Avengers: Age of Ultron is upon us, and that means the odds have gone up considerably of me having to confront The Whedon Problem with my more sophisticated, artsy friends. First you have to understand that my friends and I spend way too much time analyzing the latest “golden age of television” gems—Breaking Bad, The Fall, True Detectives, The Americans. We marvel at how The … [Read more...]
(Movie Review) Come Back Africa: The Films of Lionel Rogosin, Volume ll
Documentary movies always seem to get short shrift. For too many people there the things people tell them to watch at school so they will learn something. Growing up on a diet of talking heads sitting around talking about subjects you're not really interested in would turn anybody off watching them. Which is highly unfortunate, as there are documentary movies out with just as … [Read more...]
Movie Review – Kill Your Darlings
Long before Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs would be celebrated as the poetical and political figureheads of a 'beat generation,' there was a murder. In the new film, Kill Your Darlings, the crime scene sets itself at Columbia University, 1944, when a young Allen Ginsberg (Radcliffe) is introduced to the anarchic, pornographic mind of fellow student, … [Read more...]
Film Review – Broken, starring Tim Roth & Cillian Murphy
There are some books you always remember for the way in which they opened your eyes to the world around you. They might have stripped away your innocence in the process, but they also reassured you that no matter how bad things could get, there were always some people doing their best to bring some balance to the world. The first book I remember providing me with that … [Read more...]
Love That Loves Us: The Two Loves of To the Wonder
note: Here there be spoilers By now it is cliche to label a Terrence Malick film a "visual poem," but in the case of To The Wonder, that is what it is. Malick's cinematic eye defers to poetry more strongly than that of cinema and though I'm certain that he doesn't regard himself as a poet, he has taken the raw matter of his sensorium and fashioned it into something that … [Read more...]
Film Review – Searching for Sugar Man
Searching For Sugarman (2012) 4 stars A documentary about the mysterious Rodriguez, the singer/songwriter who released the album Cold Fact in 1970. Directed by Swedish-British filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul, this is a well told underdog story that left me in happy tears, despite some factual omissions and mysteries left unsolved. Growing up in Australia in the 1980s, I was … [Read more...]
Terrence Malick, Badlands and Caril Fugate: An Interview
Photos courtesy of Jeff McArthur (All Rights Reserved) Jeff McArthur is the author of Pro Bono: The 18-Year Defense of Caril Fugate. Mr. McArthur’s grandfather, John C. McArthur, defended Caril Fugate in her trial for her part in the Starkweather murders that occurred in 1959 and would do so for the next eighteen years in her attempts to apply for … [Read more...]
How Dennis Hopper conquered the American century
Dennis Hopper’s extensive filmography is filled with an array of painfully bad films. His early career saw him appear in any number of B-Movies and exploitation flicks; his late eighties/early nineties excursion into mainstream blockbusters such as Super Mario Bros (1993) and Waterworld (1995) were undeniably poor; and from the late nineties and beyond, his backlist of movies … [Read more...]
The Official Kerouac “On the Road” Movie Trailer is Here!
"On the Road," the movie based on Jack Kerouac's novel of the same name, will be released in the United States on December 21, 2012. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope, it's directed by Walter Salles (Motorcycle Diaries) and stars Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, and Kristen Stewart. Check out the official trailer below! Haven't read On the Road yet, or want … [Read more...]
The Biggest Mystery in Hollywood History
"An author should have no other biography than his books." “The biography of a creative man is completely unimportant.” - B. Traven Warner Brothers bought the novel THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE in 1941 with John Huston in mind as director. When the studio wrote the author, a Mr. B. Traven, in Mexico City suggesting that they pay him to come to Los Angeles to work … [Read more...]
Down by Law: The Loneliness of Jim Jarmusch
Not that it would make any difference. But if only for the sake of morale, you are willing to admit that it's a welcome shade of orange that breaks east at the horizon of what has been a roughandtumble one hell of fucked up night. A dull weariness works on your bones, your mind swirls in and out of a strange daze that threatens to rot you from within, and frankly, you'd rather … [Read more...]
