BY DAN BUSKIRK, FILM CRITIC APOCALYPTO (2006, directed by Mel Gibson) CASINO ROYALE (2006, directed by Martin Campbell) DEATH OF LAZARESCU (2005, directed by Christi Puiu, Romania) DELIVER US FROM EVIL (2006, directed by Amy Berg) THE DEVIL & DANIEL JOHNSTON (2006, directed by Jeff Feuerzeig) I AM A SEX ADDICT (2006, directed by Caveh Zahedi) THE KING (2006, directed by James Marsh) LITTLE CHILDREN (2006, directed by Todd Field) MUTUAL APPRECIATION (2006, directed by Andrew Bujalski) WASSUP ROCKERS (2006, directed by Larry Clark) Is not gloom in the very air we breathe, or am I seeing the world through […]
REVIEW: He Coulda Been Somebody
ROCKY BALBOA (2006, directed by Sylvester Stallone, 102 minutes) BY DAN BUSKIRK As the press cheers the return of Rocky Balboa to the big screen, you have to ask yourself: Is the public really crying out for another round with this mug, after 30 years? If the Riverview, the only movie theater in South Philly, draws only a three quarters-filled house at the advance screening, I’d say signs point to this fighter’s legs finally giving out. Hearing the promising advance word, I’ll admit to being vaguely optimistic that, against all reason, the man who wrote the arm-wrestling epic “Over the […]
TRIBUTE: Goodnight Mr. Ertegun, Wherever You Are
Somebody Hip: Ahmet Ertegun, 1923-2006 ED KING REMEMBERS: Growing up in love with rock ‘n roll and its extended family, images of Atlantic Records founders Ahmet and Neshui Ertegun and their team of hipster producers, such as Jerry Wexler, were burned into my impressionable brain. I never learned exactly what this group of hitmakers did beside put together the right people in the right places and then get photographed having cocktails with the Beautiful People of the 1970s pop culture scene, but the Erteguns were there in the grooves with every record I loved by The Coasters, Aretha Franklin, Otis […]
TRIBUTE: Peter Boyle Has Exited The Monster’s Ball
Actor, Emmy winner, Philly native, LaSalle College alumnus and former seminarian Peter Boyle, 71, died Tuesday night. DAN BUSKIRK REMEMBERS: Peter Boyle didn’t look good bald. Actually, he didn’t look good with hair either, and perhaps you should put aside your warm memories of the recently departed actor and take a good look at his picture. His eyes are partly unreadable because of his natural squint, his lips are thin and seem to rest in a perpetual smartass smirk, and that forehead! With its thickened brow leading up to that bulbous dome, Boyle’s swollen head seemed to suggest both the […]
HOLLA: J-Kenn, Straight Outta The 610, Lord Help Us
THE WOOK SPEAKS: You gotta at least give Jamie Kennedy a shout on this front — he’s easily the second best performer ever to emerge from the 19082 — a few paces behind Tina Fey and a good mile ahead of the dead heat that is the chick from the “Blair Witch Project” and the corpse of Jim Croce. Which is to say that when “Scream” was the shizzy back in ’96, J-Kenn was assuredly Upper Darby’s Great White Hope.Which explains why 10 years on, he’s put out a rap album. Actually, the tense on that should be past, as […]
BREAKING: Peter Boyle Dead at 71
Dec. 13, 2006 — Peter Boyle, who gained fame playing everything from a tap-dancing monster in “Young Frankenstein” to the curmudgeonly father in the long-running TV sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond,” has died. He was 71. Boyle died Tuesday evening at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He had been suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease, according to his publicist, Jennifer Plante. Boyle was beginning to gain notoriety playing hard-bitten, angry characters when he took the role of the hulking, lab-created monster in Mel Brooks’ 1974 horror film sendup. The movie’s defining moment came when Gene Wilder, as scientist Frederick Frankenstein, introduced his […]
A Multiplex Grows In North Philly, Blatstein Gives Folks Seven More Screens To Shout At, Still, This IS Progress
“The project, which broke ground in April 2005, caps years of attempts to build a movie theater and retail complex adjacent to Temple University. In 2002, Kravco Simon Co. and basketball great Magic Johnson planned to construct a 14-screen theater and retail shops at the site. That plan was canceled last year. “This is one of the most significant developments in some time,” Councilman Clarke said of the Tower Investments project. “It will be a catalyst for North Philadelphia.” The complex is the linchpin of a plan to revitalize the blocks along the North Philadelphia corridor. Other projects in the […]
BREAKING: Robert Altman, AMERICAN MASTER, Dead At 81
“THE DEATH OF AN OLD MAN IS NOT A TRAGEDY.” –ROBERT ALTMAN, 1925-2006 FROM THE SF CHRONICLE: Garrison Keillor, who starred in Altman’s last movie — this year’s “A Prairie Home Companion” — said Tuesday that love of film clearly came through on the set. “Mr. Altman loved making movies. He loved the chaos of shooting and the sociability of the crew and actors — he adored actors — and he loved the editing room and he especially loved sitting in a screening room and watching the thing over and over with other people,” Keillor said in a statement e-mailed […]
SNEEK PRE-VIEW: Fur
WIKIPEDIA: Diane Arbus
TRIBUTE: Jack Palance, Up From The Mines Of Pennsyltucky To Best of The Bad Guys Oscar Immortality, RIP ‘Curly’
When reporters asked him what he thought about most of his films, he tended to dismiss them as “garbage.” Still, his part as a homicidal husband stalking Joan Crawford in “Sudden Fear” (1952) also won him an Oscar nomination, and his role as a robber with a heart in “I Died a Thousand Times” (1955), a remake of Humphrey Bogart’s “High Sierra,” earned Mr. Palance better reviews than the movie received. Walter Jack Palance was born Feb. 18, 1920 or 1918, in Lattimer Mines, Pa., the third child of Vladimir Palahnuik, a coal miner, and the former Anna Gramiak, both […]
The Early Word: If Man Is Five, And The Devil Is Six, Then God Is Seven, THEN GOD IS SEVEN
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 7 @ The Trocadero Theatre Y-Rock on XPN and Philadelphia Weekly present THE PIXIES loudQUIETloud DVD SCREENING PARTY FREE ADMISSION / Showtime: 8pm / Age restricted 21+
Sneak Preview: Borat, Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
Unofficial Borat Site: One Hot Sexy Bitch On Fire!
Come On Feel The Rage
DISCUSSED: IRISH GIRLFRIENDS; THE IRA; RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE; MUMIA; PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN; THE END OF DEMOCRACY; AND JUST HOW AWESOME IS THIS PHOTO OF BRIAN JONES? Five years and three girlfriends ago, Rage Against the Machine was on the FOP shitlist for staging a Free Mumia concert at the Meadowlands. Mumia, as you may have heard, was convicted of killing officer Daniel Faulkner. None of that hubub was much on my radar back then. But my gal at the time, well, she was pretty hardcore Irish, Up The Ra! and all that. Her aunt was a tough-but-sweet old broad […]