Great Movies
TV/Streaming
Netflix’s The Chair Sets Up a Potentially Great Show
A review of the new Netflix series starring Sandra Oh, Jay Duplass, Bob Balaban, and Holland Taylor.
A review of the new Netflix series starring Sandra Oh, Jay Duplass, Bob Balaban, and Holland Taylor.
A tribute to the late, great Richard Donner.
A report from AFI Fest on "Concussion" starring Will Smith.
An overview of the films that will be theatrically released in the 2015 fall season.
A review of the new season of "True Detective," starring Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch.
Marie writes: Holy crap! THE KRAKEN IS REAL!" Humankind has been looking for the giant squid (Architeuthis) since we first started taking pictures underwater. But the elusive deep-sea predator could never be caught on film. Oceanographer and inventor Edith Widder shares the key insight - and the teamwork - that helped to capture the squid on camera for the first time, in the following clip taken from her recent TED talk." And to read more about the story, visit Researchers have captured the first-ever video footage of a live giant squid at i09.com
Marie writes: As TIFF 2012 enters its last week and the Grand Poobah nurses his shoulder in Chicago (having returned home early for that reason) the Newsletter presents the final installment of Festival trailers. There was a lot to chose from, so many in fact there was no room for theatrical releases; they'll return next week. Meanwhile, enjoy!
Marie writes: It was my birthday June 25th. Unlike Roger however, I'm a Crab not a Gemini. So to celebrate and with my brother's help (he has a car), I took my inner sea crustacean to Barnet Marine Park on the other side of Burnaby Mountain... and where our adventure begins....
Spoilers abound.
I watched Robert Zemeckis's "Contact" again a couple of weeks ago, so I could add it to the Great Movies Collection. In 1997 I had some questions, but this time it was even more clear that the movie ends in enigma and paradox. Like many movies, that has little bearing on its effect.
Questions introduced from near the beginning seem to find answers at the end, and most viewers are satisfied--even exhilarated. For me, too, there was uplift. No matter that the scientific establishment scoffs; Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) knows what she saw, and we saw the same things.
Absolute silence while the Warner logo, the name of the production company and the title of the movie are displayed on the screen. Suddenly, we see ourselves orbiting the Earth while a cacophony of radio and television transmissions confuses us by their sheer volume and sound pollution they cause. Then, slowly, we begin a journey throughout the universe that will last for the next few minutes, taking us far from our old and familiar planet while we experience a kind of time traveling as sounds of our atmosphere become older and older - until, eventually, we are involved by an oppressive silence and we realize that we traveled further than our oldest sound emission. And when we begin to realize the dimension of our surroundings - that goes much beyond our capacity for abstraction -, we are back to the starting point, returning to Earth through the portal represented by the blue and young eyes of Ellie Arroway, our leading character.
So, did you like what you got for Christmas..?
I am a dreamer, a traveler, a student, a teacher, a friend, a stranger, an Asian, a Canadian, a daughter, a woman, a photographer, a model, an immigrant, a citizen, a writer...but these are all just labels, and they wouldn't begin to tell you why I have an infinite love for hole-in-the-wall bars and coffee shops and black & white everything, or why live music of any kind just captivates me, or how Chinese novels move me in a way so deep that I wish every person in the world could understand the language, or why I can never ever hold back a smile watching the sun rise on a different continent.
Traveling is a huge part of my life, as is writing. With a pen and a backpack, I've had some of the most memorable moments of my life at some of the most random corners around the world.
If traveling is how one experiences reality, then writing is how I weave my dreams. It has always been the most natural, intimate, and truest expression of myself. And we all just want to tell our own stories in this lifetime, don't we?
It's like breathing, and as clichéd as that sounds, how can you explain why you need to breathe?
PARK CITY, Utah -- A jilted transsexual, a city priest, a rock musician, a man with no memory, a Jewish anti-Semite and a headless chicken. Six movies ranging from good to great. After two more days at the Sundance Film Festival, I review my notes.
I'm analyzing Jack Nicholson's career for him. He's frowning behind a cloud of cigarette smoke and trying to look interested. We're sitting in a room at the Excelsior Hotel at the Venice Film Festival, the day after the premiere of "The Crossing Guard," his new movie which was directed by his pal Sean Penn. Nicholson plays a man who wants to kill the drunk driver who ran over his little girl. The irony is, he's a drunk, too. It's a very serious picture.
Here is perhaps the finest young actor in American movies, and he says he's decided to say the hell with it, and walk away from acting, and direct films for a living. Did the gossip machine destroy Sean Penn, or is this just a phase he's going through?
