CINEMA: The Mystery Tramp

I’M NOT THERE (2007, directed by Todd Haynes, 135 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I’m Not There feel like a masters’ thesis on the themes that director Todd Haynes has been exploring for the last 20 years: the symbiotic relationship of image and identity, celebrity and anonymity; the porous borderlands of gender and sexuality and extending the outer limits of cinema’s artistic reach. With 1987’s Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story Haynes treated the bland exteriors of The Carpenters’ muzak-y cheese as a blank canvas and with 1998’s Velvet Goldmine he re-cast London in the Glam Rock 70s as […]

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CINEMA: Causality Of War

REDACTED (2007, directed by Brian De Palma, 90 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Coming off the highest profile flop of his career, a flat-footed adaptation of James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia, Brian De Palma is proving himself still spry at 68, with his camcorder-eye view of the Iraq War, Redacted. It’s an audacious move for De Palma, not just politically (the film has O’Reilly and his ilk frothing madly) but stylistically as well, robbing him of his trademark slow-motion set-pieces, florid musical scores and his gliding tracking shots. With Coppola soon to arrive with his bare-bones return to […]

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FOR THE RECORD: Natalie Portman Is Happy With Wes Anderson Nude Scene And, Hey, We Are Too

DALLAS MORNING NEWS: You might have read about it in the recent Parade magazine cover story penned by the actress. Except – shocking – she didn’t actually write it, even though the words “By Natalie Portman” adorn the cover. “They do an interview with you then sort of write it for you,” she says by phone. “They claim that you wrote it, but that’s not really how it works. They interview you like you’re interviewing me, then they just write it in the first person.” OK, so nobody was thinking about nominating Parade for a Pulitzer anyway. But it seems […]

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CINEMA: Whatever Happened To Donnie Darko?

SOUTHLAND TALES (2006, directed by Richard Kelly, 144 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Move over Michael Cimino. Grand in design, epic in its failure, Richard Kelly’s follow-up to the cult hit Donnie Darko is bound to be the new historical benchmark for young directors sending their careers up in flames. At nearly two and a half hours, the apocalyptic Southland Tales propels itself through its End Days scenario like an SUV rolling over on the freeway: it flips and flips and flips and flips till one wants to shout out in fear “Jesus, won’t this thing ever stop!” […]

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CINEMA: I Was An American Girl

Runnin’ Down A Dream (Dir. Peter Bogdanovich, 4-DISC DVD, 2007) BY AMY Z. QUINN As per usual, Philly was ahead of the curve on Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. If you grew up listening to the radio around here, you know that the first two albums, the self-titled debut and You’re Gonna Get It! were common cause on the local airwaves by 1979, back when FM was the Internet of its day. Thanks to the dashboard radio in my sister Terrie’s ’72 LeMans, I feel like I was born with the words to a half-dozen of their songs on my […]

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NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Adderall For Your Eyeballs

SHINING PATH: How Richard Gere Got His Buddha On As Richard Gere tells it, it was in 1978 that he literally and figuratively found his humanitarian path. “After [the film festival at] Cannes I went to India and Nepal,” he recalls. “It was outside of Pokhara, at the edge of the Himalayas, I took a walk through a village. There were no vehicles. I saw a hand-lettered sign that said, ‘Tibetan refugees.’ I walked up the path and it was otherworldly — it had a Brigadoon or Lost Horizons quality. Their minds and hearts were different from anything else I […]

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CINEMA: Let Us Now Praise The Brothers Coen

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007, directed by Ethan and Joel Coen, 122 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Midway through the Coen Brothers’ masterful new adaptation of Cormac McCarthy‘s No Country For Old Men, the aging sheriff Ed Tom Bell is asked by another oldster what might be the origin of the wave of murder and violence sweeping across East Texas. “I always thought once you stopped hearing ‘Sir’ and ‘Ma’am’ that the rest just follows” he says with resignation. That is as good an explanation as the film offers for the near Biblical hellfire and retribution that […]

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LIVE & DIRECT FROM THE 4 SEASONS: Todd Haynes

PHAWKER: How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? TODD HAYNES: Seven. PHAWKER: Good to know. Philebrity has video and audio of this afternoon’s presser with I’m Not There director Todd Haynes. If you are interested in Dylan or this film, we urge you head over there and check it out. Mr. Haynes’ film is utterly brilliant — slightly flawed, perhaps, but visionary nonetheless — and this afternoon he spoke eloquently and passionately about the methods to his storytelling madness. We will have much more on this film closer to the Philly release date. […]

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THE EARLY WORD: Girl Noir

For the first time since 2001 (and with completely different programming), The Secret Cinema presents a RARE NOIR DOUBLE FEATURE, showcasing two movies from the FILM NOIR genre — THE ACCUSED and THE BLUE GARDENIA — that are now under-seen, despite their classy credits. Both films were made by directors who began long careers in the golden era of German Expressionism, fled Hitler’s Germany, and arrived in Hollywood to continue their work, drawing on their experiences to produce some classic film noir in the process. Friday, November 9 RARE NOIR DOUBLE FEATURE 8:00 pm – THE ACCUSED 10:00 pm – […]

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