Wait, this is the video that spawned those "Paris Hilton befouls Brett Ratner’s Hugh Hefner biopic" rumors? How in the hell did those dots get connected? And why were people upset about that in the first place? It’s Ratner directing something not called Rush Hour; he’s like 0-for-lifetime in that department. Besides, we already got … Continue reading
If I were J.J. Abrams, right before introducing Zachary Quinto as The New Spock* to the hemorrhoidal Hall H masses at Comic Con, I’d let slip the title of 1-18-08 aka Cloverfield aka Die, Handheld, Die, because, while the mystery surrounding the project is kind of fun, the sheer inscrutability of everything surrounding it is … Continue reading
Speak it, kitty! With Comic Con now less than three weeks away… (sorry, my liver just failed for a second), speculation as to what and who will be revealed at the big Hall H panels is beginning to get way the fuck out of control. And I like it. The only thing better than breaking … Continue reading
The word out of Cannes this year was that Leonardo DiCaprio’s we-all-gonna-die environmental documentary, 11th Hour, plays like a well-intentioned, well-researched, somewhat somnambulant companion piece to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth – which sounds about right. It’s always huntin’ season whenever a major movie star attaches himself to a cause, so the smartest course of … Continue reading
In the most anticipated re-teaming of disaster-tainted icons since Kris Kristofferson met Michael Cimino for a steak dinner at Dan Tana’s (and washed dishes ’til 4 AM to settle the check), Kevin Costner has persuaded his clinically insane Waterworld co-star, Dennis Hopper, to play the Democratic candidate for President of the United States in the … Continue reading
Though it does not please me that Ernst Lubitsch – who, despite his German lineage, is carved into the Mount Rushmore of American sound comedy alongside Howard Hawks, Preston Sturges and Groucho Marx – is little more than a footnote in today’s popular culture, I can at least excuse it as an unavoidable product of … Continue reading
Here’s a fun dilemma! I don’t want to break embargo on Ben Affleck’s directorial debut, Gone, Baby, Gone (saw it a couple of weeks ago for long-lead), but I also don’t want to run a link to its just-released theatrical trailer without offering this caveat: what Miramax is selling ain’t the movie by a long … Continue reading
I love Ang Lee, but I would never try to sell his movies on the power of their lush, romantic imagery; unlike the work of his Taiwanese contemporaries, Hou Hsiao-hsien and the recently deceased Edward Yang (and I’m going off the judgement calls of my peers on the latter, since I’ve only seen Yi Yi), … Continue reading
If there’s one thing I learned from living within gimlet-hurling distance of New England for five years, it’s that you don’t want to come down on the wrong side of the Essex-Bedford turf war. John Cheever made this mistake early in his literary career, and was buried toe-less as a result. And today, as you … Continue reading