I don’t want to scare you off of Road to Guantanamo by telling you that it’s one of the most important films of the year – instead I’ll tell you that it’s one of the most harrowing. If this was a work of fiction it could have come from Eli Roth; sadly it’s all too … Continue reading
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” That line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance really applies to The Outsider, Nick Jarecki’s examination of cinematic iconoclast James Toback, a man whose filmmaking is intensely personal and obsessive and whose life is incredibly over the top and mythologized. Toback’s work is very much on … Continue reading
James Toback says he took more hits of acid than anyone else in history. James Toback bet a million dollars on a baseball game. James Toback was going to hire a hit man to kill Barry Levinson until he and Levinson became friends. James Toback lived in Jim Brown’s house and took part in star-studded … Continue reading
What is this? Every single day of the week (almost), a new "Graboid", a single moment grabbed from a random movie, appears on this site for you to guess the name of the film, share with your officemates, or discuss on our message boards. Sometimes the Graboid will be very easy and sometimes it’ll be … Continue reading
To a certain kind of person the name Will Shortz really means something. He’s the guy who’s responsible for the New York Times crossword puzzle, the single greatest puzzle on Earth. I’ll see people on the subway doing the puzzle in other papers (or worse, soduko or however it’s spelled) and I scoff – the … Continue reading
If you were a vampire, where would you want to live? Why, as far north as possible, where the sun is only out for half the year. That’s the brilliant basic concept of Steve Niles’ 30 Days of Night, a graphic novel about a small Alaska town beset with bloodsuckers during the wintry months. Unfortunately, … Continue reading
It’s another Jarecki and another documentary. The good news is that the Jarecki clan are three for three – Andrew has Capturing the Friedmans while Eugene has Why We Fight. Welcome young Nick Jarecki, just 26, and already the author of a book and the director of a compelling film about one of cinema’s oddest … Continue reading
I have a zillion interviews to transcribe today, but I had to take time out of that to bring you this most exciting piece of news. While Paramount may be dropping the ball on the Star Trek franchise, the fans just won’t let it die. Especially the gay ones. Star Trek: The Hidden Frontier has … Continue reading
I’m not in the camp that thinks the zombie genre is oversaturated, at least when it’s done right (but then I wrote a pretty great action-horror spec script involving the rotters, so I suppose I’m biased). And although most of the recent movies featuring the shambling undead deserved to be returned to the grave, the cinematic corpses … Continue reading
John Cameron Mitchell’s next film, Shortbus, made quite a stir when it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival – the largely improvised movie features scenes of real people engaging in real, explicit sex. There was actually a minor bidding war over this movie – which can never play on TV, and will never be carried … Continue reading