Happy Halloween!
Posted on October 31, 2010 at 10:54 am
From The Nightmare Before Christmas
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!
Posted on October 29, 2010 at 5:55 pm
This Halloween classic is temporarily available on Hulu. Happy Halloween!
Exclusive Clip from ‘There Be Dragons’
Posted on October 27, 2010 at 3:58 pm
“There Be Dragons” is an epic film about war, tragedy, love, and redemption, from acclaimed director Roland Joffé of “The Mission” and “The Killing Fields.” It is the story of two childhood friends who find themselves on opposite sides during the Spanish Civil War, one a priest trying to bring peace and the other a soldier driven by jealousy and anger. The son of one of the men is a journalist in the present day who tries to find out about the relationship between his father and a man who is now a possible candidate for sainthood. Joffé was drawn to the project because he was intrigued by the chance to dramatize the life of a modern-day saint, particularly considering Escrivá’s ‘liberating’ view that a path to God could be found in an ordinary life.” Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, was canonized in 2002. The film stars Charlie Cox (“Stardust”), Wes Bentley (“American Beauty”), and Derek Jacobi (“I, Claudius”).
Release is expected worldwide in Spring 2011. We are privileged to have an exclusive early peek.
Tribute: Alex Anderson, Creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle
Posted on October 26, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Alex Anderson, who came up with the beloved characters Rocky the flying squirrel, Bullwinkle Moose, and Dudley Do-Right, died this week at age 90. While Jay Ward usually gets the credit, it was his childhood friend and partner Anderson who created those characters — though he had to bring a lawsuit to be given credit for it. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly has a tribute to Rocky and Bullwinkle that gets the joy of their subversive humor just right:
It’s difficult to imagine, these days, the thrill of discovering Rocky and Bullwinkle as a kid. You felt as though you’d been let into a secret back door to TV, where the characters joked about their show’s low ratings and the very nature of the narrative itself. During one edition, Rocky thinks he hears Boris, and says, “That voice — where have I heard it before?” Bullwinkle replies, “In about 365 other episodes.” Then he added, ever the dumb one, “But I don’t know who it is, either.”
And be sure to check out the Washington Post’s list of the 15 greatest Rocky and Bullwinkle quotes.
I loved Rocky and Bullwinkle because I could watch it as a kid and then again as a teenager and enjoy it even more. There were jokes I didn’t get until I was in college. They even made a joke once about my dad, who still has a Rocky and Bullwinkle drawing on his wall. I loved it that there was a character named Nell — my niece gave me a Nell Fenwick doll that I keep in my office. And every so often I tune in again to watch Bullwinkle pull another rabbit out of his hat or read fan mail from a flounder.
Going the Distance
Posted on October 26, 2010 at 8:20 am
Even in the era of Skype and Foursquare, it is hard to stay connected when one half of a couple is in New York and the other half is in California. Erin (Drew Barrymore) and Garrett (real-life on-and-off beau Justin Long) meet just as she is finishing up a newspaper internship in New York and getting ready to go back to California to finish school. They immediately bond over the Centipede arcade game and playing trivia. Within hours of meeting they have a tipsy but tender sexual encounter (to the strains of the “Top Gun” soundtrack). They like each other. And just as they discover how much, she has to go back home.
So what comes next is the kind of old-fashioned courtship people used to have before they went to bed together, in the days when people did not take their clothes off until they decided they probably loved each other first. The essential sunny sweetness Barrymore brings to the role and the almost-quaintness of the way they try to stay close when they are far provide a tender grounding to the chaos around the couple caused by economic conditions in both of their fields (he works for a record label) and the usual gang of quirky friends and relatives who exist to populate romantic comedies. I believe they have evolved from the classical Greek chorus as a device for exposition and making the main characters seem normal by comparison and also lovably tolerant.
Here the surrounding group is top-notch, with Christina Applegate, who is superb as Erin’s tightly wound but affectionate sister and Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis as Garrett’s clueless but affectionate guy-buddies. The raunchy humor is delivered in a matter-of-fact way that can be very funny and true to the honest spirit of the characters and the pressures of the economy are lightly but effectively conveyed. The best news about the script is that it avoids the usual rom-com staples of misunderstandings and incompetence. Director Nanette Burstein and her movie trust us and trust its characters as it allows them to learn to trust each other.