Bloomberg’s Felix Gillette has seen Alan Taylor and David Chase‘s The Many Saints of Newark (Warner Bros./HBO Max, 10.1) and posted…well, not a “review” but a mildly upbeat assessment. The headline says “HBO Finally Nails a Spinoff With Chase Prequel.” And it more or less explains that Michael Gandolfini, who plays the teenaged Tony Soprano, … Read more
Blade Runner 2049 will probably land a berth at the Toronto Film Festival (right?), but the fact that it wasn’t announced among the first batch…what does that tell you? To me it suggests indecisiveness or an internal debate on the part of Warner Bros. marketing, but maybe not. The fanboys are gradually starting to realize … Read more
Credible-sounding, first-person, journalist-vetted stories about various instances of sexually aggressive moves by Donald Trump have been pouring out since yesterday, and I think we all understand that Trump’s “it’s all fabrication, all bullshit” defense is itself bullshit. Multiple torpedo gashes, water pouring in, the ship sinking, man the lifeboats, etc. The Presidential campaign of the … Read more
I do the same kind of easy-default Sundance Film Festival spitballing every December. I checkmark the titles, directors and actors I know or trust on some level and work outward from there. Per longstanding tradition, I’ll be able to see around 20 to 25 films during my nine days in Park City, depending on stamina … Read more
In a 6.12 interview with Toronto Star critic Peter Howell, Clint Eastwood admits to being “amused that one of his more recent movies, Gran Torino, has spawned a catch praise that’s almost as popular as Dirty Harry’s ‘Go ahead, make my day!’ line from Sudden Impact. The line is ‘Get off my lawn!,’ barked by … Read more
Six and a half years ago I ran an extended version of an Empire piece called “The Top 100 MVP’s — Most Valuable Players.” It was based on a telephone and e-mail poll I conducted in the summer of ’03, and then updated the following November. The central question went as follows: “Which Hollywood folk … Read more
You’d think with all the fanboys out there and all the Avatar hype that the free tickets to Friday evening’s “Avatar Day” preview would be totally gone coast-to-coast after this afternoon’s online giveaway. Actually not so far (i.e., as of 10 pm eastern). I thought this would be like the sale of Bruce Springsteen concert … Read more
I know Wes Anderson‘s Fantastic Mr. Fox (20th Century Fox, 11.13.) has been testing in the New York area because I was invited to a New Jersey showing several weeks ago. I tried to RSVP on the up-and-up with my own name, but they said no-go because I wasn’t from the right age group. In … Read more
Show of Shows Please, Oscar God…give us surprises. Any surprises. Anything. Even if it means Crash winning the Best Picture Oscar, which I’d rather not see happen for a few reasons. At 4:45 pm Joel Siegel, sharing the black mike with his ABC co-commentators Leonard Maltin and Anne Thompson, said this is precisely what might … Read more
Del Mar Nation Brokeback Mountain is starting to spread out (it went into 69 theatres on Friday), and that means that sooner or later those gay cowboy jokes on “Late Night with David Letterman” and in Aaron McGruder’s “Boondocks” comic strip will be coming to an end. The more people see Brokeback, the greater the … Read more
Midlife Surge Maybe I’m slow, but my awareness levels suddenly shot up the other day about Gong Li, Gong Li, Gong Li…some eighteen years after her film debut, and just over three months shy of her 40th birthday. This was after hearing she gives the big burn-through performance in Memoirs of a Geisha (Columbia, 12.5). … Read more
Norman Lloyd, 90, is in only three scenes in In Her Shoes and is on-screen maybe seven or eight minutes, but his performance is one of the most poignant notes in a film that’s got more than a few of them. It’s not one of those burn-through-the-screen performances (along the lines of, say, Beatrice Straight’s … Read more