Great Movies
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This Must Not Be the Place: The Films of Peter Weir
A look back at Peter Weir's best films, on the occasion of his upcoming lifetime achievement Oscar.
A look back at Peter Weir's best films, on the occasion of his upcoming lifetime achievement Oscar.
A celebration of director David Lynch's filmography in anticipation of an upcoming retrospective at the IFC Center in New York.
Who's that black guy in between the blonde Jack Black and the tattooed Ben Stiller? It's Robert Downey, Jr.
One of these days I'm gonna play it black Play it black One of these days... -- misquoted Elvis Costello song from "My Aim is True"
What will the Jim Crow "one-droppers" who didn't think Angelina Jolie was "African enough" to play Dutch-Jewish / Cuban-black-Hispanic-Chinese Mariane Pearl make of this? The actor in the center of the accompanying image is Robert Downey Jr., a white German-Scottish / Irish-Jewish actor. He's playing a white actor who is cast in a part originally written for a black actor, so he decides to play it black. The movie, "Tropic Thunder," is a satire of Hollywood actors making an epic war movie. It's directed by Stiller, co-written by Etan Cohen ("Idiocracy," "My Wife is Retarded" -- note that the "h" is not in the first name but the last; he's no relation to Joel) and Justin Theroux (who played a director in "Mulholland Dr." and an actor in "Inland Empire"). Nick Nolte, Jay Baruchel and Steve Coogan also star -- along with some big names in cameo appearances.
As Downey told Entertainment Weekly, "If it's done right, it could be the type of role you called Peter Sellers to do 35 years ago. If you don't do it right, we're going to hell." [...]
Read Editor Jim Emerson's essay on the ways he believes some are using "Million Dollar Baby" to publicize their political agendas.
"Unforgiven" and "Howards End," both about dying castes, one in the old West, one in England, led the 1993 Academy Award nominations Wednesday morning with nine mentions apiece.
