FIRST SHOWING: Ocean’s Thirteen director Steven Soderbergh’s latest project is a set of two films shot back-to-back about Che Guevara titled individually The Argentine and Guerrilla. Both are premiering at the Cannes Film Festival this month under the name Che as a 268 minute presentation. The Argentine: On November 26, 1956, Fidel Castro sails to Cuba with eighty rebels. One of those rebels is Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine doctor who shares a common goal with Fidel Castro — to overthrow the corrupt dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Che proves indispensable as a fighter, and quickly grasps the art of guerrilla […]
MEOW MIX: Hugs, Uggs, Juggs & Greed
Droll, ironic question: Does this picture of Jennifer Aniston in Philly (we assume for the Middlebrow & M shoot) count as distasteful paparazzi dreck? No, for many reasons, but nobody’s about to waste your time waxing all smug-like on the deep, reasoned and ultimately, understandable only to myself thought process I used to decide…DEVELOPING… I will, however, acknowledge being unsurprised at the speed with which Aniston embraced the city’s native dress code of pajama bottoms and out-of-style footwear. (Dude. Those things look new. ) All she needs is a Kathy Van Zeeland handbag and no car insurance and bam! she’s […]
CINEMA: The High Lonesome
MISTER LONELY (2007, directed by Harmony Korine, 112 minutes, U.S.)SUPER HIGH ME (2007, directed by Michael Blieden, 89 minutes. U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITICThe original plan was to pop in on a late Sunday night screening of Harmony Korine’s new film Mr. Lonely and do a quick overnight review. If only Korine’s latest oddball masterpiece allowed me to keep my senses. Nearly a decade since his last film, 1999’s disappointing Julien Donkey-Boy, Korine has returned, wielding his mix of naive tone poetry, stunning-yet-bizarro visual non-sequiturs and cruel flashes of raw sadism with a more assured hand than ever. While […]
All This Happened While You Were On The Internet
THE LIFE DRAMATIC: Owen Wilson shooting Marley & Me, Broad & Walnut, 1:45 PM * RELATED: Actress Kate Hudson has denied rumours she is engaged to Owen Wilson. Hudson, 29, was spotted sporting a diamond ring on her wedding finger on Thursday, fuelling speculation the on-off couple is taking their relationship to the next level. The pair met on the set of 2006 movie ‘You, Me & Dupree’ and were romantically linked later that year after Hudson split from her husband of six years, rocker Chris Robinson. The couple parted ways in June 2007, just two months before Wilson’s alleged […]
ARTSY: The Filth & The Fury
THE INDEPENDENT: John Currin is a shooting star of American figurative painting whose trajectory to fame and riches peaked gloriously five years ago with a retrospective at three major world museums. But he has some explaining to do. The 46-year-old has since controversially switched galleries, performed a curious vanishing trick and now… well, his latest flesh-on-canvas efforts would make Hugh Hefner blush. Indeed, he now acknowledges that several factors contributed to what was indeed a long dry period after the retrospective – a time when, he says, he was also depressed and experiencing a disconcerting “impotence with the brush.” Currin […]
HELTER SKELTER: Cops Dig Up Death Valley Ranch For More Bodies; Lohan Axed From Manson Flick
[“It’s Too Late To Fall In Love With Sharon Tate” By ALEX FINE] ASSOCIATED PRESS: INDEPENDENCE, Calif. — National Park Service officials say the Death Valley ranch where Charles Manson was arrested will be closed for a second time this year to search for possible human remains. A press release Thursday said that Barker Ranch will be closed for up to four days later this month. A team of forensic researchers found possible unmarked graves at the site in February that they believe could be the bodies of additional Manson victims. The park was briefly closed in April, but digging […]
CINEMA: It’s Mamet, Dammit
Redbelt (2008, directed by David Mamet, 99 min., U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITICThe first thing that people usually mention about playwright/filmmaker David Mamet is the potty mouth, the rapid-fire profane dialogue that gives his scripts a steadily salty taste, like an open sore in your mouth. Obscured by all that musical cursing is the fact that Mamet is one of our premiere mystery writers, and Redbelt is the foul-mouthed Agatha Christie’s tenth feature as a director. Like any writer at this stage in his career, Mamet’s work is part inspiration and part compulsive habit. The director continues to find […]
Q&A: It’s Too Late To Fall In Love With Sharon Tate
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Meet Roza Frykowska, 26, a recent emigre from Lodz, Poland. She is a barista at Cafe Ole in Old City. She is also an up and coming photographer, and recently started shooting for Suicide Girls. All of that would make her interview-worthy in and of itself in our book, but wait, it gets better, or worse, actually. Roza’s grandfather, the filmmaker Wojtech Frykowski, came to America in the late ’60s to establish a career in Hollywood, at the behest of his dear friend, Roman Polanski. Wojtech and his then-girlfriend, Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folger coffee fortune, […]
CAUSE CELEBRE: Free Burma!
NEW YORK TIMES: “HITLER is alive in Burma” reads the words scrawled on a cardboard sign, held aloft by a sweet-faced Ellen Page, the “Juno” star, in a 90-second human-rights public awareness message that began showing on video-sharing Web sites last week. The spot is one of 30 produced for U.S. Campaign for Burma, starring celebrities like Will Ferrell and Jennifer Aniston. They will be distributed on Fanista.com, a social-networking and entertainment retail site, then passed along to sites like YouTube and Google Video every day for the next month. The goal of the campaign is to thrust the cause […]
CINEMA: Requiem For A Jerk
CHAPTER 27 (2007, directed by J.P. Schaefer, 84 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Just when you think only the most crassly commercial equations account for what films get made, you’re stuck trying to explain the appearance of a new film on rock villain Mark David Chapman. Could any public figure be less of a box-office draw? Everyone’s least favorite “Fifth Beatle” Chapman was the mentally ill assassin who vacillated between thinking he was Holden Caulfield from J.D. Salinger’s Catcher In the Rye and John Lennon, a delusion that ended with Chapman shooting down the rock icon in front […]
CINEMA: The Second Coming Of Harmony Korine
NEW YORK TIMES: HARMONY KORINE catapulted to fame as an enfant terrible, and for a few years he played the part to perfection. He was the young skateboarder turned wunderkind screenwriter behind Larry Clark’s 1995 sensation, “Kids.” At 24 he directed “Gummo” (1997), about glue-sniffing, cat-killing teenagers in a Rust Belt backwater. Most critics hated its junkyard, freak-show aesthetic, but it spawned an instant cult, with devotees including Werner Herzog, who became a mentor and collaborator, and Gus Van Sant. Mr. Korine’s next film, “Julien Donkey-Boy” (1999), inspired by his schizophrenic uncle, continued the gutter-punk provocations. But after that he […]
Judge Sentences Wesley Snipes To 3 Years Behind Bars
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Wesley Snipes called on famous friends to vouch for him, highlighted his clean criminal record and even wrote the government $5 million in checks — all in an effort to convince a judge that his conviction on tax charges should cost him nothing more than home detention and some public service announcements. None of it worked. The “Blade” actor was ordered to do hard time. Snipes was sentenced to three years in prison Thursday for failing to file tax returns, the maximum penalty — and a victory for prosecutors who sought to make an example of the action […]