Contagion is named for the film’s most developed character. That might seem unfair to the human actors, who play their parts—Marion Cotillard an epidemiologist, Matt Damon a paragon of endurance, Laurence Fishburne a CDC boss, Jude Law a blogger-alarmist, Gwyneth Paltrow a first casualty and Kate Winslet a damage controller—but that’s the nature of the […]
Contagion is named for the film’s most developed character. That might seem unfair to the human actors, who play their parts—Marion Cotillard an epidemiologist, Matt Damon a paragon of endurance, Laurence Fishburne a CDC boss, Jude Law a blogger-alarmist, Gwyneth Paltrow a first casualty and Kate Winslet a damage controller—but that’s the nature of the […]
To be a sculptor or a painter these days means living and dying by the photographs on your website. Martha Saunders, who has painted with beeswax for the last decade, often jokes about switching to a medium that's easier to photograph than encaustic, but she is quick to credit photographer Scott Smith with bringing her work to life online.
When I found out what The Debt was really about, I greeted it with a sense of relief. Here’s what this movie is not: some hectoring documentary about Congress figuring out its financial super committee. After a strong showing at film festivals, and chatter that it may be a 2011 awards contender, The Debt, starring […]
“Pawn 90210” Wednesday 10pm, E! Pawn-store shows are big right now, between “Hardcore Pawn” and “Pawn Stars.” E! never met a trend it didn’t want to cash in on, so this special follows three formerly rich Californians looking to liquidate their assets at the “Taj Mahal of pawn stores.” One is a divorcee and widower […]
"I just started a series of paintings. They’re shape paintings based on the negative space shapes of Sol LeWitt’s sculptures—they’re just shapes. Conceptually, I think I started cutting them out and putting them in my notebook maybe about a year ago. I’m basically just living with it to see if I want to move forward. I think it’s in keeping with what I’ve been doing, basically trying to find an avenue into painting through sculpture."
Martin Scorsese once said that the Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré’s music constituted “the DNA of blues.” That puts Vieux Farka Touré next in line, not only as Ali’s son, but as the heir to a musical tradition that reintroduced the American blues to its West African origins. Vieux Farka Touré’s latest album, The Secret, […]
Its ending reportedly tampered with since Sundance, the indie-scented dysfunctional-family comedy Our Idiot Brother winds up flattering its complacent middle-class audience, but not for any real reason—there’s no medicine going down with this sugar. To try and imagine what the Weinstein Company might have worried about is to find oneself quoting the movie’s own doofus parolee hero: “You know what? You know what? Wow.”
“Star Trek: The Next Generation” Friday 8am-8pm, Saturday 1-6am, SyFy It’s Labor Day weekend, which means two things: Summer is officially over, and there’s nothing on TV until the new season starts next week. So why not spend the holiday simultaneously going to the past and the future with this “Next Generation” marathon. “Next” originally […]
By modern movie standards, the polite action comedy of bumbling criminals seems awfully quaint. Might some refreshment be had from the rude slacker comedy of utterly imbecilic criminals? Aziz Anasari (left) and Jesse Eisenberg star in the chuckle-worthy bank heist flick 30 Minutes or Less. Not from this one. Given the actual 2003 incident in […]
When Stephen Steinbrink thinks of Charlottesville, he thinks of a trip to a swimming hole in torrential downpour, and how “drunk” locals are on the good shows that come to town. After a string of tour dates was canceled in 2009, the Arizona songwriter lingered here for a few days and played in some of […]