(Film, New York) “The decay of America is original and massive in its scale,” reflects Kurt Markus, the esteemed photographer, who, with his son, Ian, filmed the small, pungent rock ’n’ roll tour documentary, “John Mellencamp: It’s About You.” ...more...
Art News
CIA Cinematheque Starts New Silent Series
January 6, 2012
(Film, Cleveland) The Cleveland Institute of Art’s Cinematheque begins its silent series this Saturday evening at 7:15 with D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. ...more...
Short films take over SPACE
January 5, 2012
(Film/Art Museums, Portland, ME) Having screened the first of this series back in June, it’s good to see evidence that SPACE Gallery plans to show the whole “Project 35” collection. ...more...
“Life In A Day” Doesn’t Have Much To Do With Life
January 5, 2012
(Film, National) ARTINFO‘s Ben Davis takes a look at the “YouTube Movie” and explains why the YouTube Movie has very little to do with what YouTube, and life, are really about. ...more...
Variety is the spice of 11th annual Mobile Jewish Film Festival
January 4, 2012
(Film, Mobile) Wait a minute: A movie about Jewish soldiers fighting in the Civil War … on both sides? Wait a minute: A movie about an Orthodox Jewish baseball team? ...more...
Best Picture? Take a number.
January 3, 2012
(Film, National) Nominations for the 84th Academy Awards are three weeks away, and no one yet has any idea what films will make up the Best Picture field. ...more...
PBS Doc Underscores Necessity of National Film Registry
December 29, 2011
(Film, National) Thank Ted Turner, in retrospect, for colorizing such classics as The Maltese Falcon in the 1980s; without that blasphemy, we might never have had a National Film Registry. ...more...
New Directors Flesh Out Black America, All of It
December 28, 2011
(Film, National) EARLY in Dee Rees’s film “Pariah” it journeys into a Brooklyn strip club where scantily clad young black women gyrate to a sexy, foul-mouthed rap song. ...more...
Looking Forward to 2012: Julia Dyer and a Film Two Decades in the Making
December 28, 2011
(Film, Dallas/National) The story behind the making of The Playroom is epic enough to deserve its own movie. The script was written in 1990. Since then, it’s received a public reading and been turned into a 10-minute short. ...more...
Wenders’ Pina: Dance Crazy
December 28, 2011
(Film/Dance, National) In the 1980s, when Pina Bausch’s Wuppertal Tanztheater Company made its early tours of Europe and the U.S., the reaction was sensational: high praise and hot denunciations. ...more...
Why revenues are down at the movie box office
December 28, 2011
(Film, National) Box-office revenue “lagged far behind 2010,” an article by the AP’s David Germain reports. Partly that was because the year lacked an “Avatar.” Partly because a solid summer slate fell off in the fall. ...more...
Movie Tour Shines New Light on New Orleans
December 21, 2011
(Film, New Orleans) New Orleans has had dozens of movies filmed there, and New Orleans Movie Tours will show you precisely where. And feed you popcorn while they do so. ...more...
Just Close Enough for an Oscar Nod?
December 20, 2011
(Film, National) Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close will wind up sneaking just under the wire for Oscar consideration, in doing so throwing another challenging title into an unusually jammed field. ...more...
What the heck is a “cult film”, anyway?
December 19, 2011
(Film, National) A pair of film studies professors have recently published 100 Cult Films, which has served to definitively quantify the notion of a “cult film.” Nah, it does nothing of the sort, but it’s a cool list. ...more...
Armloads of B-movies at Vegas’ Sci-Fi Center
December 15, 2011
(Film, Las Vegas) Every Saturday, the Sci-Fi Center’s William Powell plays his part in keeping the holy midnight movie tradition alive. ...more...
The Golden Globe Nominations are daffy
December 15, 2011
(Film, National) You may have heard that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association sometimes makes odd decisions with regards to the Golden Globe nominations. Prepare to be shocked. ...more...
How Does the Brain Perceive Art?
December 15, 2011
(Arts, National) Poorly, apparently; or at least we can’t usually tell what’s real from what’s fake. ...more...
TCM video is a moving tribute to actors who died in 2011; plus more movie briefs
December 14, 2011
(Film, National) One of the best parts of the annual Oscars telecast is its eye-misting “In Memoriam” tribute, in which all of the previous year’s fallen stars are allowed one last round of applause. ...more...
Let’s Talk About Art: The art of watching old movies
December 14, 2011
(Film, National / Pittsburgh) What’s the oldest movie you ever saw in a theater? Adults might be shocked to hear teens say it was the first “Harry Potter” movie in 2001 ...more...
Documentary traces fate of Mussolini’s corpse
December 14, 2011
(Film, National) A new documentary about Benito Mussolini examines the near cult-like fascination that many Italians had with the fascist dictator — and how his body became a focus for the fixation. ...more...
The Writers: Yasmina Reza climbs inside ‘Carnage’
December 14, 2011
(Film, National) Yasmina Reza never planned to make a film of her international hit play “God of Carnage,” a hair-trigger drama about a playground scuffle between two boys ...more...
Best Documentary? Chilean Films About Stars And Pinochet
December 10, 2011
(Film, National) “Nostalgia for the Light,” Chilean director Patricio Guzman’s documentary that mixes celestial exploration with families searching for the remains of victims of the Pinochet regime ...more...
How do you photograph an orchestra?
December 9, 2011
(Classical Music, National) Greg Sandow begs American orchestras to think about how best to be photographed. ...more...
Creating Our Own Soundtracks As We Watch Silent Films
December 9, 2011
(Film, Los Angeles, New York) If moviegoers find the sensory experience of watching the new silent film “The Artist” dramatically different from taking in the average 3-D blockbuster ...more...
“Leonardo Live!” in theaters nationwide February 16.
December 8, 2011
(Art Museums, Film, National) The groundbreaking da Vinci exhibition at London’s National Gallery will be released on HD video to movie theaters nationwide in February. ...more...
