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(02/21/13 12:00am)
Controversy surrounds the Academy Awards. Film nominations are political, and winners are sometimes undeserving. Cinephiles argue over best picture winners decades after they are decided. However, what is beyond dispute is that the Academy Awards are an integral part of Hollywood's magic. For those who love film, no night better celebrates cinema. And luckily for audiences this year, the nominations are deserved in no small part due to the fact that summer releases and foreign films, which rarely get Academy recognition, both received nods for best picture and best director (Beasts of the Southern Wild and Amour, respectively). In fact, the only undeserved nomination is the self-indulgent Les Miserables for best picture. Here are my predictions and picks for Sunday:
(01/17/13 12:00am)
Alfred Hitchcock famously remarked that he enjoyed "playing the audience like a piano." In the first scene of Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) plays all 88 keys at once. She is faced with a serious challenge: to portray the Sept. 11 attacks in an innovative manner that will shock the audience without depicting either stock news footage or recreated images of planes crashing into the Twin Towers. In the most brilliant opening scene of recent years, the screen stays black as we listen to overlapping 911 calls from the Twin Towers. These first few minutes are terrifying and set the tone for the rest of the film: the lurid manhunt for Osama bin Laden.
(01/10/13 12:00am)
2012 was not a stellar year for movies. The highest-grossing film, The Avengers, was amusing but instantly forgettable. Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master), Judd Apatow (This Is 40) and Tom Hooper (Les Miserables) all failed to live up to the greatness of their previous films. The once-great William Friedkin (The Exorcist) made the worst movie of the year, Killer Joe. Despite some major disappointments, several films showed why cinema is still the greatest art form.
(02/16/12 12:00am)
This Sunday will mark a major milestone in American television history: "The Simpsons," the greatest TV program of all time, will air its 500th episode. What began in 1987 as a series of one-minute shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show has become a multibillion dollar franchise of clothing, action figures, board games, comic books, albums, video games, a feature film and a ride at Universal Studios. "D'oh!" is now an official English word. To commemorate the show's 20th anniversary, the U.S. Postal Service released a series of "The Simpsons" postage stamps. Its effect on American culture is unprecedented for a TV show and will not be matched for a long time, if ever.
(01/26/12 12:00am)
Carnage is one of those rare films that is able to tactfully weave humor into uncomfortable and sometimes depressing situations. When it wants us to laugh, we laugh. When it wants us to cringe, we do that too. At the same time, it reveals a lot about us as men and women, as parents and children, and as couples and individuals. Despite the title, this film is not some kind of Shakespearean tragedy that climaxes in a bloodbath that kills everybody. It is not about carnage of the body but of the mind, heart and soul.
(01/11/12 12:00am)
Last year heralded terrible movies varying from the sequel of The Human Centipede to the alternative reality chick-fighting movie Sucker Punch. In spite of these cinematic disasters, Hollywood redeemed itself with raw documentaries and incredible CGI. Here are my favorite films of 2011:
(12/01/11 12:00am)
Hugo is an emotional children's story, a light-hearted romantic comedy, a thrilling mystery, an existential journey, and an ode to dreams and filmmaking wrapped into one beautiful film. A movie of this caliber is business as usual for director Martin Scorsese, but this genre of movie certainly is not. The man behind the masterpieces Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas is known for ultraviolent, profane gangster flicks. Hugo is Scorsese's first children's movie as well as his first 3-D movie. Scorsese ventures into a new style of directing and owns it like the greatest director of ?this generation.
(11/10/11 12:00am)
When creating Endtroducing… DJ Shadow's goal was to make an album constructed entirely from samples. He dug through his collection of more than 60,000 records and visited stores with a battery-operated record player. Shadow sampled from jazz, old school hip-hop, dialogue from films and interviews and even a heavy metal track. He avoided the obvious samples one would find on Girl Talk albums and searched for the obscure. The most well-known track Shadow sampled was "Orion" by Metallica, while other samples come from artists even the most outspoken sonophile wouldn't know, such as Lifer's Group and H.P. Riot. When listening to Endtroducing… one can understand how meticulous DJ Shadow was. He cut up simple drum beats and tied them together to make his own break beats. He built his own chords from the different samples. If one listens closely, he or she can even hear the fuzz from the old records DJ Shadow sampled. Somehow everything is perfectly interwoven into this organic masterpiece. Even after all my time listening to Endtroducing… I still have to remind myself that DJ Shadow did not write a single note or drum beat.
(10/27/11 12:00am)
Margin Call is one of the most interesting movies imaginable about one of the most boring jobs in existence: stock trading. Loosely based on the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the film shows how quickly an investment banking firm can go from record profits to liquidation, and is told from the perspective of the bankers themselves.
(09/22/11 12:00am)
Straw Dogs, a remake of the 1971 film with the same name, is an above-average thriller devoid of gotcha moments, a predictable plot line and a gimmicky ending. During the climactic scenes, it keeps viewers furiously biting their nails. However, with a tighter screenplay, editing and direction, this film could have been one of the few ?great remakes.
(09/08/11 12:00am)
Director David R. Ellis' (Snakes on a Plane) Shark Night 3D pays homage to the teenage slasher flicks of the '80s and the "scary things in the water" movies of the '70s by copying every shot, character and plot line from these films — without an original idea of its own. It leaves no cliche untouched and no woman unobjectified.
