Jun
22
And so now we catch up on a couple of very good films that opened last week, but — because there’s only so much podcasting I can do before my ears start to bleed — had to wait a week to be covered. In the case of the film featured in this episode, STONEWALL UPRISING, …
Apr
16
Seems to be some confusion about the title of this. For the record, according to the front page of the production notes, it’s THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES. Not THE SECRET OF THEIR EYES or even THE SECRET IN HER EYES, which is the way the video file for the trailer is labeled. So I …
Mar
06
It’s typical in these circumstances to say, “I don’t know what came over me.” But I do know what came over me: I was going to interview Felix Moeller about his new documentary, HARLAN – IN THE SHADOW OF JEW SUSS — the film about German director Veit Harlan, his infamous, anti-Semitic 1940 creation JEW …
Feb
26
At one point in the new film THE ART OF THE STEAL, one of the people protesting the moving of Dr. Albert Barnes’ art collection (Picasso, Modigliani, Renoir, Cézanne, amongst others) from its home outside Philadelphia into the city proper stands outside the gates of the museum’s eventual home, screaming, “Philistines!” The art world occasionally …
Feb
12
A tangent here, but stick with me: At the beginning of the animated film, MY NEIGHBORS THE YAMATAS, director Isao Takahata envisions the world of his titular family as an ocean voyage, complete with pounding waves and raging storms, but arriving eventually at a safe port. If the analogy was transferred to OCTOBER COUNTRY, the …
Dec
04
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not all that obsessive over metal, heavy or otherwise. Don’t hate it — in fact, I like the beat and the aggression and the flights into epic, audio assault — it just doesn’t take priority when I’m programming my Pandora stations. Nevertheless, I’m happy when one year brings us two …
Oct
29
You could probably forge a good, absurdist, dark comedy out of a government where racial identity can be declared and reversed by official decree, and white parents whose child’s skin is, because of a genetic quirk, darker than theirs struggle to get their kid designated Caucasian. I can imagine Terry Gilliam going to town on …
Oct
12
You wanna talk extreme? Charles Bronson, ne Michael Peterson, has spent thirty-four of his fifty-six years of life in incarceration of one form or another — most of that time has been in solitary confinement. The system has been violent to him, but he’s been violent back, and an anti-authoritarian cult has risen around his …
Oct
03
This is the spoiler-free version of the A SERIOUS MAN episode. To listen to the complete version, and to read the introductory text, watch the trailer and get links to the official website, go to the post marked “SPOILER ALERT!”
Jul
24
Turning out to be a rough month for romance, isn’t it? ADAM, the new drama directed by Max Mayer and starring Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne, doesn’t skip back and forth within its time line or offer the narrative flamboyancy of (500) DAYS OF SUMMER, but that doesn’t mean that the course of love is …
