A decade ago, the news trickled in, accompanied by images of unparalleled savagery, of massacres in a country few people in the West had ever heard of, on a continent few cared about, and involving class, tribal, and ethnic tensions almost nobody comprehended. In the midst of one of those messy and complicated civil wars […]
Movies
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Thank you, Kevin Bacon, thank you, Ramones
If I pick up a thank-you note to send to Kevin Bacon, would you guys sign it? It really is the least we can do, seeing as he might be the most underappreciated actor around (now that Johnny Depp has caught Oscar’s eye, anyway). His gut-wrenching turn as a prisoner in Murder in the First […]
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Over the past 30 years, cult films have gone through something of an evolution. Once thought of as obscure, inaccessible works relegated to midnight shows at boutique movie houses, they have developed into a genre of their own. In 1977, David Lynch, the hero of aspiring cult filmmakers everywhere, kicked off the concept with his […]
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In the realms of the talented
In the Peony Pavilion, a sumptuous entertainment house (read: brothel) Probably the most gratifying compliment you could pay an actor would be that he disappeared so completely into a role that you forgot who you were watching. That’s what I would tell England’s Jamie Bell (the titular Billy Elliot) after witnessing his flawless turn as […]
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Clint Eastwood takes on the boxing movie
His long and varied career in the motion picture industry — as actor, writer, director, producer, even composer — distinguishes Clint Eastwood from most of his peers. Because he runs his own production company and therefore generally controls almost every element in the making of his movies, he probably deserves that overused and much abused […]
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City’s choice: film
Timothy Carey was a sleepy-eyed yet volatile character actor who worked with the likes of Marlon Brando, Stanley Kubrick, and John Cassavetes. He was also one of the “sources of inspiration” to whom Quentin Tarantino dedicated his script for Reservoir Dogs. Despite the demands of being cool, Carey still found time to write, direct, produce, […]
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Waste nothing: the power of the remake
The release last month of Ocean’s Twelve, the sequel to the 2001 Ocean’s Eleven, itself a remake of the 1960 Ocean’s Eleven (are you still with me?) underlines one of the great truths of the American film industry, a profound and apparently enduring belief in the doctrine of the conservation of matter. Such recent efforts […]
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Crouching monster, hidden agendas
If you’re planning to see Incident at Loch Ness(Saturday, January 22, 8 p.m., Dryden Theatre, 271-4090), don’t read beyond this paragraph. Seriously, the less you know about the film, the more you’ll probably enjoy it. And if you decide to continue with this review, you’ll hopefully be persuaded to see Incident but you’ll come across […]
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The doom of Bobby Darin
According to his own oft repeated account, Kevin Spacey labors under something of an obsession with the singer Bobby Darin, whose life and career inspire the new movie Beyond the Sea. After several years, a number of false starts, and some pre-production difficulties, Spacey ended up collaborating on the script and directing the picture, in […]
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Get down with your hip, drunk self
“If the cops are around, something good must be happening.” Charles Bukowski says this with a twinkle in his eye, but knowing what we do about him, he was probably serious. The acclaimed writer, unapologetic alcoholic, and failed misogynist is resurrected in John Dullaghan’s Bukowski: Born Into This (Friday, January 14, 8 p.m., Dryden Theatre, […]
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Of all the major artistic movements of the 20th century, surrealism may be the one modern filmmakers find the most inimitable. With its roots in the often incongruous works of French poets Robert Desnos and Paul Eluard, it should come as no surprise that the one true purveyor of the movement in film might be […]
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Flying high with Howard Hughes
His profound love of the cinema and his broad knowledge of its history, displayed brilliantly in his several documentaries on film, obviously provide a major inspiration for Martin Scorsese’s work. Despite a deserved reputation for originality, he has committed both sequels and remakes, and of course, happily acknowledges his debt to the dense and glittering […]
