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Commentary – The Secret In Their Eyes
I highly recommend seeing Juan Jose Campanella’sThe Secret In Their Eyes, (winner of this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film – Argentina). If you read the reviews or even the synopsis, it makes the film sound too complicated and slow. True, it is a hearty soup of genre’s – Film Noir, Murder Mystery, Drama, Love Story, Crime Novel, but the ingredients compliment each other, never one overpowering the other. (pictured Ricardo DarĂn & Soledad Villamil)The subtitles are written as if nothing is lost in translation, particularly the surprising humor. The story within a story, storytelling has been done a million times before, but in this case it’s done…
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Commentary – SATC2
When Busby Berkeley wowed and won over throngs of people in the 30’s & 40’s with his movies of sparkle, charm and eye candy, were there just no movie critics around or did movie critics used to be real people who can take things at face value, enjoy it and for God’s sake, not pick, pick, pick like vultures on prey! Casting aside the filmmakers’ breathtaking cultural insensitivity, their astonishing tone-deaf ear for dialogue and pacing, their demented, self-serving idea of female empowerment, the biggest sin of “Sex and the City 2” is its lack of beauty. It’s garish when it should be sumptuous, tacky when it should be luxe,…
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Commentary- The Joneses, The Good The Bad and The Weird, Allen Iverson: No Crossover
What inevitably happens during a film festival, even a short film fest – I run out of time to write posts about each film I see in a timely fashion. Sometimes it’s because I’m trying to fit in other life between screenings, other times, I do too much socializing at the festivals, but mostly, I lack stamina, after I write one film commentary, I’m spent. So, better late than never, here’s commentary on the 3 remaining films I saw at the PFS Spring Preview: The Joneses – As I wrote in my festival announcement post, this was the one I wanted to see because of my affinity for both David…
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When am I going to be able to get a tax credit on my movie watching
As I wrote in my post Avatar/Oscar Catch Up , I set a goal to see 7 out of 10 Oscar nominated films before March 7th. I accomplished my goal and added onto it 3 box office type flicks out now! These three (Valentine’s Day, Percy Jackson and Shutter Island), I saw in a row, on the same day for $6. Not bad, but as I couldn’t work in a Ritz Theater discounted Wednesday or matinee showing, I paid full price for An Education and Up in the Air. In addition, the cost to rent Inglorious Basterd and A Serious Man was $5 each, being as they were both on…
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Jeff Bridges in CRAZY HEART
By Le Anne Lindsay, Editor I have a friend who’s an aspiring music journalist, similar to Maggie Gylenhaal’s character in Crazy Heart. She likes to review lesser known musicians who come into town and play Philly’s smaller venues. That honky tonk sound with a rootsy rock influence, by musicians with snow on the roof, but plenty of sexy fire still in the belly — John Doe, to name one, is really her thing. So it was great to watch the movie with her and see it through her eyes and better yet, she treated! It would seem the Producers of Crazy Heart banked on the success of last year’s has…