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(02/18/11 10:02am)
When we think of those “great sports movies,” it’s not really football movies that come to mind. Maybe in the last decade or so, with “Remember the Titans” (2000) or “Friday Night Lights” (2004), you could make a claim to the gridiron’s dominance. More often than not, it’s the diamond that holds the drama.
(02/16/11 8:25am)
French filmmaker Claire Denis’s “White Material” is a demanding, powerful, almost apocalyptic film.
(02/15/11 8:53am)
The Grammy Awards are among the strangest of awards shows, especially in the last handful of years. As the music industry has struggled to adjust to that all-consuming entity “The Internet,” its shows continue to get louder, more elaborate and full of more and more awards.
(02/14/11 9:03am)
It's a pivotal entry in an overcrowded genre, one that pays debt to the verbal duels of so many comedies of old school Hollywood while also carrying traces of what would become Judd Apatow and the like's sex-driven romantic romps.
(02/08/11 9:19am)
The Super Bowl’s lead-out program has always been a valuable slot for networks.
(02/08/11 9:15am)
Audi It starts as two rich guys trying to break out of a luxurious prison.
(02/02/11 9:10am)
“Tiny Furniture” is a film like a hundred other films produced each year — incredibly independent, shot on a shoestring budget, featuring nearly no recognizable names
and coming courtesy of someone young and very determined to make their name known.
(02/01/11 7:56am)
“The King’s Speech” is on top of the movie world.
(01/25/11 9:13am)
Usually, an Academy Award nomination is great news for producers – a nomination in a major category usually means more people will want to see the film, even if just for the sake of seeing each year’s nominees.
(01/19/11 8:44am)
NFL safety Pat Tillman could have earned millions of dollars playing for the Arizona Cardinals, but in 2002 he left the league to join the military,
serving his country in Afghanistan as undoubtedly one of the most famous enrolled men of the time. Two years later, Tillman was killed in combat.“The Tillman Story,” directed by filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev, is a conservatively nuanced film that rarely tries to shove itself forward as an encapsulating destructive act. It’s a film that readily acknowledges it doesn’t have the answers for the questions it asks.When Tillman was killed, the military and the media painted a heroic story of him leading a charge on the enemy in order to save a group of soldiers. After further investigation, it was revealed that Tillman was actually killed as a result of friendly fire in a confusing twilight assault in a canyon.But the details of exactly what happened to Tillman, exactly why he was shot and the narrative of events leading up to the moment of his death have been publicly and privately rewritten several times over the last six years.“The Tillman Story” largely follows his mother Dannie’s efforts to reconstruct the event through her own personal investigations and a drawn-out effort to uncover a huge dossier of information regarding the military’s official account of Tillman’s death. While Bar-Lev performed interviews with the family after these investigations occurred, and their recollections of piecing this convoluted puzzle together serve as the brunt of the narrative arc, it is nevertheless a fascinating look at how information gets created and disseminated. Bar-Lev also shaped the film with archive footage of Tillman’s time in the military.Tillman’s family and friends are very upfront about their disappointment in the military for changing the story and, in their words, using Tillman’s death as a means to promote the war. “The Tillman Story” has a very complex set of concerns regarding not the “justness” of the war, but the adequacy of the military-industrial complex.In chronicling how the family sought to expose what they believed to be a cover-up of the exact circumstances of Tillman’s death, the film is regularly confronted with a need to question how and why events happened, why media reported the way they did and how the military came to its own set of conclusions.The problem and the point is that it can’t answer these questions. Tillman’s family has never received the validation or gratification they feel they’re entitled to, and the film itself acts as more of an expose than anything else. In this regard, its aesthetic is relatively straightforward, coupling interviews with archival pictures and video, along with a smart voiceover narrated by Josh Brolin.“The Tillman Story” wants us to be angry, it wants us to question what we hear, but it gets at this by one crucial decision — it thinks about Pat Tillman the man, letting his family and his fellow soldiers talk at length about the kind of person they perceived him to be. The film’s most poignant stroke is in questioning the whole system of mythology, the way we create heroes simply because we need to have heroes.Instead of presenting “the truth” in any kind of definitive way, it ends in an affirmation of Pat Tillman as a man while refusing to conform to the notion that he is a larger-than-life hero. It never questions his courage, his attitude, his beliefs — it’s a very flattering portrait. Rather, it asks us to dissect our own feelings, our own perceptions of how we elevate individuals to ethereal status and how we consume heavily mediated versions of events without necessarily understanding the events themselves.
(01/18/11 8:22am)
For those of us who follow the race to the Academy Awards, Sunday’s 68th Annual Golden Globes
ceremony came equipped with very few surprises. Despite relatively few genuine upsets in the “film” half of the ceremony, one thing remains pretty clear: “The Social Network” is a really big deal.The Facebook drama won four awards — the most of the evening — taking honors for Best Original Score for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Best Screenplay for Aaron Sorkin, Best Director for David Fincher and Best Motion Picture – Drama. Essentially repeating the four wins it capped at Friday’s Critics’ Choice Awards, it’s starting to look more and more like an unstoppable steamroller barreling toward Oscar night.And while it was certainly the talk of the evening, expected frontrunners in most acting categories capped awards as well. Colin Firth won Best Actor – Drama for his stammering portrait in “The King’s Speech,” while Natalie Portman won Best Actress – Drama for her mentally unstable ballerina in “Black Swan,” and Annette Bening won Best Actress – Comedy or Musical for her depiction of a lesbian mother in “The Kids Are All Right.”“The Fighter” earned two honors in the supporting acting categories, with Christian Bale and Melissa Leo winning Best Supporting Actor and Actress, respectively.The television awards packed in a few more surprises. HBO’s freshman Prohibition drama “Boardwalk Empire” scored wins for Best Television Series – Drama and Best Actor in a Television Series – Drama for lead actor Steve Buscemi.Last year’s Best Television Series – Comedy or Musical winner “Glee” repeated its feat, winning the category for the second year in a row and also earning honors in both supporting acting categories — for Chris Colfer in Supporting Actor and Jane Lynch in Supporting Actress.Katey Sagal won Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama for FX’s “Sons of Anarchy,” while Laura Linney won Best Actress in a Television Series – Comedy or Musical for “The Big C,” and Jim Parsons earned Best Actor in a Television Series – Comedy or Musical honors for “The Big Bang Theory.”The Golden Globes have understandably earned a reputation as the more laid-back counterpart to the Oscars. With alcohol provided and a crossover of television and film celebrities attending, it usually ends up with more than a few interesting moments. Ricky Gervais, reprising his role as host, certainly served up plenty of barbs, regularly prodding as he introduced speakers, occasionally to the chagrin of those on stage. For those at home, though, Gervais kept the ceremony grounded, refusing to massage egos. And while the Globes have never really had much in the way of flashy spectacle, Gervais’ interludes helped perk the three-hour ceremony up and kept the pacing as fast as could be expected.Awards pundits are now faced with the reality that “The Social Network” is going to be an awards behemoth; by beating favored British historical drama “The King’s Speech” for this prize, it seems as if the brooding drama has little competition for the Academy Award.Not that that’s a bad thing. “The Social Network” represents something very rare — smart studio-backed entertainment. Funded by Sony, it’s a bold, often daring look at contemporary culture, and its continued recognition can only send one message to studio heads: more, please.Were “The Social Network’s” model to become a paradigm, we could expect more studios to gamble on letting directors, producers and writers with serious, intelligent visions take the reigns on bigger budgets and broader accessibility.And as the box office success of “Social Network,” “Black Swan,” “The Fighter” and “True Grit” indicate, audiences are ready for more sophisticated entertainment in wider release. This year it’s not just the stuffy awards groups: The people have spoken. That’s Entertainment.
(01/14/11 9:19am)
Best Motion Picture - Drama: “The King’s Speech”
Why? If you’ve been following the awards, you’ve undoubtedly seen “The Social Network” tearing up everything in its path. But “Speech” is the nominations leader, and its brand of refined historical drama is right up the Globes’ alley.Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical: “The Kids Are All Right”Best Director: David Fincher, “The Social Network”Best Actor - Drama: Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech”Best Actress - Drama: Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”Best Actor - Comedy or Musical: Johnny Depp, “Alice in Wonderland”Why? It may be confounding and inexplicable, but Johnny Depp is nominated twice in this category (also for “The Tourist”). His holiday thriller/comedy “The Tourist” is somehow nominated for Best Picture (Comedy or Musical) despite being universally panned and making nary a dent in the box office. The Globes bend over backward for stars. It’s weird.Best Actress - Comedy or Musical: Annette Bening, “The Kids Are All Right”Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, “The Fighter”Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, “The Fighter”Why? This is one of the most wide-open categories of the evening, and I could see any of the nominees winning. Helena Bonham Carter is also a possible winner for “The King’s Speech,” but the ensemble power of “The Fighter” and Adams’ growing celebrity should help bolster her here.Best Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin for “The Social Network”Best Animated Film: “Toy Story 3”Best Foreign Language Film: “Biutiful”Best Television Series - Drama: “Boardwalk Empire”Why? It’s a tight call between this and “Mad Men,” especially considering the ad agency drama won this award for the past three years. But “Boardwalk Empire” is new, it was one of the talks of the season and Martin Scorsese directed the pilot.Best Television Series - Comedy: “Modern Family”Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: “The Pacific” : Alec Baldwin, “30 Rock”Why? He’s won this award three out of the last four years ... might as well give him another one. If anyone else is going to win, it’ll be Jim Parsons from “The Big Bang Theory.”Best Actress - Comedy or Musical Series: Edie Falco, “Nurse Jackie”Why? While it’s somewhat foolish to pick the Globes based off the Emmys, this is a tough category, and Falco’s recent win from the Television Academy is a logical crossover. Toni Collette won the Globe and the Emmy last year and Tina Fey the year before. If votes head every which way, “Glee’s” Lea Michele could cap a surprise win.Best Actor - Drama Series: Bryan Cranston, “Breaking Bad”Best Actress - Drama Series: Elisabeth Moss, “Mad Men”Best Supporting Actress: Jane Lynch, “Glee”
(01/12/11 8:32am)
An eight-part miniseries on the Kennedys starring Greg Kinnear as John F. Kennedy, Katie Holmes as Jackie Kennedy, Barry Pepper as Robert F. Kennedy and Tom Wilkinson as Joe Kennedy sounds pretty interesting, doesn’t it?
Well, that’s certainly what the History Channel thought when they planned to air the series, developed by “24” co-creator Joel Surnow, this spring. That is, until they saw the finished project.Last Friday a representative for the A&E television networks released a statement announcing they would cancel the miniseries in the U.S. The rep told the Hollywood Reporter, “While the film is produced and acted with the highest quality, after viewing the final product in its totality, we have concluded this dramatic interpretation is not a fit for the History brand.”Fair enough. The History Channel has certainly defined its brand name on documentaries about everything from Jesus to the end of the world, but the channel has not offered much in the way of definitive, must-see entertainment. To drop the miniseries after it’s been completed and screened seems only detrimental to the overall brand of the company, especially considering “The Kennedys’s” multi-million dollar budget makes it the most expensive program the channel has funded.Even stranger is that, despite the channel’s claims that the miniseries does not reflect the level of historical accuracy they strive for, the script had been revised and approved by historical experts prior to filming.Sunday, Hollywood Reporter followed up on their story, asserting that members of the Kennedy family, including JFK’s daughter Caroline Kennedy, voiced displeasure with the series and pressured A&E network to cancel it.So, to think of this another way: in an era when cable television is becoming an arena for large-scale miniseries, with HBO and other premium channels largely dominating the field, the History Channel could have used “The Kennedys” as a complete game-changer, totally upping the ante on the kind of content they could provide for producers while also drawing massive ratings.The other kicker? The miniseries is still scheduled to air in Canada on March 6 and will be shown internationally, says the Hollywood Reporter.So not only does History cancel “The Kennedys,” but they only cancel it in the U.S. In a way this only adds insult to injury, and instead of the channel reaping the ratings of airing it, U.S. viewers will likely turn to Internet streams and torrents to see it anyway.Instead of taking a progressive step forward, the History Channel is taking several steps back, closeting and protecting their content behind the curtain of “historically accurate programming” without stopping to think about how to engage in a dramatic miniseries and provide different scopes and ranges of content.While doing so will certainly preserve the kind of audience already watching the History Channel, those content to tune in for hours at a time to suck down an array of documentaries with little sense of meaning or purpose, it will keep the History Channel from expanding its horizons, drawing in demographics and making a stand as one of basic cable’s best networks. That’s Entertainment.
(11/30/10 11:35am)
Last Tuesday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Ruffalo was placed on the U.S. terror advisory list, allegedly after showing support for "Gasland," a documentary about the potential hazards of natural gas drilling.
(11/29/10 10:42am)
Thanksgiving weekend may be a time for parades, family and turkey, but it still doesn’t stop Hollywood from promoting it as one of the major event weekends of the year (along with Christmas, Memorial Day, Labor Day and the Fourth of July). Warner Bros. switched up their release strategy slightly with “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” last week, releasing the film one week before Thanksgiving and effectively jump-starting the holiday box office and giving it a two-week run at dominating the box office.
(11/23/10 8:48am)
The Oscar race is many things. It is about the statue, about the prestige, about rooting for the underdog, about championing the personal favorite. Almost above all else though, it is about strategy.
(04/23/10 4:11am)
Walt Disney World Cliché? Maybe. But there’s no place on Earth that lets you dig up that feeling of childish nostalgia and ride a bunch of roller coasters that were a lot scarier when you were younger than Walt Disney World in Orlando.