What bubbles through the veins of the online underground eventually trickles into the mainstream, and by the time the New York Times comes sniffing around, the trend is usually past its expiration date. Yesterday’s Brand New Thing is today’s forgotten fad. Seems like only yesterday we were praising Freelance Hellraiser’s…
Once more, it all boils down to the stamps — which, if you have seen Stanley Donen’s 1963 comic-thriller Charade, nearly ruins the last 10 minutes of Jonathan Demme’s remake, The Truth About Charlie. But Demme isn’t at all concerned with such mundane things as shock-’em finales; he won’t be…
Tom Petty’s as pissed as a millionaire gets, meaning you’d best take this, ahem, concept album about rock ‘n’ roll corruption with a grain of salt the size of Mike Campbell’s hair. What happens when this album, financed by a multinational, gets airplay? Will it be considered victory or surrender,…
So there’s no confusion, the star of Sweet Home Alabama is Reese Witherspoon, who graces the film’s poster in full-body pout and appears on the press kit in close-up mug-shot smirk; any closer, and we’d shoot up her nostrils and exit through her pores. Of course, there’s a great deal…
In The Banger Sisters, Goldie Hawn plays Suzette, an aging groupie too stuck in a gloriously seedy past to move into the future. It’s 2002, yet she acts as though it’s 1969 and nothing’s changed — not the Sunset Strip’s Whisky A Go-Go, where she still tends bar behind sunglasses…
Among the more preposterous rumors spread by Harry Knowles, whose Ain’t It Cool News movie-biz gossip Web site garners undue attention from studios too craven to do their own thinking, was one from this year’s beginning: Terrence Malick, Knowles “reported,” was working on an adaptation of The Catcher in the…
Read My Lips (Sur Mes Lèvres) puts forth the fascinating and heretofore unexamined theory that being deaf offers estimable rewards. It allows one the chance to tune out the world, to ignore everything and everyone. To the deaf, chaos can feel like soothing calm, and madness comes with its own…
To misappropriate a choice comment from TV journalist turned music-biz impresario Tony Wilson, I’ll just say, “Ian Curtis.” If you know what I mean, great; if you don’t, it doesn’t matter, but you should probably read more. That is, one need not be a fan of the late Ian Curtis,…
Andrew Niccol keeps making the same movie over and over again, dressing it in slightly different clothes: the sleek charcoal Hugo Boss grays of Gattaca, the crisp Crayola hues of The Truman Show and, now, the silk-and-satin Hollywood resplendency of Simone. Niccol, writer and director, is obsessed with a single…
Things you will learn from a forthcoming oral history of Saturday Night Live: Dan Aykroyd slept with, among others, Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman and writer Rosie Shuster, the latter of whom was, at the time, married to the show’s producer and creator, Lorne Michaels. To this day, Chevy Chase regrets…
Up to a certain point, Paul Marino’s story is a familiar one, especially to any single guy in his 20s who likes playing with his joystick. Four years ago, Marino and his pals would leave their offices on a Friday night and go to another friend’s workplace, where they’d play…
After putting one over on the public — by which I mean the fanatical hundreds who keep up with Damon Albarn’s digital circle jerks — the Blur front man, Dan Nakamura, Jaime Hewlett and everyone else collecting royalties three albums in for one album’s worth of real, ahem, work return…
A press pass, reporter-turned-novelist Gregory McDonald once said, is good for one thing: It allows the journalist to ask very smart people very stupid questions. Certainly, that’s how it feels after this 45-minute drive from downtown Dallas to the Allen home of Stan Liebowitz, professor of economics at the University…
This time around, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan puts the surprise at the beginning of his film, and it’s a subtle, shimmering clue — one easily missed and, frankly, one that might not even be there at all. Such are the temptations offered by the maker of The Sixth Sense and…
At this very moment, members of the Television Critics Association are gathered at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena, California, to preview this fall’s new series, interview those responsible for them and, finally, gorge themselves silly and drink themselves stupid on the networks’ dwindling dime. This event, the so-called “press tour,” takes…
Joe Versus the Volcano ran on cable last week, and contained within that misguided, unmemorable film was a small scene that only now resonates. Tom Hanks, who believes he has not long to live, emerges from a doctor’s office wearing a fedora too small for his head and a trench…
A pal asked last week, “Who you writing about?” Told him, “Art Linson,” which screwed his face into a big ol’ question mark. “He’s a movie producer. He made Heat, Fight Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Untouchables, Car Wash…” Said said friend upon hearing that last one, “Dude…
They stream in and out, all day and all night, one after the other: band members, producers, business associates, friends, family, strangers, hangers-on who stare at the familiar face made infamous long ago. The tour bus, this parked sanctuary where he can roll his joints and drink his bottled Starbucks…
What’s most surprising about Nine Queens, a wry if awfully derivative caper come-on from first-time feature director-writer Fabián Bielinsky, is how easily it suckers you into its swindle. After all, you know from jump that something’s up. You’ve sniffed out this con before in the films of David Mamet and…
Shouldn’t have said yes, couldn’t say no. The deal was simple, and those who chose to accept it had made their own private pact with the showbiz-journalism devil. “You will spend an hour with Tom Cruise and an hour with Steven Spielberg,” said the publicist, a lovely woman from 20th…
Steven Spielberg just might turn into a great director if only he’d stop sabotaging his movies. For the second time in as many films, he demolishes his product with a third act that renders all that’s come before it void. It’s as though Minority Report, set in a near future…
The plot of The Bourne Identity is astonishingly straightforward. It is bereft of twists (instead, we’re offered tangible explanations), free of the gaping plot holes that swallow confused viewers, and absent the cynical machinations of filmmakers who believe that, to entertain, it’s necessary to also bamboozle. This adaptation of Robert…
