VARIETY: Oliver Stone’s unusual and inescapably interesting “W.” feels like a rough draft of a film it might behoove him to remake in 10 or 15 years. The director’s third feature to hinge on a modern-era presidency, after “JFK” and “Nixon,” offers a clear and plausible take on the current chief executive’s psychological makeup and, considering Stone’s reputation and Bush’s vast unpopularity, a relatively even-handed, restrained treatment of recent politics. For a film that could have been either a scorching satire or an outright tragedy, “W.” is, if anything, overly conventional, especially stylistically. The picture possesses dramatic and entertainment value, […]
CINEMA: The Naked Lead The Blind
BLINDNESS (2008, directed by Fernando Mierelles, 120 minutes, Canada/Brazil) APPALOOSA (2008, directed by Ed Harris, 114 minutes, U.S.) RELIGULOUS (2008, directed by Larry Charles, 101 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Despite Hollywood’s reputation as a Godless pit of sin, no film has ever picked a fight with The Big Man himself like Bill Maher’s documentary treatise Religulous. Disrespectful, unfair and unfortunately, frequently hilarious Maher uses a barrage of old movie clips, Daily Show-style interviews and his own biting wit to drag into the light the conflict the between our modern understanding of the world and the fantastical mythology […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR In his new book, The Devil We Know, former CIA operative Robert Baer argues that Iran is an up-and-coming — and often misunderstood — superpower, with strong influences throughout the Middle East. “The sooner we understand the Iranian paradox — who they are, what they want, how they want to both humble us and work with us — the sooner we’ll understand how to come to terms with the new Iranian superpower,” writes Baer. Baer’s previous book, See No Evil, was the basis for the George Clooney film Syriana. RADIO TIMES Hour 1 What’s your favorite song? Album? […]
NEWS CLUES: Like An Internet Sex Tape Of The Truth
HATERADE: Michael Cera Backlash Begins Pointless Quest For Consensus Apparently no one is immune to the backlash that success brings. Not even Michael Cera! America’s ubiquitous and awkward sweetheart appears to be on the precipice of the inevitable take down. Mr. Cera, who stars in this Friday’s Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, was profiled in the New York Times on Sunday, prompting prickly Hollywood Elsewhere blogger Jeffrey Wells to state that Mr. Cera is “on the brink” and “two or three steps from being over.” We can’t say we expect mannered reasoning from Mr. Wells, who is prone to over-reactions and brash […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR The new documentary Religulous offers a satirical — and very critical — look at the world’s religions. Directed by Larry Charles, the film features Bill Maher posing undercover as a man seeking spiritual guidance from various religious groups, including Christians, Jews, Muslims and Mormons. In a recent New York Times article, Maher described religion as “the ultimate hustle,” and likened his role in the film to that of Toto, the dog who pulls back the curtain to expose the shortcomings of the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. Maher is best known as the host of the HBO […]
TONITE: Do You Know Where You’re Going To?
TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE (2007, directed by Alex Gibney, 106 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Everything I know about politics I learned at the movies. Take torture. It was watching all those WWII movies with my older brother that introduced me to the U.S. policy on torture and war, especially prison camp films like The Great Escape, The Bridge On the River Kwai and Stalag 17. In each of them, the U.S. soldiers were left fairly unmolested, forced by dumb luck to wait out the war in lousy P.O.W. camp conditions. Occasionally a Japanese or German commander […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Once known mostly for his sweetly tentative portrayal of awkward, sexually anxious teenager George-Michael Bluth on the cult TV hit Arrested Development, Michael Cera became a bona fide movie star in 2007 with his winningly geeky performances in the hit comedies Juno and Superbad. As an actor, Time magazine’s Richard Corliss notes this week, Cera “has the gift of appearing both wise beyond his years and not at all happy about it … as if he’d received a vision of what life has in store for him, and it worries him sick.” Next up for Cera: Nick and […]
GOODBYE COOL HAND LUKE: Paul Newman Is Dead
NEW YORK TIMES: Paul Newman, one of the last of the great 20th-century movie stars, died Friday at his home in Westport, Conn. He was 83. The cause was cancer, said Jeff Sanderson of Chasen & Company, Mr. Newman’s publicists. If Marlon Brando and James Dean defined the defiant American male as a sullen rebel, Paul Newman recreated him as a likable renegade, a strikingly handsome figure of animal high spirits and blue-eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character was Hud, Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy. He acted in more than 65 movies over […]
CINEMA: Lite Club
CHOKE (2008, directed by Clark Gregg, 89 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC How could it have taken Hollywood a near decade to adapt another novel from shock writer Chuck Palahniuk, when most readers of Maxim would describe Fight Club as the most kick-ass film ever? There was a brief attempt to mount an adaptation of Palahniuk’s 1999 novel Survivor until the events of 9-11 gave the studio cold feet, now finally the drought is broken with Choke, the story of a sex addict whose desire for intimacy and extra cash leads him to fake choking attacks while dining […]
RALLY FOR CHANGE: Pride In The Name Of Love
Chicago, IL – Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama will return to Pennsylvania this week. In Philadelphia, Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Biden will share with voters Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s plans to end eight years of failed policies, and change Washington, so that instead of just talking about family values, we actually have policies that value families, and strengthen the middle class. CHANGE WE NEED RALLY WITH MICHELLE OBAMA AND JILL BIDEN WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 Francis Meyers Recreation Center 5803 Kingsessing Avenue Philadelphia, PA Gates Open: 4:30PM The event is free and open to the […]
CINEMA: This Won’t Hurt A Bit
GHOST TOWN (2008, directed by David Koepp, 102 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Have you ever had a classical musician dazzle you with their instrumental brilliance, then knock out a jaunty version of something like “Three Blind Mice” for a tongue-in-cheek encore? The Office creator Ricky Gervais’ first Hollywood star vehicle plays out something like that — a comic genius breathing life into the most shop-worn of premises. With Extras, Gervais’ follow-up to his instantly classic The Office, the potato-faced comic showed he was no fluke, milking unpredictable hilarity out of his frequently humiliated, put-upon persona. Even though […]
CINEMA: After Burner
BURN AFTER READING (2008, directed by Joel & Ethan Coen, 96 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC In the opening shot of the Coen Brother’s cynical-hearted new comedy the camera descends from the Heavens, zeroing in on the surface of the Earth until it swoops into the hallways of C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Virginia. There a medium-grade analyst named Osgood Cox (John Malkovich) is getting demoted, which will set into motion a ripple of high crimes and misdemeanors that reverberate violently through a group of loosely-connected malcontents in the D.C. suburbs. The Coen’s have been down this road before, […]
CINEMA: The Breeders
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC If you think the McCain/Palin ticket would be a nightmare for reproductive rights, this month’s Andrew’s Video Vault brings to life a pair of disturbing visions that imagine the worst of what such a future could look like. Rain Without Thunder, the rarer of the features, is still unavailable on DVD. This early nineties film brings us to the year 2040 when a young girl and her mother are imprisoned for procuring a European abortion after America has descended into a Theocratic State. Filmed in a pseudo-documentary style where actors address the camera directly, the […]