MTV Newsroom (Free subscription) | yesterday
With Lilith Fair returning next year, perhaps it's time for Fiona Apple to make a comeback. The feisty singer-songwriter whose debut album became a smash on the back of big singles "Criminal," "Sleep to Dream" and "Shadowboxer" proved that young women didn't have to be overly sexy or buttoned-down to make it big in pop [...]
Best Movies 2008 (Free subscription) | 29/10/2009
When 2009 is reflected on later, it won't be the clunky, predictable Oscar-bait pics that standout but rather a new crop of outspoken auteurs that came into their own in '09 with stealthy, highly confident fare. A charged determination and can't-fail idealism is instilled in these directors that makes the filmmaking process once again exciting and truly daring: A young man's game. Writer/director,...
The Film Doctor (Free subscription) | 24/10/2009
--- X-Men Origins: Wolverine (in 30 seconds) ---Nathan Zeldez broods on ways to beat information overload: "William Shockley knew the value of isolation. In 1948, shortly after his colleagues John Bardeen and Walter Brattain invented the point-contact transistor in Shockley's absence, he became so upset that he holed up in a hotel room. He knew he needed a quiet place to think. Some days later...
Hollywood Elsewhere (Free subscription) | 23/10/2009
In the view of Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman, Joel and Ethan Coen "should seriously consider making a gloriously skewed pop musical. I'm more convinced of that than ever having seen the spectacular use they make of the Jefferson Airplane song 'Somebody to Love' in A Serious Man," he eexplains. "This is one of those pop-music epiphanies worthy of Tarantino, Scorsese, or...
The Dreamcast Junkyard (Free subscription) | 18/10/2009
I've finally made it. After eleven months of climbing the Sega blog ladder, I've joined the Dreamcast Junkyard. See kids? All it takes to dominate four Sega blogs is a little perseverance, some smart-ass comments, Father Krishna and Tomleecee . The latter of the two accepts paypal , making bribes easy and convenient. Before I begin my introduction I wanted to set a few things straight. First off, I'd...
Jamespeak (Free subscription) | 16/10/2009
Note: this entry ended up being far too long to read in one sitting on a computer monitor, so I'm breaking this entry up into sections. Here's part one (of three), in which I ramble about reading film and theatre criticism. I'm going to take a weird tangential break from my typical horror film entries, shameless self-promotion and dick-and-fart-joke symposium to offer some rambling thoughts on arts...
GameSetWatch (Free subscription) | 14/10/2009
Director Gus Van Sant (Milk, Good Will Hunting) and author Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho) have teamed up to write a screenplay for a film adaptation for "The Golden Suicides" , Vanity Fair's article on the double suicide of game designer Theresa Duncan and her boyfriend, artist Jeremy Blake, in July 2007. Duncan is known for her work on PC titles that chiefly targeted girls, games such...
MTV Movies Blog (Free subscription) | 14/10/2009
One remade Hitchcock's "Psycho," the other wrote the novel "American Psycho." and they each often explore screwed up young characters, but otherwise Oscar-nominated filmmaker Gus Van Sant ("Milk") and author Bret Easton Ellis ("Less Than Zero") have little in common. The most significant contrast between them is that Van Sant's characters tend to have good [...]...
Runs like a gay (Free subscription) | 13/10/2009
Happy Birthday to Melinda Dillon 70 today When people mention the great cast of Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia they often neglect to mention Melinda's sterling contribution, perhaps because her meek supportive wife gets only one scene to really let it rip, but when you next see it watch her eaction to Philip Baker Hall's confessions and tell me you don't feel pulled along by her conviction.
Frankly My Dear... (Free subscription) | 04/10/2009
I've spent the weekend with Mitchell Zuckoff's (he did that Ponzi biography of a while back) latest, an "oral biography" of the great director, bon vivant and "family" filmmaker Robert Altman. The book is a positively "Altmanesque" treatment of the...
Cinematical (Free subscription) | 03/10/2009
In this week's Whip It, director-star Drew Barrymore shines a loving light on one of the most brutal and devilishly entertaining sports around: roller derby. If you've ever seen a derby match, you know what I'm talking about: 60 minutes of fast-skating, bruising action between players with names like Axles of Evil and Juana Beat'n. In celebration of the badass beauties of the roller derby world and...
Broken Projector (Free subscription) | 28/09/2009
I consider myself a cinephile and a good one at that. I’m not one of those people who call themselves cinephiles because they sat through the Three Colours Trilogy on cable. At 24 years old, I feel I grew up watching some of the best films that anyone can watch while growing up but somewhere [...]
Popdose (Free subscription) | 25/09/2009
The 47th annual edition of the New York Film Festival kicks off tonight at Lincoln Center. Except for last year’s paternity leave I’ve attended every one since 1994. Back before I acquired grown-up responsibilities I’d see (and pay for) upwards of half of the annual selections, spending weeknights and entire weekends at Alice Tully Hall [...]
DVD Times (Free subscription) | 23/09/2009
Blu-Ray News: Warner Home Video have announced the US Blu-ray Disc release of Magnolia on 19th January 2010 priced at $28.99 SRP. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, Magnolia is a mosaic of several interrelated characters in search of happiness, forgiven...
High-Def Digest: Blu-ray Disc News (Free subscription) | 22/09/2009
One of the most anticipated Tom Cruise films will make its high-definition debut early next year. Warner Brothers is bringing Paul Thomas Anderson's star-studded 'Magnolia,' starring Tom Cruise, Julianne...
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