You can hear the people sing — really hear them — in the long-gestating screen version of that Broadway juggernaut Les Misérables. Countering the standard practice of having the actors in a film musical lip-synch their songs to prerecorded tracks (a.k.a. “playback”), director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) insisted that…
If you have a taste for extreme adventure and think you and a friend/family member/spouse/significant other/ex (really) could survive the wild, Bear Grylls is looking for you. The adventure expert and television personality known best for the Man vs. Wild series is kicking off a new reality series on NBC…
Hmm… television guilty pleasures, eh? The trick is that I’m more adept at talking guilty pleasures with music than with TV. I’ve got a whole host of critic-hated albums at home, but with TV, I’m generally pretty solid. So I had to think a while. Then I sheepishly remembered Ancient…
Many adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby have seen the silver screen, and this summer director Baz Luhrmann will release his own starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, Elizabeth Debicki, and Amitabh Bachchan. The movie follows the literary story of writer…
In his 2005 novel One Shot, writer Lee Child lays out nine rules for surviving a five-against-one alley fight, a challenge his hero, the ex-Army cop Jack Reacher, is about to face. These include “Be on your feet and ready.” “Identify the ringleader.” “Don’t break the furniture.” Rule number nine…
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, one must have a heart of stone to watch Jacques Audiard’s outrageous melodrama Rust and Bone without laughing. Loosely adapted from two works in Craig Davidson’s 2005 short story collection of the same name, Rust and Bone finds Audiard returning to the overdetermined characters and swift…
Sadly, country songwriters stand as nearly the only entertainers in our popular culture who craft memorable art on the subject of marriage, the state in which just less than half of Americans spend the majority of their lives. A few years back, Brad Paisley, one of Nashville’s best, wrote and…
There’s traffic from Silver Lake. That’s why Kristen Stewart and Garrett Hedlund, the stars of On the Road, are late to the Benedict Room of the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. We’re as psychically far from Jack Kerouac’s Beat gospel as you can get: fidgeting under crystal chandeliers in…
Once comic actors reach a particular career stage, they often choose one of two paths: A) They stop being funny and start being all Hallmark heartwarming, i.e., by growing a beard and playing a psychiatrist. B) They accept unambitious, work-for-hire roles in mass-market family comedies about some combination of dogs,…
This January, Ovation Television Network is looking to award a community project in the U.S. a “viewer’s choice” Innovation Grant by popular vote. The InnOVATION Grant Program was born from its short docu-series “Motor City Rising,” which features a group of artists working to revitalize parts of Detroit. Producers realized…
There is no cool way to spin the fact that I am obsessed with a teen soap opera. It’s one that airs on the CW, no less. The network is home to Rachel Bilson-starring Hart of Dixie, which finds yankee doctor Zoe Hart relocating to a small, southern town, and…
Welcome back to Middle-Earth. It has been nearly a decade since writer-director Peter Jackson last set foot on J.R.R. Tolkien’s hallowed ground, signing off on a spectacular trilogy of films adapted from the British author’s Lord of the Rings novels. There were box office billions and well-earned Oscars aplenty and…
It’s dispiriting that a film about the romantic life of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who cultivated a small coterie of mistresses, should exhibit so little interest in what so engaged its hero: the women’s individual hearts and minds. Instead, Hyde Park on Hudson quickly introduces us (and FDR) to the president’s…
The way films come and go, in and out of theaters, usually it’s easier to miss a movie than catch it. That makes planning ahead a must when it comes to moviegoing in the Valley. That’s also why we’ve handpicked five must-see flicks screening this month to add to the…
David Chase looks like he wants to whack somebody. Not just anybody, mind you, but the middle-age guy with the bad dye job a few tables away from us in the Library Bar of the Regency Hotel. “Hiya!” bellows the dye job into his phone. “I’m sittin’ here watchin’ the…
Fans of ABC’s Bachelor and Bachelorette shows have surely marked their calendars for the big event taking place this Sunday. For those of you who may not be obsessed with all things Bachelor, the evening will mark the second time a couple of contestants will actually walk down the aisle…
Anthropologist and self-admitted yard sale enthusiast Spencer MacCallum serendipitously helped change the life of a Mexican potter, his town, and the entire tradition of an art form after wandering into a run-down second hand store in Deming, New Mexico nearly 30 years ago. It was in Bob’s Swap Shop where…
Early in Waiting for Lightning, skateboarder Greg Hunt utters a surprising truth as he marvels at the giant ramp Danny Way has put together in order to jump the Great Wall of China: “They would never let anyone build something like that here.” It’s a throwaway remark that’s also an…
A wan comedy about gambling that takes no risks, Stephen Frears’ Lay the Favorite has none of the stinging sordidness of The Grifters, his 1990 movie about chiselers and con artists. That tight, nimble adaptation of Jim Thompson’s high-pulp, strained-through, Greek-tragedy 1963 novel endures as the only other good film…
Everybody’s favorite holiday debacle comedy “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” will be showing during Civic Space Park’s PJ’ s in the Park event Friday, December 7. The Griswolds (who recently reunited for an Old Navy ad) will be shown in all their chaotic glory right after a screening of the Christmas…
An adaptation of George V. Higgins’ 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade, Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly anatomizes a self-policing underground economy of junkies, killers, and administrators to indict a present-day mainstream world — the world into which the film is being released by Harvey Weinstein, heralded by misleadingly generic TV ads…
Could there be a more unsympathetic character in today’s culture than a well-born white male who uses his privilege irresponsibly? A highly improvised fictional exposé in search of the elusive heart and soul of hipster nihilism, The Comedy stars alt-comic superstar Tim Heidecker as Swanson, a trust fund 35-year-old hanging…
