In a studio on the edge of the East Village, cinematographer Haskell Wexler was seated on the lip of a window at a cocktail party thrown to honor film director John Sayles and his producer and partner, Maggie Renzi.
“I can tell you know I’m hard of hearing,” the octogenarian told The Transom, “because you Read More
John Sayles’ Silver City fires yet another cinematic salvo across the bow of the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Ashcroft ship of state, which seems to be steaming ahead toward yet another stolen election. In paying his populist-progressive dues, Mr. Sayles has inscribed his own thematic signature on Silver City , his 15th feature film in a muckraking quarter of Read More
Wednesday 15th
We’ve learned some valuable lessons this week : The city can survive the constant threat of terrorism , sudden electrical blackouts, the G.O.P. and 100,000 hippies, but can be brought to its knees by rain ; that no matter how many times we read Real Simple , our closet is still a Read More
A few dozen passengers were settling into their seats in the
Quiet Car of the Acela Regional Express as it rolled out of Boston’s South
Station on Friday, July 30, when a slightly rumpled guy boarded the train, a
Democratic National Convention credential still slung around his neck.
The man began talking-quite loudly-about Senator Read More
Ridley Scott’s Matchstick Men , from a screenplay by Nicholas and Tod Griffin, based on the book by Eric Garcia, was a thoroughly absorbing hour and 56 minutes of entertainment. This was due largely to my not knowing a thing about these “matchstick men” before the screening, other than that they were a group of Read More
John Sayles’ Sunshine State , from his own screenplay, was shot on Amelia Island, Fla. He calls the place Plantation Island, and there’s also Delrona Beach (“Delrona” is a playful hybrid of Delray and “Daytona). Mr. Sayles and his longtime producer, Maggie Renzi, are particularly interested in Amelia Island’s biracial history and sociology, its separate Read More
Basically, Instinct Is a Copycat
The trailers for Instinct are misleading. They give the impression that this lurid, bizarre film about nature versus the most violent “instinct” of man is another Silence of the Lambs , with Anthony Hopkins as a savage, lunging Hannibal Lecter on the loose and Cuba Gooding Jr. as the man Read More
In the supposed gloom-and-doom atmosphere of the recently concluded Cannes Film Festival, it is hard to see how John Sayles’ Limbo was overlooked. Perhaps the jurors were torn between admiration and disappointment as I was.
For much of its running time Limbo seems to be soaring to a new peak of artistice xpression, then it Read More
Joel Coen’s The Big Lebowski , produced by his brother Ethan Coen, turns out to be a cubist comedy concocted by the irrepressible Coen brothers out of bits and pieces of the old and the new, the black and the blue, the profound and the profane, in a portion of Los Angeles where hyper-reality collides Read More
