Welcome to New York Observer‘s Golden Globe coverage of the 2012, where you’ll be able to read (and participate!) in real time as Drew Grant and Dan D’Addario take bets on which acclaimed actor will be the first to slap that lopsided grin right off Ricky Gervais‘ face. Let the fun begin! Read More
In the pantheon of tastelessness designed to make you laugh at diarrhea, menstruation, masturbation, yeast infections, fellatio and worse, you can now add a stupid horror called 50/50. Artificial, irresponsible, filthy and forgettable, it knocks itself cross-eyed trying to make you roar with laughter at chemotherapy, with the nauseating Seth Rogen milking most of the yuks. But a stoner comedy about cancer? I don’t think so.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has two expressions — sleepy and catatonic — and he wears them ragged as Adam Lerner, a 27-year-old reporter for National Public Radio stationed in Seattle who sinks into an understandable depression when malignant tumors are diagnosed on his spine and he is given only a 50/50 chance of survival. Read More
Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s crowdsourced art co-op website, HitRecord, has recorded a book deal with Harper-Collins imprint It Books. The site takes user-generated content in individual units referred to as “records” which can then be “remixed” by other users, or just saved from the internet by Mr. Gordon-Levitt himself.
“When I see something that I think Read More
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has come a long way from his blank-eyed zombie look in lifeless early flops like Brick and Halloween H-20. But he remains unpredictable. One minute, he’s an appealing, fresh-faced romantic lead in 500 Days of Summer. Turn around and he’s covered with tattoos, wearing filthy rags, sporting long greasy hair and blabbing obscenities Read More
At the movies, incomprehensible gibberish has become a way of life, but it usually takes time before it’s clear that a movie really stinks. Inception, Christopher Nolan’s latest assault on rational coherence, wastes no time. It cuts straight to the chase that leads to the junkpile without passing go, although before it drags Read More
While the success of films like Little Miss Sunshine, Once and Precious prove that the Sundance Film Festival still holds some pretty serious weight in Hollywood, something about the grandaddy of them all has—shall we say—dulled. Perhaps Sundance lost some edge around the same time it featured heavily in a plotline on Entourage. Sensing this, Read More
Uncertainty
Running time 101 minutes
Written And Directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel
Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lynn Collins
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the young actor who was so charismatic in (500) Days of Summer and so deadly dull in Brick, now finds his interesting, sleepy-eyed face worthy of well-earned catatonia in a load of pretentious Read More
After a week of slightly disappointing returns at the box office, Hollywood braces for a rebound with two major genre releases: One for the 10-year-old inside all of us and one for all of our mothers. Five movies hit theaters today, as August gets started in earnest. As we do every Friday, here’s Read More
Monday: Boy Interrupted
As part of their summer-long documentary film series—which airs every Monday at 9—HBO is premiering Dana Perry’s Boy Interrupted, a harrowing look at the life and death of her 15-year-old son, Ryan, who committed suicide after a battle with bipolar disorder. We haven’t seen the 2009 Sundance Grand Jury prize Read More
Finding something to love in (500) Days of Summer is a fairly easy task to accomplish. Marc Webb’s indie-rrific paean to failed romance is filled with enough jubilant laughs and heartbreak to make it an instantaneous hit (the $27,000 per screen average the film scored this weekend bears this out). But … something Read More
