Sunday, August 1, 2010
2010-07-26 21:48:34
Deception in Inception: the Ultimate Movie Magic
In his “Personal Journey through American Movies,” Martin Scorsese described movie directors as smugglers. They are illusionists, experts at creating and sustaining a mood. Perhaps this is the enduring truth of movie magic, the ability to play a trick on the audience, before they discover how it was done...More
2010-05-13 12:58:36
IRON MAN 2: Out Of The Frying Pan Into The Scarlett
by JOHN MARKS She's not just the best thing in the movie. She's the only thing in the movie. There, I've said it, and I don't care who rolls their eyes. My wife already has. I do have an argument that goes well beyond the spandex. For about five minutes, Scarlett Johansson transforms Iron Man 2 from a piano bar jazz riff on a superhero idea into the first viable superheroine drama...More
2010-05-06 22:04:20
NEWSWEEK FOR SALE: "All The President's Men" Helps Me Say Good-bye To All That
by JOHN MARKS When the sale of Newsweek by the Washington Post made headlines this week, I happened to be in New York, visiting old friends and former colleagues in the journalism profession. The news hit me hard. I never worked for Newsweek, but I spent seven years at the "also-ran newsweekly", as the New York Times put it, U...More
2010-05-02 09:14:22
DEAN MARTIN'S DEEPWATER HORIZON: Or How We Like Our Life In The Land Of Menefreghismo
by JOHN MARKS Lately, what with oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, shady trading on Wall Street and collapsing mines in West Virginia, I've been thinking a lot about Dean Martin. Dean had it down. He was the ultimate American success, triumphing across the platform peaks of the entertainment industry of the 1950's and 60's: music, television, movies, Vegas...More
2010-04-19 05:47:12
CLASH OF THE TITANS: Our Paranormal Cinema (Part 2)
by JOHN MARKS At my local music store, a home-made sign hangs on the wall. "Which make better movie monsters? Puppets or computers?" Duh! I put a red felt tip check beneath puppets. So did most everyone else. That may sound like a perverse conviction, given that the biggest hits of the year thus far have been computer-lab extravaganzas fitted or retrofitted for 3D, but people in my town have a contrarian streak and tend to find solace in handmade things...More
2010-04-10 06:44:49
THE GHOST WRITER: Our Paranormal Cinema (Part 1)
by JOHN MARKS Ferry boats appear on the screen, and the movies begin. It's primal, like the dawn of creation. One boat sails by day, the other by night. The former looks huge and white, like Moby Dick. The latter, backdropped against darkness, is bathed in light...More
2010-04-01 02:52:12
HOLY WEEK IN INDONESIA: Practicing Shalom/Salaam
I am working on a documentary on peacemaking via music. We’ve heard of calls to arms, marching songs that accompany troops into battle. But can songs arising from Christian and Muslim contexts also forge a more peaceful future? Could songs written for sacred settings carve out a third way, to bring harmony where there has been enmity? Last year, I went to Beirut for an academic conference of ethnomusicologists...More
2010-03-31 18:43:53
by JOHN MARKS We talk constantly about terrorism in this country, but we give relatively little time to the concept of terror itself. What lies at the heart of that experience? What is the most terrifying thought for most people most of the time? Is it really the possibility that we might end up on the wrong plane or subway car with a suicidal Islamist one day? Or is the face of real terror, the kind that gets you up in the middle of the night, a bland and quiet thing, like the fear of suddenly finding yourself a mentally troubled, middle-aged man in the city of Los Angeles without a drivers license or a job? As I watched Ben Stiller's haunted face in Noah Baumbach's Greenberg, I saw a form of terror that our movies almost never touch: that of finding yourself an abject failure in an America where worldly success is the measure of everything...More
2010-03-24 00:35:04
"Muslims kill 500 Christians in Nigeria" made headlines recently. Would it have garnered as much attention if the story was, "Christians killing Muslims in Nigeria?" Those were the reports in the same region in 2008. For over a decade, a battle has raged across northern Nigeria between Christian Tarok farmers and Muslim Hausa cattle herders...More
2010-03-23 19:44:05
WINDRIDER: A Special Encore Showing of "Driftwood"
The Surprising Power of a Wish
by John Priddy
We are proud to have an encore showing of one of our Windy Wednesday Windrider WinterFest series films that received a great deal of positive feedback: "Driftwood", by Michelle Steffes...More2010-03-17 10:18:10
THE WHITE RIBBON: Anatomy Of A World Suicide
by JOHN MARKS In a Michael Haneke film, when two kids have knives and one has a whistle, it's probably best to avert your eyes. Something bad is about to happen to the kid with the whistle. And so it is in Haneke's masterful The White Ribbon, though what happens to the kid with the whistle is nothing compared to what happens to everyone else in town...More
2010-03-13 11:32:07
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Tim Burton Feeds Us Candy Mushrooms Of Love, And We Start To See Bandersnatches
JOHN MARKS We live in an age of design revolution, but it's easy to take for granted, because most of us don't spend a lot of time contemplating our teapots. If you rustle up a Target catalogue from 1990, though, you'll see the difference. Our teapots and much else have been transformed...More
2010-03-09 20:47:51
WINDRIDER - Now Playing: "Rocket Man"
Now Playing: "Rocket Man" “No longer a boy and yet still full of joy”…so states a narrator near the conclusion of Laurence Cohen’s ingenious, sci-fi-tinged short, The Rocket Man, whose title derives from lead character Benji’s favorite childhood book...More
2010-03-04 01:09:37
OSCARS 2010: Old School Storytelling
Plenty of Oscar prognosticators turn the nominations into a horserace. They assign odds to the various nominees based upon timing and the mood of the Academy voters. Will an Oscar win cap a career or launch a new star? Is it payback for a previous snub or an outstanding anomaly within an otherwise obscure body of work? I asked my sharp students at Pepperdine University to get behind the Oscars, to investigate how the ten nominees for Best Picture got a greenlight...More
2010-03-03 11:26:45
WINDRIDER - Now Playing: "Hearts of Darkness"
Humor Sheds Light into the Darkest Heart
by John Priddy
We are proud to present the next Windy Wednesday short film in our Windrider WinterFest film series: Hearts of Darkness, from Zac Streich. Zac Streich’s hilarious animated short Hearts of Darkness, an Angelus finalist, presents a pastiche-like send-up of epic movie references from Apocalypse Now to The Titanic, with a side of Steamboat Willie thrown in for good measure...More2010-02-26 12:36:25
CITY OF THE ANGELS FILM FEST: Hidden Gems
People are always asking me for film recommendations. Unfortunately, my favorite movies are often tough to find. I see so many amazing films at festivals that rarely (if ever) get the attention they deserve. They may win the Audience Award at South by Southwest (like THAT EVENING SUN) or screen at Sundance before slipping into obscurity (like LOURDES)...More
2010-02-24 01:58:19
WINDRIDER - Now Playing: "Weathered"
Now Playing: "Weathered"
by John Priddy
Co-written and co-directed by Matt Barber and Matthew Webb, graduates of San Jose State University film school and Fuller Theological Seminary’s Theology & Film program, respectively, WEATHERED, an Angelus Live Action semi-finalist, offers a perceptive, moving portrait of a woman immobilized by grief over losing her fiancé...More2010-02-21 09:55:04
SHUTTER ISLAND: Scorsese's Late Masterpiece Is A Puzzle Film About 20th Century Horror
by JOHN MARKS Film brats who make movies often fall into the trap of making movies that merely rehash other movies. Film brats who become critics often make the mistake of seeing only other movies in the movies they review. That may explain why so many smart reviewers missed the glory of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, a late period masterpiece from a director who loves movies more than life...More
2010-02-14 06:31:48
CRAZY HEART: The Best Valentine Day Movie Is A Country Western Heartbreaker
by JOHN MARKS Some movies are visual songs. You can almost hum them. But which song? While watching Jeff Bridges in his Oscar-nominated role as the broken but unbowed musician Bad Blake in Crazy Heart, a thousand tunes went through my mind...More
2010-02-10 01:10:45
WINDRIDER: Now Playing - "The Little Gorilla"
Tapping Into Your Inner Kong
by John Priddy
We are proud to present the next Windy Wednesday film in our Windrider WinterFest series: “The Little Gorilla,” from writer/director Harry Kellerman. This highly acclaimed 12 minute family friendly film has won numerous awards, and audiences everywhere just love it...More
Advertise with us:
917-428-0671
For editorial or event questions:
Site designed by 495 Communications
www.495communications.com
Site developed by Supergiant Web Development
www.supergiantweb.com