Film
The most famous and revealing scenes in Victor Hugo’s Les READ MORE >>
The undead, the living dead, the vampires, the zombies, the sleepless ones—call them what you like, there’s a lot of them about these days, and some of them are on the movie screen. Whether those creatures are more frightening than the zombies from life is hard to say. But now that we’re agreed the world is coming to an end, then zombie-ism—could “zombiana” be a word?—is becoming more fashionable. Zombie chic has been pale, vacant-eyed, and listless in the fashion magazines for years. READ MORE >>
The Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami has now made his second feature in exile. READ MORE >>
The word that comes up again and again in discussions about Michael Haneke, the Austrian director of Oscar nominee Amour, is “austere.” His films are so precisely crafted, with such rigorous camerawork and editing, that you feel you might suffocate halfway through. Minutes-long takes are not uncommon. There is no music, except for what the characters hear, and music is often more of an agony than a mercy. And then there’s the violence—it’s depicted unflinchingly and without warning. READ MORE >>
An aging Apache chief, Ulzana, breaks out of the reservation. He has no hope, let alone ambition; he simply wants to get the smell of old age and passivity out of his nostrils. He will kill white people and behave like an Apache. It is the one way he has of ensuring an honorable death. He is pursued by a cavalry detachment, by a young Apache who has signed up with the blue coats, and by a veteran scout who is himself anticipating death. READ MORE >>
In 2010, I spent the month of February checking my P.O. box in Montana for tickets to the Academy Awards show, a spectacle I knew only from television and which usually left me feeling, the morning after, both merrily derisive and left out—the way you may feel right now. I had reason to hope that it would be better in person. READ MORE >>
In Wreck-It Ralph, the Disney film up for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature, the hero Ralph, voiced by a croaky John C. Reilly, opens by brooding about his fate. Shrek-chested, with arms so thick they rip his sleeves, Ralph was born to play the villain, programmed into a retro-chic arcade game where he has the Sisyphean task of pummeling a pixellated building. Each time a kid drops a quarter, Ralph is expected to Wreck. The result is that those who dwell in his game—residents of the threatened building, the angelic hero "Fix-It Felix"—despise him. READ MORE >>
Bradley Cooper: Beefcake Thespian
How the "Silver Linings Playbook" star became a serious actor
It’s a real shame that the planned big-screen production of Paradise Lost, which was to feature Bradley Cooper as Lucifer, will never see the light of day. It might have been the perfect role for the 38-year-old actor, who’s nominated for Best Actor at this Sunday’s Oscars for his work as in Silver Linings Playbook. READ MORE >>
Side effects: It’s a curious term, suggesting an assured central purpose, with some collateral consequences—like you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs? Or is it possible that “side effects” is a delusional escape clause, that all effects are part of each other? A side effect may make you ill; but you were sick already. READ MORE >>
There is a new shot in the movies and it deserves attention. In truth, it has been around for some time, but meaning can take a while to sink in. The first time I felt its possibility was in the late ’50s, reading Norman Mailer’s The Deer Park. The narrator of that novel is Sergius O’Shaughnessy, who has been a first lieutenant in the Air Force. Stationed in Tokyo, he performed over Korea. “Sometimes on tactical missions we would lay fire bombs into Oriental villages. READ MORE >>
