In 1944, in an attempt to bolster a British morale deflated by hardship both home and abroad, Sir Lawrence Olivier co-adapted, directed and starred in Shakespeare’s Henry V, a bit of altruism (narcissism?) that not only went over big with critics and the general public, but also garnered him a special Academy Award. Mission accomplished!
You ever found yourself surveying the accumulation of detritus that is your abode, thinking: Christ, what a shit-show? And pledging to yourself that, come the weekend, all that bric-a-brac, all those bits and bobs, all that knick-knackery, will be donated to the Salvation Army so…help…you…God!
There are precious few times that one enters the darkness of a cinema only to emerge a few hours later transformed into a better human, one who has glimpsed the human condition as never before and, as such, achieved a certain enlightenment or—dare I say?—grace.
45th President of the United States of America, Mr. Donald J. Trump Continue reading
There’s little doubt a mention in B-Movie Cult Classics Unearthed Watching Late-Night HBO in College™, the CFS’s ongoing examination of eminently watchable if sometimes mediocre (or flat-out bad) cinematic curiosities, is coveted by filmmakers beyond all else, Oscar/Palme d’Or be damned.
As revealed by my admission that the first laserdisc (RIP) I ever purchased was the documentary Visions of Light, anyone who reads this blog knows that I’m a nerd for the art of cinematography.
This’ll be short and sweet, neither of which come easy to me.
I stumbled across Margin Call on HBO one evening a couple years after it was released (2011) to critical acclaim but, sadly, middling box office.
Been a while. Bike accidents, vacations, life, etc.
Anyway, went to see Apocalypse Now (1979) the other day at Chicago’s Navy Pier IMAX, which, unlike the local multiplex version of the format (snarkily referred to as “LieMax”), happens to be the real deal (60’H x 86’W
Be it his turn as flamboyant TV host Caesar Flickerman in The Hunger Games I-IV, empathetic refuge scientist Abraham Erskine in Captain America: The First Avenger or long-suffering magazine art director Nigel Kipling in The Devil Wears Prada, Stanley Tucci has proven time and again to be one of our finest character actors.
Let’s end this, shall we?