Do I dare to eat a peach?

This would have made the cover of the Weekly World News.

My theory: He saw this movie when he was younger and it traumatized him.

Some 200 of my TwitterPages are linked at the right.
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April 9, 2013

Three unauthorized out-takes from “Siskel & Ebert” in the 1980s. Bootlegged.

I’ve seen these scattered here and there. Now someone has strung them all together. This was the weekly routine during tapings: Arguments alternating with hilarity, with the offstage voices of Buzz the floor director and Don the director unsuccessfully trying to steer us back on track.

I wrote a blog entry about the energy Siskel and I put into attacking each other. Here it is: Siskel & Ebert at the Jugular.

Thanks for the link to Damon Berger.

April 9, 2013

I’ll never smoke weed with Willie again

My 1986 interview with Willie, happiness is being on the road again.

Some 200 of my TwitterPages are linked at the right.
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April 9, 2013

Nick & Nora’s hangover cure

Kartina Richardson is a Far-Flung Correspondent for RogerEbert.com. She blogs at Mirror.org and tweets at @thismoithismoi. She treasures her tattoo of Jean Cocteau.

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Amazon.com Widgets

April 9, 2013

We are part of all worlds

By Mark Hughes on October 20, 2010 6:40 PM

A singularity, tiny beyond comprehension, burst forth with power and energy. In seconds, the foundation for reality and existence in our universe were created. Only Hydrogen and Helium existed as elements. They formed stars.

Eventually, those stars died. Some collapsed and became black holes, singularities working in the reverse of the one that raptured outward to form our universe, instead gobbling up all reality around them. Other stars broke down and exploded, hurtling their essence further into the universe that still grew and expanded and changed around them.

That essence, that dust from the stars, contained new elements, elements formed within the heart of the stars. This star dust, these new elements, formed everything else in the universe. Planets formed, rocks formed, water formed.

And life formed. Life composed of elements born in the heart of the first stars, stars themselves formed from the birth of our universe.

Life no doubt formed all around our universe, including probably on a planet in the Gliese 581 star system. And of course, life formed right here on Earth. Microbes, multi-celled organisms, complex organisms, in the oceans and then crawling out onto land and evolving into all manner of living creatures. On a planet changing radically over millions of years, struck by massive impacts from asteroids and comets, one so large it knocked part of the planet loose and formed our moon.

Life here evolved and became self-aware, stood on hind legs, grunted and then spoke. Looked up into the sky at night, saw the stars, and wondered about our own origins.

We were born out there among the stars, starting in that first instant when the singularity expanded and birthed stars that birthed everything else that became life that looked up into the sky and that finally understood. From a single point to a universe, from stars to stardust to life. From simple life to complex self-awareness.

And meanwhile, still out there, those stars that fell into themselves and formed black holes? They feed on this universe’s leftovers, filling up one side of a singularity that many researches now strongly suspect opens up and spits back out that energy and mass into brand new universes just like our own. The laws pass from one to another, the first stars form again and then in their hearts form the ingredients for the rest of the universe, and once more forming life that will some day look up and understand it all.

Our singularity was probably born that same way, the back door so to speak of a singularity in some universe that already existed long before our own was formed. Our universe was fed by that older universe, the laws passing through to us.

Universes form, inherently forming stars that inherently form the rest of what is needed for a universe, and those stars explode sometimes and collapse other times. And some of the collapsed ones form new singularities birthing more universes, birthing more stars to birth more universes, on and on. Each time, too, some stars birth life. Life that eventually must become self-aware and must eventually comprehend these basic concepts — the simple law of averages says life will exist, and some of that life will understand.

Life is sort of the consciousness of the universe, the way a universe can be aware of its own nature, it’s own past, and you might even say it’s own “purpose” — to reproduce, to make more, to keep understanding.

Think about the odds, the complexity, the beauty and perfection in this. A singularity, a universe, stars, stardust, life, a black hole, a new singularity, a new universe, new stars, new stardust, new life, forever and ever. And we sit here able to understand it, to tell others about it, to look up into the night sky at the stars and know “That’s where we came from, that’s where we’ll go some day, and there are other living things looking up into their own night sky out there around those stars right now thinking the same thing.”

We don’t have to look up and feel insignificant — we are more significant than we can ever probably truly appreciate, as the consciousness of all that exists. We are part of it, part of not only this world but all worlds.

Now tell me — what miracle could be more awe-inspiring than that?

Knowing and believing these things, the idea of a God having made everything would actually be a let-down, wouldn’t it?

This comment was posted on my blog entry here.

April 9, 2013

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834
Tom O’Bedlam reminds me that it was Coleridge who coined the phrase “the willing suspension of disbelief.”
What follows is a 1977 experimental film by Larry Jordan, using animated engravings of Gustave Dore with Orson Welles reading the Coleridge poem. Then there is Tom O’Bedlam reading “Kubla Khan,” and a charming video for an English class about the life of Coleridge. I end with a tribute to Welles. He and Coleridge would have enjoyed one another.

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April 9, 2013

Richard Harris: Don’t let it be forgot

By Roger Ebert / June 26, 1974

Richard Harris, dressed from head to toe in black, sprawled on the couch in his hotel suite and sang, not at all badly, a few warmup lines of “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.” It was afternoon, although apparently not for him, and he was in Chicago with Ann Turkel, his bride of 13 days, to promote a new movie they costar in.

The name of the movie is “99 44/100% Dead,” and that is what most of its villains are, after they encounter Harris. Unlike the soap, however, they do not float, and the movie opens and closes with scenes of a macabre fraternity of the deceased: gangland victims encased in concrete and sent to wait at the bottom of the East River.

“The only way to view this movie,” Harris explained, “is to see it as sort of a comic strip, to be enjoyed and laughed at on a strictly one-dimensional level. Once you ask yourself the first question about it, you’re lost.”

Harris plays the world’s greatest hit man, who is imported to New York as a big gun in a war between Little Eddie and Fast Joey, or Little Joey and Fast Eddie (“We never quite explain who either one of them is”), and Ann Turkel plays his girl friend. She is a schoolteacher, who drives the getaway school bus.

“I was petrified,” she said, looking, however, definitively the opposite on the couch next to Harris. “I had never driven a stick shift in my life before, and they gave me about two hours’ lessons and set me loose in Los Angeles traffic.”

“You almost killed the camera crew, luv,” said Harris.

“I almost turned us over,” she said. “They had a stunt man in the back, but I can’t figure out how he was going to help me.”

“He was scared shitless,” Harris observed.

Their movie, which has been directed as sort of a cross between Steve Canyon and Fearless Fosdick, is a very flatsurfaced, exaggerated, popart fantasy by John Frankenheimer, whose other credits include “The Manchurian Candidate.”

“When he sent me the script,” Harris recalled, “I got to the line that said, ‘This town isn’t big enough for both of us,’ and I threw it aside. What the hell kind of line is that? It went out with the 1930s. But then I thought if the script’s so bad, what’s a class director like Frankenheimer doing sending it to me? So I picked it up again, and got the joke. It’s a comic strip put-on, done perfectly seriously.”

It is the latest of a great many movies, most of them (“This Sporting Life,” “Man in the Wilderness,” “Camelot”) successful for Harris, but it’s Ann Turkel’s first role. She’s a Westchester County girl, daughter of a clothing manufacturer, who did a lot of modeling and television commercials before Frankenheimer saw her screen test, liked it and put her opposite Harris. Casting about for the most original question I could imagine, I asked if it had been love at first sight.

“Not exactly,” said Ann, a tall and slender brunet with wide eyes and, sigh, lots of other qualities. “Actually, first sight was five years ago. We met then, but Richard doesn’t even remember.”

“I had my head up my . . . in the clouds,” Harris explained.

“When he found out that I’d been cast for the movie, he wanted me fired,” she said.

“There are too bloody many good actresses unemployed already, so why give this unknown a job, was my line,” Harris said.

“There was an item in one of the London papers, all about Ann Turkel vs. the Ogre,” Ann said.

“I looked up ogre in the dictionary and I didn’t like it one bit,” Harris said.

“We were both in London at the time and scheduled to fly to Los Angeles on the same flight,” she said. “I was so frightened of Richard I changed my ticket to tourist class to escape him.”

“That was unnecessary,” Harris said, because I bloody well didn’t fly back at all. Then Frankenheimer called me up and told me to stop being a bloody fool and trust his judgment, because he’d seen the screen test.

“By the time I finally walked on the set, I was feeling rather guilty, and so I sort of helped her, you know, and we became friends. But she still had her boy friend back in London. One day, after about six months, we were sitting by the pool, and I said, ‘Ann, dearest, do you think there’s something going on between us and we don’t know about it?'”

“Maybe it’s a case of opposites attracting,” Ann said.

“That’s it,” said Harris. “She used to go out with tall, sleek, wellgroomed men, and I went out with buxom blonds. There are thousands of girls on the streets like the ones in Hollywood today, but not many girls of the more elegant type, refined . . . I think Annie has a real gift.”

Their next movie together might be a sequel to his very successful “Man in the Wilderness,” he said. That one grossed around $15 million and was about a civilized English man surviving in the wild.

“I almost got killed on that one,” he recalled. “I was suspended from the top of the tepee for the manhood ceremony, and the rope broke and I fell. I could have landed in the fire or impaled myself on a buffalo horn, but I missed and landed between them. Remembering my early training in tavern brawls, I sprung quickly to my feet, because when you’re on the floor, they kick you. Only THEN did I pass out.”

Harris, it’s been noted, is very likely the only living actor who has starred not only in a Doris Day picture (“Caprice”) but also in a Michelangelo Antonioni picture (“Red Desert”). I asked if he brings the same acting techniques to both kinds of movies.

“The only advice I ever got on acting that did me any good,” he said, “was a long time ago when I was just starting out and I made a picture in Ireland with James Cagney. It was called ‘Shake Hands with the Devil.’ I’ll never forget, one day, Cagney summoned me to his suite at the Shelbourne Hotel for a couple of drinks.

“And then be said, ‘Kid, you’ll do OK. You’ll make it.’ Harris was doing his Cagney imitation. ‘But remember this: When you’re in a movie and they want you to go from one place to another, walk in a straight line. A straight line. That’s how they’ll know you’re the star. Too many of these goddamned English actors are walking in curves all the time!”

Richard Harris at the Toronto Film Festival, 2001.
(Photo by Ebert. Mentioned in obituary below.)

In Memory: Richard Harris.

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April 9, 2013

Herzog looks ahead to the Cave

Herzog at Toronto 2010. (Photo by Ebert)

In April at the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Werner Herzog spoke of the 3D film he was making, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.”

On the night of 9/13/10, the film had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

In a conversation that afternoon at TIFF’s Bell Lightbox, Herzog said, “It was only finished yesterday. I haven’t seen it myself.”

Here’s what he said in April about filming it in 3D:

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April 9, 2013

In memory of the memories of W. G. Sebald

A great man and a haunting and evocative writer died Dec. 14, 2001. W. G. Sebald wrote books like no one else before or after him. His books involve a melancholy prowl through the wreckage of the 20th century and his own sometimes bewildered fragments of memory. They are always described as fiction, yet take the form of memoir and are illustrated by photographs that uncannily and exactly match his words. They are real beyond real. You can do no better than to read him. RE

The entry on Sebald in Wikipedia.

Photographs representing his face, subjects, moods and vision. The Sebald Pool on Flickr.

Analogue.” “Inspired by the writings of W.G. Sebald and Arthur Conan Doyle and the early films of Peter Greenaway, Analogue attempts to re-imagine the sublime in the 19th century romantic landscape.”

“A visual/verbal poem in memory of WG Sebald.”

Sin contra, “without counting”

An architectural history class project in relation to “Topographical Stories” by David Leatherbarrow and “Austerlitz” by WG Sebald.

Amazon.com Widgets

From the Sebald photo pool on Flickr:

April 9, 2013

Aid rushed to movie overdose victims

To play, click on the link
Click here: In Freak Accident, 34 Katherine Heigl Films Released At Once
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April 9, 2013

the Your Movie Sucks™ files

Gathered here in one convenient place are my recent reviews that awarded films Two Stars or less. These are, generally speaking to be avoided. Sometimes I hear from readers who confess they are in the mood to watch a really bad movie. If you’re sincere, be sure to know what you’re getting: A really bad movie. Movies that are “so bad they’re good” should generally get two and a half stars. Two stars can be borderline. And Pauline Kael once wrote, “The movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we shouldn’t go at all.”

“Just Go With It” (PG-13, 116 minutes). This film’s story began as a French farce, became the Broadway hit “Cactus Flower,” was made into a 1969 film and now arrives gasping for breath in a witless retread with Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston and Brooklyn Decker. The characters are so stupid it doesn’t seem nice to laugh at them. One star.

“Sanctum” (R, 109 minutes). A terrifying adventure shown in an incompetent way. Scuba-diving cave explorers enter a vast system in New Guinea and are stranded. But this rich story opportunity is lost because of incoherent editing, poor 3D technique, and the effect of 3D dimming in the already dark an murky caves. A “James Cameron Production,” yes, but certainly not a “James Cameron Film.” One and a half stars

“I Am Number Four” (PG-13, 110 minutes). Nine aliens from the planet Mogador travel across the galaxy to take refuge on earth and rip off elements of the Twilight and Harry Potter movies, and combine them with senseless scenes of lethal Quidditch-like combat. Alex Pettyfer stars as Number Four, who feels hormonal about the pretty Sarah (Dianna Agron), although whether he is the brooding teenage Edward Cullen he seems to be or a weird alien life form I am not sure. Inane setup followed by endless and perplexing action. One and a half stars

“Certifiably Jonathan” (Unrated, 80 minutes). Jonathan Winters deserves better than this. Jim Pasternak’s mockumentary is not merely a bad film, but a waste of an opportunity. Nearing 80, Winters is still active and funny, and deserves a real doc, not this messy failed attempt at satirizing–what? Documentaries themselves? Lame scenes involving an art show, a theft and the “Museum of Modern Art” fit awkwardly with cameos of too many other comics, who except for the funny Robin Williams seem to be attending a testimonial. One star.

“The Green Hornet” (PG-13, 108 minutes) An almost unendurable demonstration of a movie with nothing to be about. Although it follows the rough storyline of previous versions of the title, it neglects the construction of a plot engine to pull us through. There are pointless dialogue scenes going nowhere much too slowly, and then pointless action scenes going everywhere much too quickly. One star.

“The Nutcracker in 3D” (PG, 107 minutes) A train wreck of a movie, beginning with the idiotic idea of combining the Tchaikovsky classic with a fantasy conflict that seems inspired by the Holocaust. After little Mary (Elle Fanning) discovers her toy nutcracker can talk, he reveals himself as a captive prince and spirits her off to a land where fascist storm troopers are snatching toys from the hands of children and burning them to blot out the sun. I’m not making this up. Appalling. And forget about the 3D, which is the dingiest and dimmest I’ve seen. One star

“I Spit on Your Grave” (Unrated; for adults only. Running time: 108 minutes) Despicable remake of the despicable 1978 film “I Spit On Your Grave.” This one is more offensive, because it lingers lovingly and at greater length on realistic verbal, psychological and physical violence against the woman, and then reduces her “revenge” to cartoonish horror-flick impossibilities. Oh, and a mentally disabled boy is forced against his will to perform a rape. Zero stars.

“Life As We Know It” (PG-13, 113 minutes). When their best friends are killed in a crash, Holly and Messer (Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel) are appointed as joint custodians of their one-year-old, Sophie. Also, they have to move into Sophie’s mansion. But Holly and Messer can’t stand one another. So what happens when they start trying to raise Sophie. You’ll never guess in a million years. Or maybe you will. One and a half stars

“Hatchet II” (Unrated, 85 minutes). A gory homage to slasher films, which means it has its tongue in its cheek until the tongue is ripped out and the victims of a swamp man are sliced, diced, slashed, disemboweled, chainsawed and otherwise inconvenienced. One and a half stars

“The Last Airbender” (PG, 103 minutes). An agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. Originally in 2D, retrofitted in fake 3D that makes this picture the dimmest I’ve seen in years. Bad casting, wooden dialogue, lousy special effects, incomprehensible plot, and boring, boring, boring. One-half of one star.

“The A-Team” (PG-13, 121 minutes). an incomprehensible mess with the 1980s TV show embedded within. at over two hours of Queasy-Cam anarchy it’s punishment. Same team, same types, same traits, new actors: Liam Neeson, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copley, “Rampage” Jackson, Patrick Wilson. One and a half stars

“Sex & the City 2” (R, 146 minutes). Comedy about flyweight bubbleheads living in a world where their defining quality is consuming things. They gobble food, fashion, houses, husbands, children, and vitamins. Plot centers on marital discord between Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mr. Big (Chris Noth), a purring, narcissistic, velvety idiot? Later, the girls are menaced for immodest dress during a luxurious freebie in Abu Dhabi. Appalling. Sure to be enjoyed by SATC fans. One star

“The Good Heart” (R, 98 minutes). Oh. My. God. A story sopping wet with cornball sentimentalism, wrapped up in absurd melodrama, and telling a Rags to Riches story with an ending that is truly shameless. That fine actor Brian Cox and that good actor Paul Dano and that angelic actress Isild Le Besco cast themselves on the sinking vessel of this story and go down with the ship. One and a half stars.

“Kick-Ass” (R, 117 minutes). An 11-year-old girl (Chloe Grace Moretz), her father (Nicolas Cage) and a high school kid (Aaron Johnson) try to become superheroes to fight an evil ganglord. There’s deadly carnage dished out by the child, after which an adult man brutally hammers her to within an inch of her life. Blood everywhere. A comic book satire, they say. Sad, I say. One star

“Nightmare on Elm Street” (R, 95 minutes). Teenagers are introduced, enjoy brief moments of happiness, are haunted by nightmares, and then slashed to death by Freddy. So what? One star

“The Bounty Hunter” (PG-13, 110 minutes). An inconsequential formula comedy and a waste of the talents of Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler. He’s a bounty hunter, she’s skipped bail on a traffic charge, they were once married, and that’s the end of the movie’s original ideas. We’ve seen earlier versions of every single scene to the point of catatonia. Rating: One and a half stars.

“Cop Out” (R, 110 minutes). An outstandingly bad cop movie, starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan as partners who get suspended (of course) and then try to redeem themselves by overthrowing a drug operation while searching for the valuable baseball card Willis wants to sell to pay for his daughter’s wedding. Morgan plays an unreasonable amount of time dressed as a cell phone, considering there is nothing to prevent him from taking it off. Kevin Smith, who directed, has had many, many better days. One and a half stars.

“The Lovely Bones” (PG-13). A deplorable film with this message: If you’re a 14-year-old girl who has been brutally raped and murdered by a serial killer, you have a lot to look forward to. You can get together in heaven with the other teenage victims of the same killer, and gaze down in benevolence upon your family members as they realize what a wonderful person you were. Peter Jackson (“Lord of the Rings”) believes special effects can replace genuine emotion, and tricks up Alive Sebold’s well-regarded novel with gimcrack New Age fantasies. With, however, affective performances by Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci and Saoirse Ronan as the victim. One star.

“The Spy Next Door” (PG, 92 minutes). Jackie Chan is a Chinese-CIA double agent babysitting girl friend’s three kids as Russian mobsters attack. Uh, huh. Precisely what you’d expect from a PG-rated Jackie Chan comedy. If that’s what you’re looking for, you won’t be disappointed. It’s not what I was looking for. One and a half stars.

“Old Dogs” (PG, 88 minutes). Stupefying dimwitted. John Travolta’s and Robin Williams’ agents weren’t perceptive enough to smell the screenplay in its advanced state of decomposition. Seems to have lingered in post-production while editors struggled desperately to inject laugh cues.Careens uneasily between fantasy and idiocy, the impenetrable and the crashingly ham-handed. Example: Rita Wilson gets her hand slammed by a car trunk, and the sound track breaks into “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” When hey get their hands slammed in car trunks, they do. One star. View the trailer.

“Did You Hear About the Morgans?” (PG-13, 103 minutes). Feuding couple from Manhattan (Hugh Grant and Jessica Sarah Parker) are forced to flee town under Witness Protection Program, find themselves Fish Out of Water in Strange New World, meet Colorful Characters, survive Slapstick Adventures, end up Together at the End. The only part of that formula that still works is The End. With supporting roles for Sam Elliott and Wilford Brimley, sporting the two most famous mustaches in the movies. One and a half stars.

“The Twilight Saga: New Moon” (PG-13, 130 minutes). The characters in this movie should be arrested for loitering with intent to moan. The sequel to “Twilight” (2008) is preoccupied with remember that film and setting up the third one. Sitting through this experience is like driving a tractor in low gear though a sullen sea of Brylcreem. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson return in their original roles, she dewy and masochistic, he sullen and menacing. Ah, teenage romance! One star

“The Boondock Saints II: All Saint’s Day” . (R, 21 minutes) Idiotic ode to macho horseshite (to employ an ancient Irish word). Distinguished by superb cinematography. The first film in 10 years from Troy Duffy, whose “Boondock Saints” (1999) has become a cult fetish. Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus are Irish brothers who return to Boston for revenge and murder countless enemies in an incomprehensible story involving heavy metal cranked up to 12 and lots of boozing, smoking, swearing and looking fierce and sweaty. One star. View the trailer.

“Gentlemen Broncos”. (PG-13, 107 minutes) Michael Angarano plays Benjamin Purvis, a wannabe sci-fi Doctor Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement). Alas. the great man rips off the kid’s book, just when get kid has sold the miniscule filming rights. All sorts of promising material from Jared Hess (“Napoleon Dynamite”), but it’s a clutter of jumbled continuity that doesn’t add up, despite the presence of Jennifer Coolidge. Two stars. View the trailer.

“The Fourth Kind”. (PG-13, 98 minutes). Nome, Alaska (pop. 3,750) has so many disappearances and/or alien abductions that the FBI has investigated there 20 times more than in Anchorage. So it’s claimed by this pseudo-doc that goes to inane lengths to appear factual. Milla Jovovich is good as a psychologist whose clients complain that owls stare at them in the middle of the night. One and a half stars. View the trailer.

21 and a Wakeup . (R, 123 minutes). A disjointed, overlong and unconvincing string of anecdotes centering around the personnel of an Army combat hospital in Vietnam. Amy Acker plays an idealistic nurse who is constantly reprimanded by absurdly hostile officer (Faye Dunaway). Plays like a series of unlikely anecdotes trundled onstage without much relationship to one another. One episode involves an unauthorized trip into Cambodia by a nurse and a civilian journalist; it underwhelms. One and a half stars. Visit the website.

“Cirque de Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant”. (PG-13, 108 minutes) This movie includes good Vampires, evil Vampanese, a Wolf-Man, a Bearded Lady, a Monkey Girl with a long tail, a Snake Boy, a dwarf with a four-foot forehead and a spider the size of your shoe, and they’re all boring as hell. They’re in a traveling side show that comes to town and lures two insipid high school kids (Josh Hutcherson and Chris Massoglia) into a war between enemy vampire factions. Unbearable. With Joh C. Reilly, Salma Hayek, Ken Watanabe, Patrick Fugit, and other wasted talents. One star. View the trailer.

“Couples Retreat” (PG-13, 107 minutes). Four troubled couples make a week’s retreat to an island paradise where they hope to be healed, which indeed happens, according to ages-old sitcom formulas. This material was old when it was new. The jolly ending is agonizing in its step-by-step obligatory plotting. I didn’t care for any of the characters, and that’s about how much they seemed to care for one another. Starring Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Faizon Love, Jon Favreau, Malin Akerman, Kristen Bell, Kristin Davis and Kali Hawk. Two stars. View the trailer.

“Fame.”. (PG, 90 minutes). A pale retread of the 1980 classic, lacking the power and emotion of the original. A group of hopeful kids enroll in the New York City School of the Performing Arts and struggle through four years to find themselves. Their back stories are shallow, many seem too old and confident, the plot doesn’t engage them, and although individual performers like Naturi Naughton sparkle as a classical pianist who wants to sing hip hop, the film is too superficial to make them convincing. Two stars. View the trailer.

“All About Steve”. (PG-13, 87 minutes ) Sandra Bullock plays Mary Horowitz, a crossword puzzle constructor who on a blind date falls insanely in love with Steve, a TV news cameraman (Bradley Cooper, from “The Hangover”). The operative word is “insanely.” The movie is billed as a comedy but more resembles a perplexing public display of irrational behavior. Seeing her run around as a basket case makes you appreciate Lucille Ball, who could play a dizzy dame and make you like her. One and a half stars. View the trailer.

April 9, 2013

Videos of every panel at Ebertfest 2012

My website is unique for the variety of critical voices it features. At Ebertfest this year, seven Far-Flung Correspondents and five Demanders joined directors, actors and other critics in the panel discussions.

April 9, 2013
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