THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST (2009, directed by Daniel Alfredson, 147 minutes Sweden) FOUR LIONS (2009, directed by Chris Morris, 97 minutes, U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I was a little disappointed that the title of this third film from the best selling Stieg Larsson novels was only metaphoric. In the first part, hacker and violent avenger Lisbeth Salander really showed her dragon tattoo and in the second half she actually played with fire (engulfing her abusive daddy in flames). Here, I was hoping for some Wily Coyote-style action where Lisbeth made one of her many attackers […]
SCIENTIST: Zombie Apocalypse Could Happen
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: In the zombie flicks 28 Days Later and I Am Legend, an unstoppable viral plague sweeps across humanity, transforming people into mindless monsters with cannibalistic tendencies. Though dead humans can’t come back to life, certain viruses can induce such aggressive, zombie-like behavior, scientists say in the new National Geographic Channel documentary The Truth Behind Zombies, premiering Saturday at 10 p.m. ET/PT. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society, which part-owns the National Geographic Channel.) For instance, rabies—a viral disease that infects the central nervous system—can drive people to be violently mad, according to Samita Andreansky, […]
CINEMA: Heart Of Stone
STONE (2010, directed by John Curran, 105 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC What would it take to rouse Robert DeNiro out of his deep slumber? When did we see last him conscious, maybe the sullen ex-con in 1997’s Jackie Brown, maybe the heist mastermind in 1998’s Ronin? In this past decade it seems that the man who was once America’s most respected actor is most engaged when chasing Ben Stiller around the suburbs in the Meet The Parents franchise. A melancholy autumn of a career indeed. Stone might have perked him up. It’s a chamber piece, […]
CINEMA: Dead Man Talking
PATRIOT NEWS: R.Budd Dwyer pulled a revolver from the manila envelope. “This will hurt someone,” he cautioned reporters packed into Room 129 of the state Finance Building. As they pleaded with Dwyer, he waved them back with his free hand. Pennsylvania’s treasurer — fractured by fraud, racketeering and bribery convictions — had called the news conference on this snowy Thursday morning to proclaim his innocence for the last time. Then, with television cameras rolling, he shoved the gun’s six-inch barrel into his mouth. Almost 24 years since Dwyer’s public suicide on Jan. 22, 1987, the day remains a polarizing event […]
CINEMA: The Un-Friendster
THE SOCIAL: NETWORK (2010, directed by David Fincher, 121 minutes, U.S) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I’ve heard a lot of people discuss this movie in the weeks running up to its release but nobody is using the film’s name. Instead, they’re calling it “The Facebook Movie.” But on its face The Social Network is hardly about Facebook at all; there ‘s precious little “friending” going on, no videos of cute kitties are posted and no one is seen begging for nails to build their barn on Farmville. But interest seems high because with 500 million Facebook users, boy billionaire […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See My Dog Tulip
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 27 7:00PM Screening PENN DESIGN MEYERSON HALL 1st FLOOR GALLERY 210 SOUTH 34TH STREET (entrance in plaza) First reader to email us at FEED@PHAWKER.COM wins two tix to Monday’s screening and Q&A with the filmmakers. Include a cell # for confirmation. Good luck and godspeed.
CINEMA: The Friendster
WALL STREET JOURNAL: The film—which premieres Friday night and will be widely released Oct. 1 by Sony Corp.’s Sony Pictures—takes as its narrative framework two lawsuits over the company’s origins. Facebook later settled the cases. On Friday, Mr. Zuckerberg will announce on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” that he is donating $100 million to the public schools in Newark, N.J.— his first major act of philanthropy. Facebook’s efforts to combat the film stretch back to the 2009 publication of Ben Mezrich’s book, “The Accidental Billionaires,” upon which the film is based. “Ben Mezrich clearly aspires to be the Jackie Collins or […]
CINEMA: I’m Not There
NEW YORK TIMES: CASEY AFFLECK wants to come clean. His new movie, “I’m Still Here,” was performance. Almost every bit of it. Including Joaquin Phoenix’s disturbing appearance on David Letterman’s late-night show in 2009, Mr. Affleck said in a candid interview at a cafe here on Thursday morning. “It’s a terrific performance, it’s the performance of his career,” Mr. Affleck said. He was speaking of Mr. Phoenix’s two-year portrayal of himself — on screen and off — as a bearded, drug-addled aspiring rap star, who, as Mr. Affleck tells it, put his professional life on the line to star in […]
CINEMA: Whatever Happened To Joaquin Phoenix?
ASSOCIATED PRESS: The film is full of dark, sometimes graphic scenes about the Academy Award-nominated Phoenix, whose decision to go for a music career and concurrent decline was fodder for late-night comics. In one scene, Phoenix banters about the irony of his life being depicted in film, when he is trying to get away from the industry. The film follows Phoenix to his last acting and press events, where he grumbles that he “hates” acting. “I think everyone at some point in their life hates their jobs and the people they are around,” he says in opening scenes to explain […]
CINEMA: Spare Us The Cutter
MACHETE (2010, directed by Robert Rodriguez & Ethan Manquis, 105 minutes, U.S.) MESRINE: PUBLIC ENEMY #1 (2008, directed by Jean-François Richet, 133 minutes, France) SOUL KITCHEN (2009, directed by Fatih Akin, 99 minutes, Germany) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC After twenty-five years of playing glowering bad guys, ex-con turned actor Danny Trejo has finally made the improbable move to leading man in Robert Rodriguez’s action film throw-back Machete. Carefully balanced between spoof and action vehicle, Machete delivers on the berserk carve-’em-up mayhem promised in the character’s original fake trailer made for the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse collaboration. Machete possesses a bullish […]
CINEMA: Happiness Is A Warm Gun
MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT (2008, directed by Jean-François Richet, 113 minutes, France) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The first of a two-part robbing, shooting and killing jamboree, Mesrine: Killer Instinct is a dazzling vehicle for French superstar Vincent Cassel, Cassel burst into the scene in 1995 as the violent ghetto youth Vinz in the controversial La Haine and has shown himself to be surprisingly flexible in French productions and Hollywood films, appearing in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Twelve and Thirteen and even providing a voice in Shrek. Like Bogart he has a face that can seem simultaneously handsome and homely and standing […]
CINEMA: Happiness Is A Warm Gun
LIFE DURING WARTIME (2009, directed by Todd Solondz, 98 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Todd Solondz returns to the unmoored characters from his 1998 film Happiness to find them further adrift in his latest feature, Life During Wartime. Resurrecting the sisters Joy, Trish and Helen from Happiness’ parade of sad sacks, Solondz again studies characters whose lives fall disappointingly short of where they imagine. It’s Joy’s journey that gives us a tour through these tortured souls’ live. Played by the meek-voiced Shirley Henderson, Joy travels down to Florida to reunite with her mother (veteran actress Renee Taylor) and […]
CINEMA: Still Tilda After All These Years
ORLANDO (1992, directed by Sally Potter, 93 minutes, U.K.) TRASH HUMPERS (2010, directed by Harmony Korine, 78 minutes, USA) BY DAN BUSKIRK Eighteen years ago, when I was a new resident of San Francisco, the date movie of the year was Sally Potter’s Orlando. Hip, literary, breezy and oozing with spectacle, it reveled in the type of feminist and gender issues on which the city built it’s reputation as the Gay Capitol of America. Orlando was released a gay lifetime ago, it originally had a lightly scandalous air which has all but dissipated now, yet as its theatrical re-release shows, […]