One of the most versatile and magnetic actors on the screen today, Michael Shannon has established such a reputation for playing twisted, violent and unpredictable characters that it comes as no surprise to see him dominate the screen as real-life Jersey City serial killer and mob hit man Richard Kuklinski in The Iceman. It’s a Read More
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On Thursday, University of Maryland student Rebecca Martinson, a member of the Delta Gamma Sorority, achieved a level of Internet infamy after a private letter she had sent to her sisters was circulated around the campus and eventually sent to Gawker. Some were quick to call Ms. Martinson “psycho” and refer to her email as “insane” due to its rambling, incoherent and frankly confusingly venemous content (as far as we can tell, this was sent because some sisters were “being fucking WEIRD at sports”); ironically, it would take a sorority member or at least someone in a mean girl’s high school clique to truly appreciate the quick and effective destruction of a life with just one click of a forward button.
But we’re not here to pass judgement on Ms. Martinson or her colleagues. We’re here to watch two dramatic readings of the email: the first by Boardwalk Empire‘s Michael Shannon– which truly does bring to mind the actor’s role as a hallucinating schizophrenic in Bug–and the latter by a Barbie doll. Read More
- The intimidatingly assiduous Peggy Siegal greets people at the door; thanks us for coming to celebrate party with The New York Observer. “We are The New York Observer!” We cry. She doesn’t even pause. “Well, it’s great to see you anyway.”
-Terry McDonell: I’ve always loved the Observer, I have great respect for Peter Kaplan. The coverage of everything I was interested in New York in the past 25 years was reflected in The Observer at the highest level.
- Ray Kelly recalls the last time he was at the Four Seasons. “[We] feel like you never leave,” we tell the Police Commissioner. His reply: “A lot of people feel that way.” Read More
Polished and uniformly riveting, the four actors in Grace, a new play on Broadway by Craig Wright, directed by Dexter Bullard at the Cort, provide the grace an otherwise benign and disappointing play does not. The playwright had a runaway success off-Broadway with Mistakes Were Made. History and good fortune did not repeat themselves uptown. However, the estimable Michael Shannon has graced both plays, and for that, Mr. Wright can count his blessings. That goes for the rest of us too.
A treatise on theology and faith, with all the doubt and distrust, hope and salvation such weighty subjects inspire, Grace picks at scabs instead of fully addressing them. If you’re looking for answers to earth-shattering questions raised by Sunday-morning television evangelists looking to raid your soul for profit, you will go away empty. But you will spend 90 edgy minutes (without intermission) in the company of a few vainglorious actors, good and true, while you make up your mind. Read More
Tonight, we’re dropping in on a preview of the latest big-star-on-Broadway show, to see the acting-for-screen tics that’ll get ironed out by opening. The ubiquitous Paul Rudd (last season of Parks and Recreation, this winter’s new Judd Apatow flick, This Is 40, along with every other Apatow comedy, and Julia Roberts’ Broadway play, back when Read More
Yesterday, when HBO announced that they were going ahead with a series order for Luck, most of the internet met the news with a collective shrug. Not because Luck isn’t poised to be one of the most highly anticipated shows of 2011 — spoiler: it already is — but because of course HBO picked it Read More
THE GREATEST
RUNNING TIME 98 minutes
WRITTEN AND directed by Shana Feste
STARRING Pierce Brosnan, Susan Sarandon, Carey Mulligan, Michael Shannon
3 Eyeballs out of 4
Grief comes cloaked in as many forms as the tragedies that cause it. Almost all of them are on view in The Greatest, a somber, sensitively Read More
THE RUNAWAYS
RUNNING TIME 109 minutes
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED bY
Floria Sigismondi
STARRING Dakota Fanning,
Kristen Stewart, Michael Shannon
2 Eyeballs out of 4
Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll—it’s fun, isn’t it? As long as there is music to be cranked up on the stereo, so will it always be Read More
One of the very best films to come out in the last couple of years hits DVD today and you haven’t seen it. Why Revolutionary Road, Sam Mendes’ tragically beautiful adaptation of Richard Yates’ novel, failed to connect with moviegoers is a question that has many answers: In an era of hope, it was too Read More
