th . It used to be that critics could gorge on piles of advance DVD screeners of films playing the festival. This year, advance screening opportunities are oddly curtailed, giving us just a handful of films on which to report. Some of the festival […]
CINEMA: What Is And What Should Never Be
BY JESSE LUNDY LED ZEP CORRESPONDENT So I’ve been looking forward to going to see the Led Zeppelin movie Celebration Day since I saw that it was going to be playing in Philadelphia. I broke my rule of never stepping foot into the Riverview Theater on Delaware Ave–recently reviewed by Albert Y. on citysearch.com as “The absolutely worst place you can ever imagine you could go to attempt to watch a movie.” I did it for the Zep. When I got there, about 75 people were already in the theater. Lots of graybeard classic-rock looking dudes who surely fought […]
CINEMA: The Great Escape
NEW YORKER: The new Ben Affleck movie, “Argo,” begins in November, 1979, with the storming of the American Embassy in Tehran. A crowd breaks into the compound, taking more than fifty Americans hostage. Six escape through the back of the building and take refuge in the residence of the Canadian Ambassador. How can they be spirited out of the country, or, as the jargon puts it, exfiltrated? Back in Washington, the task falls to a C.I.A. staffer named Tony Mendez (played by Affleck), from the Office of Technical Services. Various plans have been mooted, the most credible being that the […]