Some collaborations between Hollywood people and non-Hollywood artists yield magical results -- take Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers' work on Where the Wild Things Are , for example -- but in the case of Erased James Franco , the hour-long art film made by the artist known as Carter with Hollywood actor James Franco occupying the central role, the results are confused, mundane, and borderline pretentious....
Seth Rogovoy, author of Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet, is guest-blogging all week for MyJewishLearning and the Jewish Book Council. My new book, Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet (Scribner) — a critical biography of the rock poet that examines his life and work through a Jewish prism — hasn’t even been officially published yet (that happens [...]
his morning, I awoke in Manhattan to my own personal Jewish film festival. The screens are filled, this week, with films of Jewish and Israeli interest. How so? Well, we have documentaries on the assassination of Kasztner; the life of Attorney William Kunstler; and the Catskills bungalow lives of a group [...]
The Times Top Ten Films of the Decade: Hidden The Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum No Country For Old Men Grizzly Man Team America Slumdog Millionaire The Last King of Scotland Casino Royale The Queen Hunger And at 11: Borat (?) Full List here . I would replace No Country - vapid, over-stylized, with Before the Devil Knows You're Dead . and Slumdog with Michael Clayton . Otherwise, pretty good - maybe Waltzing...
A.O. Scott's piece on a decade's worth of movies is, as usual, worth reading. However, I do think this passage deserves further comment: Perhaps the easiest and most satisfying way to make sense of the unruly cinematic abundance of the past 10 years is to sift through it for masters and masterpieces, kicking the tires to see what has been built to last. Whatever else was going on, a handful of great...
Last week, we cornered General Hospital star James Franco and asked what on earth he was doing acting on episodes of General Hospital , figuring the answer was either a drinking problem or a maniacal desire to be written about on more blogs. Alas, he would only tell us: "I've got other ideas for my participation in this soap opera beyond just being in this soap opera." Today, though, Movieline...
After years working as a screenwriter culminating with his teaming with Todd Haynes on the script for his Dylan tribute I'm Not There , screenwriter Oren Moverman decided to tackle his first movie as a director. The Messenger is a movie about soldiers without necessarily being a war movie, following army officers Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) and Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), who have been assigned...
Last Night In Twisted River is the I’m Not There of John Irving novels. Like Todd Haynes’ attempts to turn Bob Dylan into a figure of myth in that film, Irving playfully invents a story that’s as much about the pleasures of reading one of his novels as it is anything else, until it poignantly turns into a paean for a dying art and a plea for the idea of the story. This could all...
This was a point advanced in Cinema Blend that I just about dropped my jaw when reading. See, I had forgotten that, way back in the long long ago, the brothers Weinstein owned Miramax, but they sold it to Disney back when it was doing a lot better. Now that Miramax is bleeding cash like [...]
BEN WHISHAW seems to have become the go-to actor for filmmakers casting sensitive creative types. In 2006, he starred as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the murderous, introverted s
San Franciscans: Join us for a selection of new Wholphin films, including a sneak peek at the upcoming Wholphin No 10, this Friday, November 6th at 8PM at ATA. The line up will include Spencer Susser’s young-love story in post-apocalyptic zombie times, “I Love Sarah Jane,” a young Todd Haynes starring in “He Was Once,” Mary [...]
Last Saturday in Manhattan, the handsomer-than-a-hundred-moviestars moviestar, James Franco, before racing over to the SNL set to simply sit in on a sketch and do nothing, gave a talk to fans and students at the New Yorker Festival , where, among other things, he revealed that he still has the prosthetic penis he wore in Milk and has since used it as a mask in another movie. But among those other...
Like so many trailers, this recently released one for Mira Nair's Amelia (Fox Searchlight, 10.23) seems to deliver a compressed version of the whole film (except for the last 10 or 15 minutes). Sitting here, having watched various versions for the last two or three months, I feel that I have seen it. There's a screening early next week for people like me (i.e., late-to-the-table types)....
As usual, note that each of the award ceremonies tend to have their own regulations for what can be included and when, so there are plenty of discrepancies in regard to official release year, etc. Also, I had some difficulty finding the recipients of many of the national industry awards, so forgive me for leaving out some of the countries that were listed for 2006. Notice that this was one of the rare...
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