BY DAN BUSKIRK Looking over this list of favorite film experiences of the last year I’m stuck on the idea that my recommendations might be misleading. Particularly with Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely and with both the Van Sant films, the power of the experiences seem especially diminished by their transition from theater event to home video. Watching Diego’s Luna’s Michael Jackson impersonator break-out his best Jacko moves in front of a Paris skyline in the opening of Mister Lonely or Christopher Doyle’s breathless camerawork in Paranoid Park were visceral experiences in the theater. At home, what can I say: results […]
CINEMA: The Trouble With Marley & Me
BY JONATHAN VALANIA So, just got back from holidaying at my sister’s down in the Dirty South. (Oh, it was lovely, thanks, you’re a lamb for asking) And as is the Christmas tradition, Uncle Jon gave his sister and her hubbo a 2.5 hour respite from the rigors of parenting and took my nephews (ages 8 and 10), niece (age 4), and my mom (age 68) to the movies. We went to see Marley & Me, the movie version of Inquirer columnist John Grogan’s best-selling book, based on his reportedly wildly popular newspaper columns about life with Marley, AKA the […]
MEDIA: The Curious Case Of The Man Shot For Talking At A Brad Pitt Movie That Became A Global Headline, And The 3 Men Shot Dead In One Day That Did Not
INQUIRER: Three shootings yesterday in Grays Ferry, Kensington and West Oak Lane left three dead and three in critical condition, police said. All the victims were male, and all were shot on the street. No arrests had been made as of last night. Just before 6 p.m. in the 1300 block of Harmony Street in Grays Ferry, two men in their 50s were shot. One, age 56, was shot once in the head, the other on the right side of his body. Both were pronounced dead at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. About 6:30 p.m. on the 800 […]
CINEMA: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
GRAN TORINO (2008, directed by Clint Eastwood, 116 minutes, U.S.) VALKYRIE (2008, directed by Bryan Singer, 120 minutes, U.S.) THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (2008, directed by David Fincher, 167 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK, FILM CRITIC Our country’s economic future may be starting to resemble a three-card monte game but those brave and handsome Captains of Industry are standing tall at multiplexes this Christmas. Uberstars Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt are all front and center on big movie posters this Christmas, marketing heroes who are protecting the poor, thinking traitorous thoughts and getting hotter with every […]
DEATH OF PURRFECTION: Eartha Kitt RIP
NEW YORK TIMES: Ms. Kitt, who began performing as a dancer in New York in the late ’40s, went on to achieve success and acclaim in a variety of mediums long before other entertainment multitaskers like Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler. With her curvaceous frame and unabashed vocal come-ons, she was also, along with Lena Horne, among the first widely known African-American sex symbols. Orson Welles famously proclaimed her “the most exciting woman alive” in the early ’50s, apparently just after that excitement prompted him to bite her onstage during a performance of “Time Runs,” an adaptation of […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Path Of The Righteous Man Is Beset On All Sides By The Tyranny Of Evil Men
NEW YORK TIMES: WHEN HE WAS 12 YEARS OLD, PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN saw a local production of “All My Sons” near his home in Rochester, and it was, for him, one of those rare, life-altering events where, at an impressionable age, you catch a glimpse of another reality, a world that you never imagined possible. “I literally thought, I can’t believe this exists,” Hoffman told me on a gray day in London early in the fall. He was sitting in the fifth row of the audience at Trafalgar Studios in the West End, where he was directing “Riflemind” (a play […]
WEEKEND UPDATE: The Good News Flower Hour
The Good News Flower Hour #4 Folks, here’s the latest installment of The Good News Flower Hour, wherein I provide the voice for a flower that reads the news. The debut is HERE and the last couple episodes are HERE and HERE. We are still tweaking the concept and streamlining the production schedule on these — it takes a LONG-ass time to make these little three-minute suckers — but we hope to make this a weekly feature in the very near future. Enjoy.
CINEMA: Beyond The Shadow Of
DOUBT (2008, directed by John Patrick Shanley, 104 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Producer Scott Rudin has demonstrated a show of faith by putting acclaimed playwright John Patrick Shaley in the director’s seat for the first time in eighteen years to helm the film adaptation of Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning religious drama, Doubt. The Oscar-winner screenwriter of Moonstruck gave up film directing eighteen years ago after directing the cult bomb Joe Versus the Volcano. While placing faith in Shanley’s unimaginative direction may have been misguided, it is not enough to sink a film with a script whose writing is […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Composer Erran Baron Cohen‘s latest CD Songs in the Key of Hanukkah offers a new take on traditional sounds. He talks about the album — and about collaborating with his brother Sacha Baron Cohen on the movie Borat. Recorded in London, Berlin and Tel Aviv, the compilation of songs combines klezmer, reggae, electronica and hip hop as it reinterprets classics. The album even features New York rapper Y-Love rhyming in Yiddish. Erran is a founding member of ZOHAR Sound System and DJ’s internationally and in London clubs. ALSO, you have to be pretty dedicated to your work to set […]
CHARLIE DON’T SURF: Actor Sam Bottoms, AKA Lance The Surfer In Apocalypse Now, Dead At 53
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Sam Bottoms, a film and television actor who played the role of California surfer-turned-GI Lance Johnson in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic “Apocalypse Now,” has died. He was 53. Bottoms died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles of glioblastoma multiforme, a virulent brain cancer, said his wife, Laura Bickford. Bottoms was 20 in 1976 when he was cast to play surfer Lance Johnson in “Apocalypse Now,” in which he was one of the young sailors who accompany Capt. Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) up river in a gunboat for his rendezvous with Marlon Brando’s renegade […]
TONITE: On Sugar Mountain
ROCK SNOB ENCYCLOPEDIA: AMERICANA (Musical movement 1776-present; see also alt-country, No Depression) Often shortsightedly assumed to date back no further than the first Uncle Tupelo record, the Americana musical tradition in fact begins with that iconic, bloodied fife-and-drum trio staggering out of the smoking ruins of the American Revolution. Forsaking macho jingoism for earthy, backwoods aesthetics, Americana is a catchall phrase to encompass the impossibly wide breadth of American roots music, evoking the magnificent vistas of the national geography and the transcendental struggle of the American experience — the good, the bad, the ugly, the high and the lonesome. While […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Philip Seymour Hoffman stars opposite Meryl Streep in Doubt, a new film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play. His character, a young and charismatic priest, provokes a nun’s suspicion for his special attention to their Bronx-based school’s only black student. Hoffman, a popular and versatile character actor, most recently starred in Synecdoche, New York. His other films include Capote, for which he received an Oscar for Best Actor, and the Coen brothers cult-classic The Big Lebowski. ALSO, In 1977, historian James Reston Jr. helped prepare journalist David Frost for a series of interviews with Richard Nixon that resulted […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
ALWAYS DO THE RIGHT THING: Spike Lee, Temple University, Last Night BY TIFFANY YOON At 7pm last night, Spike Lee (Shelton Jackson Lee) spoke to students in Mitten Hall at Temple University. A coy Lee — wearing a black turtleneck, denim jeans, tweed beret and his signature glasses, as ever, reminiscent of Malcolm X — spoke to an over-packed hall of students. The heavy turnout wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for the Emmy-award winning filmmaker except that this event took place amidst a stressful last week of classes for Temple students and most sacrificed valuable studying time, sleep and […]