Happy Easter and Passover, or just plain happy Sunday, everyone. News, links, etc: -JJ Abrams first real words about Star Wars (and some Star Trek). (Empire) -I guess Charlie Kaufman has officially given up on Frank or Francis now? He’s developing a series at FX. (/Film) -Bryan Singer on his return to (and abandonment of) X-Men,...
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Just to supplement our home video column this week, Criterion announced today that they would be celebrating Akira Kurosawa’s birthday this weekend by streaming 24 of his films (plus a few bonus videos) for free all weekend. The titles include some of his most famous, like The Seven Samurai, Ikiru and The High and...
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I finally caught Red Tails this week on HBO. I don’t wish to damn it with faint praise, but the George Lucas-financed Anthony Hemingway-directed story about the first all-black squadron of fighter pilots in WW2 was not as bad as you might expect it to be from the trailers or from Lucas’s involvement. Certainly,...
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HBO premiered its Alfred Hitchcock/Tippi Hedron biopic, The Girl, last night in primetime. A co-production with BBC, the film tells the story of the living prison Hedron was kept in by an obsessed Alfred Hitchcock in the 1960s. Aside from the diminutive English actor Toby Jones in the role of Hitch, there was very...
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This week was all about Criterion’s beautifully done bluray edition of Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love for me. It is, as far as I can tell, flawless — just like the film itself. The picture is crystal clear without a spec of blocking, artifacting, halo or flutter. The one spot I thought...
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It was a hell of a rough seven days, days that saw the end of Tony Scott, Phyllis Diller, Jerry Nelson and Neil Armstrong. For our purposes here, Tony Scott was the biggest loss, but personally, while I liked the other three, I admired the hell out of Neil Armstrong as much for his...
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Much of my week was spent devouring both the Jaws and Royal Tenenbaums blurays. Both films look completely gorgeous in their hi-def upgrades, but beyond that there are some problems. Tenenbaums is the same disc as the DVD that came out 10 years ago, thus all of the features were shot in native SD and nothing...
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I absolutely loved Danny Boyle’s sweeping epic of an Opening Ceremony, despite the fact NBC decided to delay it and chop it up for prime time, cutting out a few sections (including, apparently, a Death Eater attack). Of course people complained. This is boring. This is lame. This is too multicultural. This is an...
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This week in movies fucking sucked and I don’t want to talk about it. I stopped paying attention to Twitter and blogs on Friday morning, so this week is soft on links. When I went to sleep on Thursday night (well, Friday morning), the story was “unconfirmed shooting at Batman screening in Denver.” I...
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For the last few years I’ve been doing a yearly piece trying to forecast the upcoming foreign films we might be talking about at some point. It’s tough work and it tends to be something I put months of thought into, whittling it down to 30 or so films to write about before I’m...
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Fringe Fest 2013 reviews Arts & Culture: Our top seven picks By Jessica Bryce Young 5/22/2013
The Survivors Project News: Excerpts from ebook that gives sexual-abuse survivors a chance to tell their stories 5/22/2013
Album Review: Daft Punk's 'Random Access Memories' Daft Punk ascends to new heights of what-the-fuck on arguably the year's most anticipated release. By M.T. Richards 5/22/2013
This Little Underground Music: Our live music columnist talks about a new record club and reviews Tera Melos and Blood Ceremony. By Bao Le-Huu 5/22/2013
Happytown: Florida Action Watch holds Koch Bros. Protest News: Highlight: Tea Party blogger calls Sentinel’s Scott Maxwell “rude, radical and unprofessional” By Billy Manes 5/22/2013
Feedback Music: Music updates from around town: Sportstown, East-West Records, double dose of Lil’ Indies By Ashley Belanger 5/22/2013