Seven women writers talk about their problems with "male feminism"; Wikipedia blocks U.S. senate for "vandalism" of Edward Snowden's page; Millikin professor killed family 46 years ago, and now we're finding out; what it's like to have your movie taken away from you by Harvey Weinstein; David Edelstein on 'The Spectacular Now'; Matt Damon on the state of modern Hollywood; David Lynch on "Twin Peaks"
Marie writes: Widely regarded as THE quintessential Art House movie, "Last Year at Marienbad" has long since perplexed those who've seen it; resulting in countless Criterion-esque essays speculating as to its meaning whilst knowledge of the film itself, often a measure of one's rank and standing amongst coffee house cinephiles. But the universe has since moved on from artsy farsty French New Wave. It now prefers something braver, bolder, more daring...
Paul Walker is scared. And he's running.
Wayne Kramer, the director of "The Cooler" and "Running Scared," took the negative reviews of his last picture pretty hard. They weren't all negative, though. Roger Ebert gave "Running Scared" three stars and wrote a dizzying description: Speaking of movies that go over the top, "Running Scared" goes so far over the top, it circumnavigates the top and doubles back on itself; it's the Mobius Strip of over-the-topness. I am in awe. It throws in everything but the kitchen sink. Then it throws in the kitchen sink, too, and the combo washer-dryer in the laundry room, while the hero and his wife are having sex on top of it.That kind of "pushing the envelope," as he's phrased it in interviews, appears to be pretty much what Kramer was going for.
But Kramer evidently felt there was some kind of critical curse on his film, which came out on DVD last week. In an interview with Scott Collura at Now Playing Magazine, Kramer says: I feel it’s just one of those movies that people are gonna - That the marketing did not create an appealing image of what the film was, whether it be the trailers or posters, or whatever it was. People felt like this wasn’t something they needed to go see. Now, hopefully when they do see it, they’ll go, “Wow! We really misjudged this film,��? Or, “It’s a lot better than I was led to believe.��? We had some good reviews. I don’t mean to say every critic hated the film. We had like Roger Ebert, and Quentin Tarantino’s a big fan of the film and really comes out strongly for it; and Andrew Sarris and guys like Mick LaSalle. But if you check out a site like Rotten Tomatoes -- I kind of have mixed feelings about that site because every Internet jerk with a website gets to play film critic. And usually it attracts the more elitist, snobbish sites that I just despise like Slant.com [actually, it's slantmagazine.com]. Have you ever seen those guys? I mean they hate movies.
NP: Yeah.
WK: And you can print that, too. Please.
NP: I will!
PARK CITY, Utah--"I've worked hard to stay in shape," William H. Macy was saying, "but who would have guessed my first love scene would come when I was 50?"
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