The New York Film Festival is a stubborn little New York City institution, defiantly separate from its film-festival peers. Nestled in the marble-and-wood confines of Lincoln Center, it doesn’t have Cannes’ beach-town glitz, nor the big, splashy world premieres of Venice. It doesn’t offer hundreds of films or inspire the feeding frenzy of Toronto, or Read More
Gay cowboys, a 60-foot rubber lobster, a pair of Siamese twins who play guitars and become pop stars, the usual menu of war, chemotherapy patients, dope fiends, wife beaters, child abusers, born-agains, violence, rape, rock ’n’ roll and Liza Minnelli. Toronto 2005’s got something for everybody. Thirty years ago, three broke Toronto movie buffs who Read More
Gay cowboys, a 60-foot rubber lobster, a pair of Siamese twins who play guitars and become pop stars, the usual menu of war, chemotherapy patients, dope fiends, wife beaters, child abusers, born-agains, violence, rape, rock ’n’ roll and Liza Minnelli. Toronto 2005’s got something for everybody. Thirty years ago, three broke Toronto movie buffs who Read More
Near the end of the 29th Toronto International Film Festival, after the unveiling of 328 movies in 10 days dedicated to sex, depression, incest, animal mutilation, war, suicide, sex, child abuse, divorce, vampires, more sex and what my aunt Charley Lorean Calhoun Smith used to call “puttin’ on airs,” something nice happened. It happened at Read More
For a time there, between the invasion of the Republicans and vapid Fashion Week, one couldn’t be blamed for thinking that the cultural elite in New York might never return.
During the dark days of summer, Times Square became our cultural fiefdom and The Lion King its jewel in the crown. Elitism and intellectualism Read More
On the dour anniversary of 9/11, lights flashed. Sirens roared. Cell phones rang. Rented limo doors opened and hottie du jour Penélope Cruz emerged, surrounded by burly security guards with hairy forearms who whisked her down the intensely lit crimson-red carpet into another premiere “gala,” where she talked about doing an on-screen lesbian tango with Read More
No Diplomatic Immunity
For UES Flower Picker
A word of advice to crooks: It’s best to commit your crimes on streets that aren’t home to foreign consulates, especially those important enough to warrant NYPD sentry boxes in front of them. That’s the lesson one plant-loving petty criminal learned on June 23, when he chose Read More
Catching up with all of the new movies may not be worth the effort. From last year’s Toronto Film Festival, Twist is not a documentary about lap dancing. It’s a contemporary retelling of, wouldn’t you know, the Charles Dickens classic Oliver Twist , told from the Artful Dodger’s point of view. Instead of the band Read More
Heading into last week’s homestretch at the 28th Toronto International Film Festival, I began to realize, somewhere between The Best of Youth , a six-hour challenge about an embattled Italian family told against the unraveling social and political events of the last 40 years, and The Saddest Music in the World , one of an Read More
Nicole Kidman is in the hotel lobby, talking about sex. Anthony Hopkins, sometimes known as Hannibal Lecter, is in the downstairs restaurant, sending his food back twice. Nicolas Cage is on the street outside, munching an ice-cream cone. Francis Ford Coppola is in the kiosk next-door, rifling through the papers for reviews of a new Read More
