Though The Laramie Project recounts some scant details of his life and the awful facts of his death, Matthew Shepard himself is never depicted in the three-hour theatrical docudrama now onstage in its area premiere at Addison’s WaterTower Theatre. That Shepard’s absence is the point clearly serves as motivation for…
Last October, Sue Vertue found herself in a Los Angeles soundstage watching the filming of a pilot for a would-be NBC sitcom. The storyline of this particular episode dealt, more or less, with the horrific (and, of course, capital-H hilarious!) fallout that comes when a man’s girlfriend finds his porn…
The image for which sports photographer Neil Leifer is most famous–the shot pictured below of Muhammad Ali roaring over a prone Sonny Liston during their 1965 heavyweight championship fight, perhaps the greatest sports photograph in history–is seen as a glorious triumph, for Ali and for Leifer. To me, though, it’s…
He lived for so short a time, 39 scant years, that he’s barely recalled now except by film reviewers who conjure his name in critical comparisons (in Newsweek he was most recently likened to, of all people, Eminem) and historians who lament his early demise and wonder, “What if?” He…
Hitler as artist…Hitler as artist…Damn. So much for the ol’ “summarize plot, tease overpaid actors, pontificate wildly” formula. Reviewing Max–about the wonder years of Der Führer (Noah Taylor) and his eponymous, fictional Jewish benefactor Max Rothman (John Cusack)–looks to be something of a task. Set in 1918 Munich, this confident…
Once upon a time, in the town of Darkness Falls… “Wait,” you’re probably saying to yourself, “Darkness Falls is the name of the town?” Yes. Yes, it is. And it’s haunted by an evil tooth fairy. Are you sure you want to know more? OK, good. Because once you get…
Ever since Amores Perros burst onto the international scene two years ago, Latin American cinema has been experiencing one of the most fertile periods in its history. Encompassing such works as Alfonso Cuaron’s Y Tu Mamá También and Walter Salles’ Behind the Sun, these socially conscious, frequently brutal portraits of…
If comedy is tragedy plus time, then 150 years from now, The Complete History of America (abridged) might be hailed as a comic masterpiece. As it is now, however, the show’s two hours of skits, song parodies and adolescent silliness, written by the same trio of author-actors who condensed all…
It’s hard to ignore Plano-based author H.J. Ralles’ ambition. “Move over Rowling, here comes Ralles,” reads the blunt headline of a press release from Ralles, announcing the release of her latest sci-fi fantasy novel aimed at the preteen market. Let’s see: Ralles, like J.K. Rowling, was born in England. Both…
Two months and 2 ounces (just kiddin’, Mom) later, Grand Theft Auto Vice City’s starting to feel a bit played out; only so many times I can hear “I Ran” while driving a stolen sports car through a city that looks like Miami and feels like soggy Cleveland. And who…
Compiled in the cold light of day, the sum of Chuck Barris’ contributions to American culture are the Top 40 ditty “Palisades Park,” which he wrote in 1962, and his discovery, a few years later, that many people are willing to make complete fools of themselves in front of a…
Just as writer-director Menno Meyjes’ Max was premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, Overlook Press was shipping to bookstores Frederic Spotts’ Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. Meyjes’ film and Spotts’ book say essentially the same thing: Adolf Hitler was a reluctant dictator, a potentially insignificant man who wanted…
It all begins with the word. “I believe I may have a first sentence,” murmurs Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman, really) to her husband, Leonard (Stephen Dillane), commencing labor on the author’s fourth novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The year is 1921, but skillfully intercut segments illustrate that the book’s heady emotional content…
These are the dog days of January, the poor put-upon month used by studios as a dumping ground for product considered too lethally toxic for release during those real moviegoing months–December, say, when audiences are buzzed on two weeks of vacation and award-contenders do their Oscar striptease and reveal that…
As light and crisp as the bubbles in a Buck’s Fizz, the dialogue in Oscar Wilde’s infrequently performed comedy-melodrama Lady Windermere’s Fan stands as some of the playwright’s best. “I don’t know what society’s coming to,” moans a snooty duchess, “the most dreadful people seem to go everywhere. They certainly…
Things learned from the season premiere of Dinner for Five, the Jon Favreau-hosted Independent Film Channel production in which the Swingers writer-star invites famous pals to spill infamous tales: Director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats) and Favreau once feuded via the Internet over allegedly disparaging things the latter once said about…
Here’s a black-and-white rhetorical question for you: How many people of the opposite race do you socialize with regularly? Schoolmates, co-workers, your kids’ friends and fellow church members you see on Sunday don’t count. We suspect that it’s not many. And we don’t say this meanly, since the same is…
This is how it works in the modern age: A man writes a book, two other men make a movie based on the book, another man writes a soundtrack to the movie based on the book, then the man who wrote the book writes an essay about his reactions to…
Spike Lee’s adaptation of David Benioff’s 2001 novel The 25th Hour hews closely to the original tale, which the author has adapted in screenplay form: Montgomery Brogan, a working-class white boy who dreamed of being a New York City firefighter till he fell into the soft pile of easy money…
“Cops die daily, and they die bad,” barks manic police lieutenant Henry Oak (Ray Liotta) to undercover narcotics officer Nick Tellis (Jason Patric), revealing both his hardened ‘tude and a little confusion when it comes to adverbs. Welcome to Narc, Paramount Pictures’ bid for a gritty, post-Training Day dirty-cop thriller,…
Those who seek a polar opposite to Michael Caine’s kind-but-firm patriarch Dr. Wilbur Larch in The Cider House Rules will find it in Jim Broadbent’s horrid, one-eyed headmaster, Wackford Squeers, in the new adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby. Author John Irving cribbed extensively from Charles Dickens to create his delightful (and…
According to various unreliable sources on the Internet, Just Married co-stars Ashton Kutcher (forever to be known as the star of Dude, Where’s My Car?) and Brittany Murphy (who wears way too much scary makeup even when she isn’t playing mental patients who’ll never tell) are now actually planning to…
