MZS
Big and Small: Ian Holm, 1931-2020
The veteran actor found greatness in small characters, and universality in villains and knaves.
The veteran actor found greatness in small characters, and universality in villains and knaves.
The famed director of Romeo & Juliet, La Traviata, Jesus of Nazareth and more passed away this weekend at the age of 96.
A look back at the five movies featuring Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, recently released in a 4K Blu-ray box set.
The latest on Blu-ray and DVD including Coco, Darkest Hour, Murder on the Orient Express, and The Florida Project!
A number of Oscar contenders have impressed this year with their abundance of talent onscreen.
An essay about Christopher Nolan's "Dunkirk," from the latest edition of the online magazine Bright Wall/Dark Room.
A collection of some of our favorite interviews from 2016.
An in-depth preview of the upcoming 70mm film festival occurring at Chicago's Music Box Theatre from February 19 to March 10.
The latest and greatest on Blu-ray/DVD and streaming services, including "About Elly," "Furious 7," "Love & Mercy," "Moonrise Kingdom" and more!
An interview with "Woman in Gold" director Simon Curtis.
Festival correspondent and awards season expert Erik Childress picks his favorite review of Roger's.
At their big D23 Expo event, Disney unleashed some stars and a lot of tantalizing info about live action films.
Nick Schager ponders the new crop of action directors, who bring 'serious film' cred to the genre, but can't seem to show personality where it counts the most.
Marie writes: It's no secret that most Corporations are evil - or at the very least, suck big time. And while I have no actual proof, I'm fairly certain there is a special level of Dante's Hell reserved just for them. (Map of Dante's Hell.)That being the case, when my younger brother Paul wrote me about a cool project sponsored by Volkswagen, I was understandably wary and ready to denounce it sight-unseen as self-serving Corporate shyte. As luck would have it however, I was blessed at birth with curiosity and which got the better of me and why I took a look. For what I found was nothing less than extraordinary....
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Complete list of 84th Annual Academy Award nominations announced Tuesday:
Hollywood nostalgia may be warmly embraced Tuesday morning when the 2012 Academy awards nominations are announced. Films involving the invention of the cinema, the transition from Silent to Talkies and the legend of Marilyn Monroe are among those certain to be nominated.
Marie writes: Behold an extraordinary collection of Steampunk characters, engines and vehicles created by Belgian artist Stephane Halleux. Of all the artists currently working in the genre, I think none surpass the sheer quality and detail to be found in his wonderful, whimsical pieces...
Left to right: Little Flying Civil, Beauty Machine, Le Rouleur de Patin(click images to enlarge)
My new voice belongs to Edward Herrmann. He has allowed me to use it for 448 pages. The actor has recorded the audiobook version of my memoir, Life Itself, and my author's copies arrived a few days ago.
Listening to it, I discovered for the first time a benefit from losing my own speaking voice: If I could still speak, I suppose I would probably have recorded it myself, and I wouldn't have been able to do that anywhere as near as well as Herrmann does.
My editor, Mitch Hoffman, suggested a few readers he was confident would do a good job. Herrmann's name leaped up from his email.
You may have seen this Art Warning from the Avon Theatre in Stamford, CT. It's been flying around on Twitter and Facebook the past few days (I RTed it from Christopher Misch at Next Projection) and people have had all sorts of reactions, from "How sad that this is necessary," to "How hilarious that this is necessary," to "Is this necessary?"
Austin Dale of indieWIRE interviewed the Avon's programmer, Adam Birnbaum, who said:
There was a small but vocal minority of patrons who walked out of the film, but there were a few individuals who were fairly nasty and belligerent towards the management staff, demanding their money back. There have been a significant number of people who were fascinated by the film and there were plenty of individuals who have written to us to tell us that they thought the film was a masterpiece.
I didn't attend the April 30 critics' screening for "Thor" because it was at the same time Ebertfest was showing "A Small Act," about an 88-year-old woman named Hilde Back. She'd flown from Sweden, and I wanted be onstage to present her with the Golden Thumb. Missing "Thor 3D" was not an inconsolable loss, because Richard Roeper covered it for the paper and I was able to see it in Chicago in nice, bright 2D. The house was surprisingly well-populated for a 8:50 p.m. screening on a Monday, suggesting that some people, at least, will make an effort to avoid 3D.
"Thor" is failure as a movie, but a success as marketing, an illustration of the ancient carnival tactic of telling the rubes anything to get them into the tent.
Raging Bull, Henry V and Heat are primary examples of films acclaimed on their releases and steadily more since then. But this is far from being the case with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: slaughtered by the majority of critics in 1994, when it was released, the movie by British director Kenneth Branagh didn't please the audience either, becoming an embarrassing box office flop in the career of its director, which had so far been in ascension.
Even the surprising casting of Robert De Niro in the role of the "monster" wasn't enough to attract the attention of the audience, which therefore lost the opportunity to witness yet another immensely sensitive performance by the actor - and I use the word "monster" in quotes because DeNiro may have played many in his brilliant career (Louis Cyphre, Al Capone, Max Cady and even Jake La Motta come to mind), but the creature conceived by British writer Mary Shelley certainly isn't one of them. At least, not in Branagh's beautiful version.
