“Death wasn’t being responded to as a public health problem,” David France says. “It was dealt with with sniggers. It was left to religious leaders to explain or respond to the epidemic. And they responded by calling it the wrath of God.” He adds: “That’s the hostility we all saw…
“I hate realism,” director Genndy Tartakovsky said last week over the phone. “In America, especially, we’re very narrow-minded as far as animation goes. There is only one kind of movie, and that’s that big, family-oriented, four-quadrant, please-everyone kind of film. But if I wanted realism, I’d watch a live-action movie…
For Now Showing, the fall arts guide inserted in the September 27 issue of Westword, we asked dozens of luminaries on the local arts scene — including winners of the Westword MasterMind awards — to answer three questions: – Aside from your organization (or yourself), who is doing the most…
Clyfford Still. For the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, director Dean Sobel has installed a career survey of the great artist that starts with the artist’s realist self-portrait and features his remarkable post-impressionist works from the 1920s. Next are Still’s works from the ’30s, with some odd takes on…
Pee-wee’s Playhouse, a Saturday-morning staple for Gen X-ers who were, at the time, way older than the time slot’s intended audience, represented the pure, uncut mainstreaming of the late-1980s art scene in New York’s East Village. The first season was even shot on the upper floor of a former neighborhood…
There’s something startlingly noncommittal about many of the initial reviews of The Master that leaked out following the impromptu screenings that writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson organized in 70mm-equipped houses across the country, and later in response to the film’s official bow at the Venice Film Festival. This is perhaps the…
The new, semi-gritty indie About Cherry is all about a semi-reluctant slide into the porn industry, and it’s also the first mainstream feature co-written by a busy porn actress, Lorelei Lee, otherwise famous for double penetrations and clothespin bondage. This shouldn’t strike us as very strange. Every screenwriter needs a…
A critic’s report from a film festival like Toronto, where something like 300 features were unveiled from September 6 through 16, can be something like a Rorschach test — or, at least, it can be something like the Rorschach test depicted in Paul Thomas Anderson’s TIFF entry, The Master, in…
The 35th Starz Denver Film Festival returns to the Mile High City from November 1 through 11, and is looking for volunteers to help both before and during the annual cinematic extravaganza…
Wayne White might be your favorite visual artist of the last few decades that you didn’t know existed. But that was sort of the point behind Beauty Is Embarrassing, director Neil Berkeley’s the documentary about White’s life and career thus far, which will screen at the Denver FilmCenter this Friday,…
Denver-based ski porn purveyors Level 1 Productions won big at the IF3 International Freeski Film Festival over the weekend in Montreal, with director Josh Berman and his team taking the top prize — Best North American Film — for their 2012 film Sunny, as well as Best Editing and Best…
Clyfford Still. For the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, director Dean Sobel has installed a career survey of the great artist that starts with the artist’s realist self-portrait and features his remarkable post-impressionist works from the 1920s. Next are Still’s works from the ’30s, with some odd takes on…
Slick and grown-up as Richard Gere himself, this intricate fiscal thriller gets a dead bead on extreme privilege, with Gere’s Madoff-like billionaire fund-runner scrambling to keep his personal empire from crumbling like crackers. He has everything — including a loving family, a hot French girlfriend (Laetitia Casta) and that warm…
It’s pretty Pollyannaish to complain when companies that are in the business of making money on movies make certain movies solely to make money. And yet it seems to be widely acceptable to be cynical about big-budget movies that are made, marketed and released in order to sate an appetite…
The blitzkrieg of award season is right around the corner, and with it, we can expect an onslaught of stunt performances designed to wow Academy voters and feature editors (and also viewers?) with their evident degrees of difficulty and demonstrable totality of transformation. With Daniel Day-Lewis having strapped on the…
The big movie event of September will be the anticipated latest from a certain filmmaker who signs his films with the surname Anderson and a pair of initials, a prodigious talent who burst onto the scene with a stylish entry in the mid-’90s crime-thriller wave and never left. The master…
Editor’s note: Village Voice media film critic Karina Longworth is blogging regularly from the Toronto Film Festival.This is her fourth in the series. As the summer of self-plagiarism comes to a close, add Terrence Malick to the list of those accused of this debatable crime: The auteur’s quick follow-up to…
File under you know you’re in Boulder when….Promoters of the Reel Rock Tour announced last night that tickets for the kickoff of their package tour of the year’s best climbing films on Thursday at Chautauqua Auditorium have already sold out, and that there are only about 100 tickets left out…
Editor’s note: Village Voice media film critic Karina Longworth is blogging regularly from the Toronto Film Festival.This is her third in the series. For maybe the first hour of Yellow (written and directed by Nick Cassavetes, the man responsible for the national treasure that is The Notebook), I kept thinking…
Editor’s note: Village Voice media film critic Karina Longworth is currently at the Toronto Film Festival, from where she’ll be writing regular blog posts. This is her second in the series. The best, most daring and form-defying documentaries in the world right now are being funded by the Danish Film…
The vicious international terrorists of COBRA could never stop GI Joe, but he’s finally met his match, at least temporarily. This year’s GI Joe Fest — an annual film festival of stop-motion animation starring everyone’s favorite military action figure — that was scheduled for Saturday, September 22 has been canceled…
Editor’s note: Village Voice media film critic Karina Longworth is currently at the Toronto Film Festival, from where she’ll be writing regular blog posts. This is her first in the series. This is a blog post about two movies that were screened for the press within the first 24 hours…
