“This was something that a human hadn’t yet attempted to do … there was considerable doubt if a human could take it.” “This” was the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, when the British newspaper dared any single person to circumnavigate the globe in a yacht. The five-thousand pound purse lured eight professional sailors and […]
Romance and Cigarettes
November 13, 2007 by
After buying the rights in 2005, Sony Pictures apparently didn’t know what to do with this blue-collar musical, and left the film to rot on its shelves for the last two years. Two years later, director John Turturro wrestled back the rights from the studio and is distributing it on his own dime. Romance and […]
The Waste Land
November 8, 2007 by
No Country for Old Men opens with a series of shots of a dry, desolate Texas, a place that seems unkind to both man and beast. Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) begins to speak in voice-over, ruminating on his life, on his being a sheriff, admiring the men who served before him, and lamenting the […]
Sleep and Indifference
November 4, 2007 by
Pickup on South Street, playing Monday night at the Parkway Theater. The tombs are beautiful,the naked Latin and the engraved fatal dates,the coming together of marble and flowersand the little plazas cool as courtyardsand the many yesterdays of historytoday stilled and unique.We mistake that peace for deathand we believe we long for our endwhen what […]
Love Tore Him Apart
November 2, 2007 by
Control is now playing at the Uptown Theatre. There is a wonderful moment the amazing bio-pic Control where Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division, walks to work from his parents home in suburban Manchester. He has a job at a government employment agency, trying to help people get on their feet. As he trudges […]
Help!
October 23, 2007 by
“So these are the famous Beatles,” says one of the manyBritish stiff-upper-lip types in Help!, their second go-round with director RichardLester. This ’65 effort concerns the Fab Four on the run from pug-faced LeoMcKern, who is a kind of Indian spiritual leader with a Cockney accent, eagerto get Ringo’s holy mood ring. Watching Help! makes […]
Pickup on South Street
October 23, 2007 by
In Sam Fuller‘s 1953 paean to the New York City underworld,pickpocket Skip McCoy (the great Richard Widmark) accidentally nabs the wrongwallet-one containing microfilm that the Commies are hungry to get theirmitts on. Soon the cops, the feds, and the Reds are all out to get Skip and histreasure. In Pickup on South Street, the director […]
Lake of Fire
October 23, 2007 by
Seventeen years in the making, Lake of Fire, the epic abortion documentary by Tony Kaye (best known for American History X),has finally arrived. Mercifully shot in silvery 35mm black and white(thus making its horribly graphic imagery that much less disturbing), Lake of Fireeschews narration to rely on 152 minutes of talking heads, protests,and, of course, […]
American Gangster
October 23, 2007 by
Between the Coens’ new shoot-’em-up and American Gangster, this year’s Oscar contenders will probably be slam-bang pieces of entertainment. In Gangster, Denzel Washington plays African-American mob boss Frank Lucas,who ruled ’70s Harlem by making his product—heroin—better and cheaperthan his rivals’, while simultaneously becoming one of the city’s greatcivic leaders. Opposing him is one Russell Crowe,an […]
The Many Faces of Bob
October 18, 2007 by
Check out the new trailer for the kaleidoscopic Bob Dylan biopic, I’m Not There. The film stars Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Marcus Carl Franklin, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, and Ben Whishaw as Bob in the various stages of his career.