As The Observer—and every other news outlet—has been scrambling to report in detail, the city is abuzz over the high-profile indictment and arrests of figures in an art-world money laundering scheme involving seven-figure card games, international sports betting rings and mixed martial arts fighters who played the Rocky Balboa role of debt collector. Read More
Update: Well, now we have an extra hour and a half of the red carpet! Talk amongst yourselves!
What is it about the Academy Awards? Intellectually, it’s hard to muster up that much enthusiasm about who “wore it best” (Ang Lee) or how modest Katniss will be in her acceptance speech, hopefully avoiding a First Wives’ Club reference that sounded like she was hating on Meryl Streep this time. And yet … we still feel compelled to watch. Maybe it’s because secretly, deep down, we still find it fascinating that the guy who does the voice of Stewie looks like the host of a reality game show about finding true love by having a dance-off on a stripper pole.
Or maybe it’s because we’re just suckers, who deep down believe that Beasts of the Southern Wild might still possibly have a chance against Argo or Lincoln.
Come join us, will you, on this the most magical of evenings for producers, people who are married to movie stars, and dress designers? We’ll be hosting a live chat below. Just click the big countdown button and you’re all set. Got it?
Great. Read More
Tonight is the 85th Academy Awards, and for all intents and purposes it should be a good one. Look at all those serious films, and the one movie by Quentin Tarantino! And with big snubs for Best Director for both Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, does that mean one of them will be be sweeping up the Best Picture Award as a consolation prize? And most importantly, is it too late to write in a ballot for Javier Bardem in Skyfall? Because he was great. Read More
If Affleck You Don't Succeed...
Video
We don’t want to give too much away about this tremendous discovery of Ben Affleck’s first stab at directing a film, so let’s just go with the title of the short from 1993: I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney.
Great title. Almost a shame the studios changed it to Gone Baby Gone. Just kidding. This is a much more ridiculous film. It’s no The Town, is all we’re saying. Check out the entire 16-minute flick below. Read More
If you are too busy watching the Australian cycling thing and can’t understand what the hell is going on with Twitter (honestly, we don’t know who you follow, but no one on our feed actually bothers naming the winners of these things), here are the latest updates for the 2013 Golden Globe Awards. Read More
– The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore (recently profiled by The Observer) was the main guest on Letterman last night after Kate Hudson dropped out. See, in a perfect world, you wouldn’t have the guy who spent 24 hours in Battery Park during Sandy as the pinch-hitter for an actress whose biggest news right now is a cameo on Glee. Read More
It’s rare as a pink giraffe, but every once in a blue moon a movie comes along in which each piece fits seamlessly and every detail works. Argo is one of them. I have come to regard Ben Affleck as better, stronger and more self-assured behind a camera than he is in front of one, but in this exemplary, meticulously detailed thriller about a fake movie that saved real lives, he wears both hats magnificently. The result is a movie that defines perfection.
Gifted, intelligent and full of cogent ideas, Mr. Affleck can almost always be depended on to come up with something fascinating, coherent and thoroughly cinematic. Argo, his third feature film as a director after Gone Baby Gone (2007) and The Town (2010), is no exception. It grabbed me by the lapels and held my attention for two solid hours without a sideward glance, and I can’t wait to see it again. You have to see it twice if you want to absorb the myriad pieces of a jigsaw too fantastic to accept as fact, although we know going in that the recently declassified records of an amazing history lesson prove otherwise. This movie is not only true, but unbelievably true. Read More
The Master
Paul Thomas Anderson Read More
Usually when someone wants to become a criminal, they either have to be born into it (like Michael Corleone) or spend years proving their mastermind skills (Sean Connery in The Rock). That’s just how the law works. Very rarely are bad guys just allowed to watch a Ben Affleck movie and then recreate the scenarios in order to get off with heists. Which is just the sort of ingenious thinking a group of Brooklyn crooks used to evade the police when they did exactly that: taking the best plot devices from The Town to get away with…well, not murder. But a bunch of robberies. And they didn’t wear the nun masks. Read More
Ostriches with heads buried in the sand, or even moviegoers seeking diversionary entertainment stripped of all burdensome snags such as thought-provoking issues about the way we live now, be warned in advance: The Company Men is a timely, intelligently written, beautifully acted film of great sensitivity and wisdom about corporate downsizing that will make you Read More
