(Photo by Dean Parker) "Carter Burwell's score, drawing from themes from American folk music of the era, is one of his greatest." -- Glenn Kenny, review of "True Grit" on MSN Movies 1. I had missed the news, quietly announced…
Whenever research confirms something we feel we already knew intuitively, or from our own experience, there are always people who'll scoff and say, "Well, I could have told you that!" And maybe they could have, but that's not the point.…
This e-mail pitch has been going around (with all the identifying information that I've stripped out), and I'm just not sure what to make of it. A "celebrity film critic" is "representing [yellow tail] Reserve wine" and wants to talk…
The Muriels are back! Everyone's favorite movie awards, the Muriels feature the longest presentation ceremonies of any other movie awards. They go on for weeks -- from February 16 to March 6. Take that, Oscars! And there are no musical…
Please consider this my contribution to the For the Love of Film (Noir) blogathon, now in progress. This room is haunted. By shadows from out of the past... and by my failure to ever complete the thing. I notice I…
It's Valentine's Day, and what better occasion to coincide with the second annual Film Preservation Blogathon, For the Love of Film (Noir)co-hosted by Self-Styled Siren and Marilyn Ferdinand. Not only is it great readin', it's a benefit for The Film…
This five-foot-tall baby giraffe named Margaret has subtly changed the way I look at creature design in science-fiction and fantasy movies. I haven't been able to stop oggling her. Margaret is small for her age, and was having difficulty suckling,…
There are two of them that matter most to me, I think -- and not in the Best Picture category. ("The King's Speech" over "The Social Network"? Really? I can only shrug. Forget it, Jim -- it's the Academy...) I'm…
Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank" was shot in Essex and several boroughs outside of London (IMDb lists Barking, Havering and Tower Hamlets among them) and these landscapes -- variously industrial, suburban, undeveloped -- look as chilly and otherworldly as anything in…
When Andy Samberg (as Mark Zuckerberg) asked Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg how he played Zuckerberg in "The Social Network" (shortly before the real Zuckerberg joined them onstage during the opening monologue on "Saturday Night Live"), he said: "I speak in…
Great Movies