MCN Originals Archive for August, 2010
MW on Movies: Scott Pilgrim Vs The World and The Expendables
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (Three Stars) U.S.; Edgar Wright, 2010 Oh, to be a kid again. To feel the juices running madly, to get wildly excited about comic books and top ten hit-lists and about the last good new teen movie you saw (the canon from A Hard Day’s Night to Superbad) and maybe even a (No!…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Arthouse Redux: The Fine Art of Balancing Politics and Filmmaking
Since I brought up Walter Salles‘ and Daniela Thomas‘ Linha de Passe in last week’s Arthouse Redux column, I thought this would be a good opportunity to discuss that film in greater depth while also revisiting their earlier film, Foreign Land. Salles is perhaps better known to American audiences for his solo directorial efforts with…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »On Kevin Kline, Todd Solondz, and the Sad Decline of Indie Film
I was thirteen years old in 1996, which I think is the year “indie” film became more of an adjective than a movement. It was the year that “indie” replaced the word “arthouse” — which was odd because many of the successful indie films that followed weren’t independently financed at all. But that year had…
Read the full article »30 Weeks To Go Yeah… It’s Time To Start Thinking Oscar Again
We’re a few weeks away from Venice/Telluride/Toronto, which kicks off the Oscar season in one 19-day period. What these festivals do is to get a few titles rolling, but mostly, they start eliminating would-be contenders from the race. It’s not just press, fans, and reality in play here … it’s the studios too. Fox Searchlight…
Read the full article »Wilmington on DVDs: Sweetgrass, A Prophet, Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music, The Ghost Writer … and more
CO-PICKS OF THE WEEK: NEW Sweetgrass (Four Stars) U.S.; Lucien Castaing-Taylor/Ilisa Barbash, 2010 (Cinema Guild) In Sweetgrass, named for the lushly beautiful Montana country in which it takes place, we see the last summer pasturing of the vast sheep herd that once belonged to the Allested ranch in Big Timber: thousands of sheep blanketing the…
Read the full article »A Prophet: Blu-ray
With all due respect for the lives of the guards and inmates slaughtered by New York State Police at the Attica Correctional Facility in 1971, it’s reasonable to assume that American prisons are more hospitable places to spend a few years of incarceration than those in, say, Turkey, Thailand, China, Brazil, South Africa and Northern…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »The Trouble with Defining the Chick Flick as “Stupid”
Are most Hollywood movies made for women “stupid,” or do Hollywood studios in general tend to make movies for both men and women that aren’t aiming for a high intellectual watermark? I was perusing Entertainment Weekly, reading about the upcoming film Eat, Pray, Love when I came across a sub-story about how movies made for…
Read the full article »Bang Bang Man Moron
It was déjà vu all over again as funny buddy cops and stereoscopic hip hoppers joined the summer box office fray. The cruiser bruisers of The Other Guy debuted at the top of the movie charts with an estimated $35.7 million while the foot stompers of Step Up 3D slotted third overall with a disappointing…
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