Culture Notes: Updike, Tinting, Super Bowl

Updike: Just two months before John Updike died the British magazine Literary Review anointed him (you should pardon the phrase) with their first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award for bad sex writing, a knock against Updike’s approach to a favorite topic. Putting aside for a moment the thought that the British should be lecturing anybody on the subject [...]

Uninvited Taken in Town (Weekly Links)

Links to the reviews I wrote for the Herald this week:
Waltz with Bashir. “There’s no Oscar category yet for animated documentary….”
Taken. “Liam Neeson is built for handing out whuppings.”
The Uninvited. “This one is actually restrained.”
New in Town. “This film about corporate insensitivity and bedrock American values was filmed in Winnipeg.”
Were the World Mine. “The idea [...]

Movie Diary 1/29/2009

The Andersonville Trial (George C. Scott, 1970). Done in the style of live TV, from Saul Levitt’s play (which Scott had starred in on Broadway ten years earlier). William Shatner and Jack Cassidy play the oppposing lawyers in the trial of Captain Henry Wirz (Richard Basehart), who commanded the dismal POW camp at Andersonville, Georgia. The idea [...]

Movie Diary 1/28/2009

Coraline (Henry Selick, 2009). The Nightmare Before Christmas director is on his own: no Tim Burton in the title, and no Danny Elfman on the soundtrack – composer Bruno Coulais does some interesting stuff. (full review 2/6)
The Uninvited (Charles and Thomas Guard, 2009). A remake of the Korean Tale of Two Sisters, which was a pretty nice [...]

Movie Diary 1/26/2009

Bitter Victory (Nicholas Ray, 1957). Spare antiwar movie, with Richard Burton and Curt Jurgens as the British officers sent on a mission in North Africa, with issues of cowardice and jealousy much to the fore. The widescreen black-and-white photography is especially eerie in the desert night scenes, with Ray adding the kinds of touches (the [...]

1991 Ten Best Movies

Some movies deserve to own their moment, to be shared by audiences and define a certain time and place, not in the way a blockbuster does but as a challenging New Thing. Like Blowup, say, or La Dolce Vita. Why didn’t Les Amants du Pont Neuf find its place? Leos Carax’s film is exhilarating, but perhaps it lacked [...]

Movie Diary 1/24/2009

Contraband (Michael Powell, 1940). Conrad Veidt as a Danish sea captain led into intrigue by Valerie Hobson (who played the actual title character in Bride of Frankenstein) during the London blackout. This movie’s wit and momentum should be the envy of just about any other spy story of the era — Powell, who had made The Spy in [...]

Wendy and Lucy (Weekly Links)

That’s right, didn’t see the multiplex movies this week. But I reviewed one film for the Herald, and it’s enough:
Wendy and Lucy. “Reichardt’s style doesn’t tell you what to feel, but you will feel plenty.”
Also, the Oscar reaction show on KUOW-FM: here.
And more radio: I talk with KUOW’s Jeannie Yandel about politics, film and the [...]

Oscar Hangover

Wow, this is pretty lame even for Oscar voters. The embargo against animated films being nominated best Best Picture continues (sorry, Wall-E), and the voters are above the low-class origins of The Dark Knight but not above the archaic corn of Slumdog Millionaire. There can be only so many slots for indie offerings, so Wendy and Lucy and Sally Hawkins [...]

Movie Diary 1/21/2009

Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008). One from the Luc Besson meat-grinder. For some reason I am susceptible to Besson’s high-concept approach, although it usually works better in French (Banlieue 13) than English (Transporter 3). Premise here has the daughter of Liam Neeson and Famke Janssen being kidnapped – a plausibility problem, because genetically speaking, any offspring of Liam Neeson [...]