Actor Owen Wilson was taken to a hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., Sunday, according to a story Drudge Report linked to on Sunday. According to the report, Wilson was transported to St. John’s Hospital. Citing sources, The National Enquirer and Star magazine said the star of “Wedding Crashers” and “Starsky & Hutch” had cut his left wrist and taken an undetermined amount of pills. He was found by a family member who called for help. Santa Monica police confirmed only that the actor had been taken to a hospital, TMZ.com reported. “On Sunday Aug. 26. 2007 at 12:10 pm officers […]
MYSTERY TRAMP: I’m Not There
Todd Haynes’ speculative fiction/magical-thinking Dylan biopic, set for release November 21st. NEW YORK TIMES: Imagine you’re a film distributor, handling an experimental movie by one of the country’s most iconoclastic directors. The subject is an enigmatic occasional recluse who is being portrayed by four actors, an actress and a 13-year-old boy. Where do you open that film? If you’re very lucky, you get to book it at Film Forum, perhaps the most exclusive art-house cinema in Manhattan. Now what do you do with a movie that stars Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Christian Bale and Heath Ledger; whose subject is Bob […]
CINEMA: Bonnie & Clyde At 40
BY A.O. SCOTT OF THE NEW YORK TIMES The story of “Bonnie and Clyde” has been told so many times that it has acquired the patina of legend. It’s the kind of historical fable that circulates to explain how the world once was and how it came to be the way it is now: a morality tale in which the wild energies of youth defeat the stale certainties of age, and freedom triumphs over repression. I’m not talking about the adventures of the actual Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, who robbed and shot their way through Texas, Oklahoma and adjacent […]
CINEMA: Bergman, Antonioni, Apatow
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC SAN FRANCISCO — As Philly slowly melts into its mid August stew I slipped off this week to San Francisco, where it is a good twenty degrees cooler and I can lounge around in my sweater all week and entertain some thoughts other than, “Geez, it’s frigging hot today.” The plan was to relax and maybe file some wildly irrelevant pieces on the Pacific Film Archive’s Max Ophuls festival or Alpha video’s reissue of Jean Hersholt‘s Dr. Christian series. Instead, my ride to the airport arrived with the news of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman‘s death, […]
CINEMA: Sunshine Superman
SUNSHINE (2007, directed by Danny Boyle, 108 minutes, U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It wasn’t long ago when the ecological horrors of ’70s sci-fi films like Mad Max or Soylent Green seemed quaint and naive, another relic of the era, like sideburns or double-knit pants. Films like the new space trip spectacular Sunshine are now one of the few beneficiaries of the fact that we are living in a time when a future of natural and unnatural calamity seems to be a real possibility. 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle refracts the dread of an imminent environmental disaster into […]
CINEMA: Rescue Dawn
(RESCUE DAWN, Directed By Werner Herzog, 126 Min., 2006) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC First it was the series of dreamlike fictional films, then a steady stream of surreal documentaries and now, with his first large-budget, English-language film, the force of nature known as Werner Herzog is ready for the third act of his career. With Rescue Dawn, starring Batman himself Christian Bale, Herzog appears to be capitalizing on the fluke success of his documentary Grizzly Man by swinging for the fences for a last shot at a Hollywood homer. A triumphant story of a downed pilot’s survival in the […]
CINEMA: Death Kisses At The Drive-In
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The filmmakers turn their cameras both inward and outward in yet another improbable triple-feature mounted by Andrew’s Video Vault. In Richard Rush’s The Stunt Man and the surprisingly plush Poverty Row programmer The Death Kiss treachery descends during a film’s shooting while the mid-seventies goofball comedy Drive-In gently satirizes the Texas townsfolk who meet up one night while watching movies in their cars under the stars. And you can call this a double triple-feature, each film has its own movie-within-the-movie. First up is the best remembered of the bunch; Richard Rush’s euphoric meditation on the […]
CINEMA: Die Free Or Live Hard
LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (2007, directed by Len Wiseman, 130 minutes, U.S.) ANGEL-A (2005, directed by Luc Besson, 91 minutes, France) BY DAN BUSKIRK, FILM CRITIC Making the phrase “Yippie-Ki-Yay, Motherfucker” safe for the PG-13 world, aging smart-aleck Bruce Willis returns after a 12 year hiatus from the franchise that made him a movie star with Live Free Or Die Hard (or Die Hard 4, but who’s counting?). Unlike Stallone with last year’s Rocky Balboa, Willis doesn’t seem quite as desperate to claw his way back to megaplex screens yet before he disappears into a career as a funny […]
CINEMA: That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick!
(SiCKO, Directed by Michael Moore, 113 min. USA) BY JONATHAN VALANIA EDITOR As Michael Moore declares over the kind of gallows-humored opening montage that has since become his trademark, SiCKO, his invasive procedural on the American health care system, is not about the 50 million uninsured people in the richest country in the world, or the estimated 18,000 who die each year because they can’t afford to seek care. Nor is this film about the fact that the United States’ health care system is the 37th best in the world (woo-hoo!), right behind Slovenia. No, this film is about the […]
CINEMA: Love Is Blind
CRAZY LOVE (2007, directed by Dan Klores & Fisher Stevens, 92 minutes, U.S.) BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! (2006, directed by Guy Maddin, 95 minutes, U.S./Canada) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC When it comes to telling a melodramatic story through weathered old imagery, few recent films have done it better the new documentary Crazy Love. Rescuing a 50-year-old tale from ancient tabloids, this expensively-mounted doc tells the tumultuous saga of Burt and Linda, a Bronx couple whose romance crashed to a halt in 1957 when the jealous Burt hired men to throw lye into her face, after she dumped him to […]
THE EARLY WORD: The Valerie Project
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Next week Philly will reprazent at the Jarvis Cocker-curated Meltdown Festival, to be held in London’s prestigious Southbank Centre. After a week featuring resurrected rock acts Roky Erickson, The Stooges and Devo plus Beth Orton singing Disney tunes with Pete Doherty & Shane McGowan (for sake of their health please keep those two apart) the week will climax with with the Philadelphia conglomeration known as The Valerie Project sharing the bill with the former Pulp frontman’s closing set. Originally formed for a screening at UPenn’s I-House last year, The Valerie Project will tune up for […]
CINEMA: She’s Gotta Have It
Scarlet Diva (2000, directed by Asia Argento, 91 minutes, Italy) Rape (1969, directed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 79 minutes, U.K.) Blonde Ice (1948. directed by Jack Bernhard, 74 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Expanding the definition of what makes a “chick flick,” Andrew’s Video Vault brings to the big screen of The Rotunda a trio of women who are profane, murderous and just plain creepy. First up is Asia Argento’s directorial debut, 2000’s Scarlet Diva. A guaranteed audience divider (its Rotten Tomatoes rating currently at an even 50%) the actress/director stars in a thinly-veiled autobiographical opus […]
CINEMA: ONCE/DAYWATCH
ONCE (2007, directed by Joe Carney, 85 minutes, Ireland) DAYWATCH (2006, directed by Timur Bekmambetov, 132 minutes, Russia) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC As a viewer who has successfully defended himself against many cloying romantic comedies, I was pleased and surprised that I found myself defenseless against the acclaimed Irish musical romance saddled with the forgettable title Once. It’s no shock that audiences have been swooning for this Sundance award-winner, as it evokes the experience of frustrated love with a dreamy directness while throwing in a bunch of heartfelt musical performances from an empathetic cast. Any film that hits this […]