Colonial History, Through The Eyes Of The Colonized
Actor and writer Danai Gurira sometimes refers to herself as a “Zimerican”: She was born in Iowa, but spent most of her childhood in Harare, Zimbabwe — where her new play, The Convert, is set. “I grew up there from age 5 to 19,” Gurira says. “I’m back there every year, but I feel like [...]
How One George Lucas Fan Takes Fan Filmmaking Into His Own Hands
Blame Jar Jar Binks. If George Lucas had never created that annoying, slapstick-prone CGI character in The Phantom Menace, history would be different. No amount of “meesa so sorry” can make up for this abomination. And to add insult to injury, Lucas is sending a 3D Jar Jar Binks into theaters on February 10th. When [...]
A Spy On The Run, But Playing It Too ‘Safe’
It was only a matter of time before someone made a Tony Scott movie without Tony Scott. The director’s frequent collaborations with Denzel Washington are guilty-pleasure entertainments — particularly the dark exploitation-lite of 2004′s Man on Fire — but they’re mostly built on a familiar template. Washington’s always playing a cool-under-pressure character who’s asked to [...]
In War And ‘In Darkness,’ Our Worst And Best Emerge
s Not much is known about Leopold Socha, a sewage worker and petty thief who protected a small group of Jews hidden in the pipes beneath the then-Polish city of Lvov, while aboveground the occupying Nazis methodically gutted the Jewish ghetto. In Darkness, a visceral new addition to the burgeoning subgenre of Holocaust dramas from [...]
‘The Turin Horse’: The Abyss Gazes Implacably Back
Hungarian director Bela Tarr is the master of the hopeless slog. His latest film, The Turin Horse, is nowhere near his longest trudge — that would be the seven-hour Satantango, from 1994 — but it may be his last. Fittingly, it’s about the end of the world. Based on a scenario by longtime Tarr collaborator [...]
George Clooney On Acting, Fame, And Putting Down Your Cell Phone Camera
George Clooney is nominated for two Oscars this year — for his lead role in The Descendants and for co-writing the adapted screenplay for The Ides Of March, which he also directed. He speaks to Robert Siegel on today’s All Things Considered about film, but also about the life he lives as one of Hollywood’s [...]
‘Chico And Rita’ And All That Jazz
In the 11 years since the Oscars introduced an award for Best Animated Feature, the category has been dominated by children’s movies, often with computer-animated pandas, penguins and ogres at their center. This year’s a little different. Two of the animated films are subtitled, and one is definitely aimed at adults: the Spanish film Chico [...]
Historian Seeks Artifacts From Lincoln’s Last Days
Historian Noah Andre Trudeau is known for uncovering secrets of the Civil War. His previous books, Bloody Roads South and Gettysburg, have unveiled information about Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s march to the sea in 1864, and the legacy of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Now, in preparation for a book about a largely unexamined period [...]
Much Ado About Dickens: Why The Bicentennial Hype Matters
If you are a book lover with an unquenchable taste for kitschy Victoriana, good news: this week, the world has finally caught up with your interests. The occasion: the bicentennial of Charles Dickens’s birth on February 7, 2012. In the United Kingdom, the United States, and in countries around the globe, the event is being [...]
Scrappy ‘Girlchild’ Forms A Girl Scout Troop Of One
You’d think that, by now, the news that Americans are spoiling their children would be as attention-getting as the fabled headline, “dog bites man,” but, apparently, we never weary of hearing about how bad we’re doing as parents. Last year, it was the Tiger Mom; this year, a hot new book called Bringing Up Bebe, [...]
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