I had a short but fun telephone interview yesterday with Richard Curtis, who wrote the screenplays for Four Weddings and a Funeral and Bridget Jones’ Diary, two films I enjoyed tremendously, and who has written and directed a new film that will open in October called Pirate Boat. Formerly titled The Boat That Rocked–I guess …
You never can tell what a summer will be remembered for. The summer of 1975 got Jaws, the summer of 1916 got the Somme. One summer gets a hummable ditty from Mungo Jerry that will be played on the radio until the end of time, and another summer gets Hurricane Katrina. With about four weeks …
Two Sundays ago I went over to the Jacob Burns Center and interviewed Armando Iannucci, the director and co-writer of In the Loop for the Daily Beast. In the Loop is one of the best political satires I have seen in years, one that uses comic insights into human foibles–vanity, ambition, anxiety, lust, and so …
INTERVIEW WITH ARMANDO IANNUCCI OF `IN THE LOOP’ Read More »
Saw a screening of An Education on Monday, and found it exceptional. Carey Mulligan did a great job showing the girl who was more than a girl but not quite yet a woman, and the rest of the cast–Alfred Molina, Emma Thompson, Olivia Williams, Peter Skarsgaard, Dominic Cooper, and most especially Rosamund Pike–were terrific. A …
It was one of those good days, a mood changer. Went down to Chelsea to sign some papers for Joe Cilibrasi, and then decided to grab some lunch in a barbecue joint, and right at the next table was my friend Sharon Jautz, the former head of HR at Playboy, now blonde and tan and …
Ginny and I saw Z at the Burns yesterday. Such a brilliant movie–fabulous acting, tremendous direction by Costas Gavras. The quiet, firm intensity of Jean Louis Trintignant as the honest judge is piercing (the way he demands “Nomme, pronomme, occupation” from the exalted commanders of the gendarmarie is to behold justice made flesh), and the …
Last week Ginny and I went to the Jacob Burns Center to see The Graduate, and also to hear Mark Harris discuss his book Pictures at a Revolution. The book focuses on the five films that were nominated for Best Picture in the watershed year of 1968–The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of …
A highly eclectic, hardly systematic accounting of what I liked best in 2008: 1.) THE ELECTION. What a tremendous drama. The characters were strong and well-drawn–too-good-to-be-true Barack Obama, the redoubtable Hillary Clinton, the indomitable and gracious John McCain, and the brilliantly imagined Sarah Palin, among others–plus the well-plotted series of upsets and comebacks, culminating in …
The holiday movie season is upon up. No, I don’t mean Four Christmases and Nothing Like the Holidays and the endless broadcasts of It’s A Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. I’m talking about Valkyrie, the movie about the attempted assassination of Hitler, and The Spirit, Frank Miller’s blood-saturated comic book adaptation, and of …
Casino Royale did so much to refurbish and rehabilitate James Bond, but A Quantum of Solace does not advance the effort nearly as much. Daniel Craig‘s portrayal of Bond was a major element in the restoration, but it was really the character of Vesper Lynd, played by the wonderful Eva Green) that made the greatest …