VARIETY: Slamdance has bestowed its top film awards on Tom Quinn’s family drama “The New Year Parade” and to Greg Kohs’ doc “Song Sung Blue.” MORE …Philadelphia’s colorful Mummers’ Parade bookends an unsentimentalized portrait of 21st-century divorce in “The New Year Parade.” Winner of the Slamdance grand jury prize, Tom Quinn’s first feature combines non-professional actors with hundreds of actual marching band participants to yield an almost documentary-like look at a family left reeling after the parents separate. Quinn, who hails from the emerging “Phillywood” independent scene, possesses a strong artistic sensibility and the confidence to build his story around […]
CINEMA: ‘Vagina Dentata’ Is The Nice Word For It
TEETH (2007, directed by Michell Lichtenstein, 93 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It is my sad duty to report that the great cinematic essay on the subject of Vagina Dentata has yet to be made. Points for getting to the subject first should be awarded to Mitchell Lichtenstein (the son of Pop artist Roy) with his directorial debut Teeth. While Spielberg may have defined high concept filmmaking with his “fish that eats people,” Lichtenstein’s got a twist that can’t be beat, he’s sexed it up as “the vagina that eats people.” Like Jaws, Teeth supplies the giddy thrill […]
NEWS CLUES: ‘So Local It Hurts’ Edition
A WHITER SHADE OF TRASH: Judge Rules Family Not Safe On At Any Speed A judge in Camden County said yesterday that the 5-week-old baby abandoned last weekend in Cherry Hill could not be returned to her family. The baby’s mother, Felicia Mikels, 17, was beaten to death Friday night and dumped into Pennsauken Creek, authorities said. Prosecutors have charged two men in the teenager’s death — her uncle, Christopher Mikels, 26, and Douglas Mandichak, 25. Christopher Mikels told police he may also be the father of Felicia’s baby, Miciana Ramos. Both lived in Pennsauken, in a home shared by […]
RIP: Actor Heath Ledger Dead At 28
NEW YORK TIMES: The actor Heath Ledger was found dead this afternoon in an apartment building at 421 Broome Street in SoHo, according to the New York City police. Mr. Ledger was 28. At 3:31 p.m., a masseuse arrived at Apartment 5A in the building for an appointment with Mr. Ledger, the police said. The masseuse was let in to the home by a housekeeper, who then knocked on the door of Mr. Ledger’s bedroom. When no one answered, the housekeeper and the masseuse opened the bedroom and found Mr. Ledger unconscious. They shook him, but he did not respond. […]
CINEMA: Unveiled
PERSEPOLIS (2007, directed by Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi, 96 minutes, France) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The new animated film from France, Persepolis takes its name from the bygone capitol of what is now Iran. It’s a fitting title for this engrossing coming-of-age story, throwing its heroine into the tides of history with its story of a modern young woman searching for her place among an ancient culture. Animated in an uncluttered black and white style, Persepolis rescues what could be a sentimental, time-worn tale by presenting a complicated cross-cultural journey riddled with blasts of Western Pop adrenaline. Prepare […]
Q&A: 12 Useful Facts About Juno‘s Kimya Dawson
[As told to JONATHAN VALANIA/Illustration by ALEX FINE] 1. Kimya Malaika Dawson‘s name means ‘Quiet Angel’ in Swahili. She is not, however, Swahili. It was all her parents idea. Obviously. 2. Miss Dawson’s 18-month-old daughter is named Panda Delilah Dawson. “There was no second choice, it was certain from the beginning that it was gonna be ‘Panda Delilah’ whether it was a boy or a girl,” says Miss Dawson, explaining that Tom Jones was playing when she went into labor. Not in concert, on the stereo. Obviously. 3. All of Miss Dawson’s songs on the Juno soundtrack were originally written […]
NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Adderall For Your Eyeballs
ATTACK A TASTE OF THE CLONES: FDA Approves Franken-Meat For Humans WASHINGTON – Meat and milk from cloned animals is as safe as that from their counterparts bred the old-fashioned way, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday, but sales still won’t begin right away. “Meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones are as safe as food we eat every day,” said Dr. Stephen Sundloff, FDA’s food safety chief. Regardless, it still will be years before many foods from cloned animals reach store shelves, for economic reasons: At $10,000 to $20,000 per animal, they’re a lot more expensive […]
I’M NOT THERE: Best Golden Globes EVER!
ASSOCIATED PRESS: BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Cate Blanchett won the supporting actress Golden Globe on Sunday for the Bob Dylan tale “I’m Not There” during an awards show truncated from glitzy banquet to dry news conference because of the Hollywood writers strike. Marion Cotillard won for best actress in a musical or comedy for a remarkable personification of singer Edith Piaf in “La Vie En Rose,” playing the French icon from youth through middle age and into her ailing final years.Javier Bardem won for supporting actor in “No Country for Old Men,” playing a merciless killer tracking a fortune […]
CINEMA: The Twilight’s Last Gleaming
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Acclaimed experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs (named by the Whitney Museum as one of the one hundred greatest artists of the twentieth century) delivers his life’s work with the nearly-fifty-years-in-the-making masterpiece Star Spangled To Death. No wonder the movie’s running time is an elephantine six hours-plus. Think of it as Picasso’s La Guernica come to life, with laughs added. Nearly fifty years in the making, Star Spangled To Death sums up everything that fascinates and distresses the filmmaker. Sifting through the cinematic junkyard of the last century to display a delirious melange of ham-fisted political propaganda, […]
REWIND 2007: THE YEAR IN CINEMA
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It isn’t often that I reach out for a sports analogy, but the 2007 film season seems have lacked a very deep bench, particularly here in the Philly market. Procrastinating on submitting that “authoritative” Top Ten of 2007 list has allowed me to gaze over a number of critic’s year-end lists, and it is distressing how similar the lists read. There are two or three on my list that seem to be on almost everyone’s list as well as another small handful of other titles (There Will Be Blood, Juno, Sweeney Todd, Away from Her, […]
CINEMA: Blood Brothers
THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, 158 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK, FILM CRITIC Like a booby-trap designed to ensnare film buffs with the evanescent bait of familiarity, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film references so many iconic American classics that it takes on the momentum of one of those zingy montages they use on the Turner Classic Movie channel. Playing like a Tarantino film with more prestigious references, There Will Be Blood rarely lets a scene go by without nodding to John Ford, Orson Welles, or John Huston (he even shot the darn thing in the […]
RECONSIDER THIS: Barbarella Turns 40
BY MATTHEW DADDONA When director Robert Rodriguez announced in May of 2007 that he would take on Roger Vadim’s 1963 cult sci-fi classic Barbarella, the rumors about who would play the title role circled the globe faster than an orbiting satellite. Jessica Biel, Rose McGowan, Lindsay Lohan and even Beyonce Knowles were all attached, or rumored to be attached, at some point. Barbarella turns 40 in 2008, and since 40 is the new 30, she’s holding up pretty well, not that anyone ever expected more from her than a few stoned laughs and a half-dozen hard-ons. Luckily for us, Rodriguez […]