by Christina Waters | May 24, 2009 | Home, Movies |
What blockbuster author Dan Brown needs more than anything right now is a witness protection program. If English teachers, theological archaeologists and script doctors across the land ever found out where he lives, his life wouldn’t be worth the pixels Ron Howard’s new film is made of. In addition to a jowly Tom Hanks reprising his lifeless role as Harvard “symbologist†Robert Langdon, and semi-smoldering Ayelet Zurer as CERN nuclear physicist with a stripper’s name, Vittoria Vetra — both avoiding even a neutrino of sexual chemistry — Angels & Demons had to be Brown’s high school term paper about that merry band of Renaissance conspirators known as the Illuminati.
Langdon is summoned to Rome where hell’s a poppin’ in the form of a vial of anti-matter (cooked up at CERN) that has fallen into the wrong hands. The Church is in disarray, having just lost one pope and heading toward seclusion in the Sistine Chapel (nice photoshopping here) to vote (more…)
by Christina Waters | May 15, 2009 | Home, Movies |
You don’t have to be old enough to remember William Shatner before he was the Priceline Negotiator to love the new Star Trek cine-blitz. I admit to being twice trekkie – loved the original in reruns, and adored the Jean-Luc Picard “Next Generation” team – loved them to bits! I also loved this movie.
In the new installment – lightyears better than those latex-intensive Lucas flix – the spirit of Kirk and Spock materializes brilliantly in the young, hot-to-the-max form of Chris Pine (Kirk) and Zachary Quinto (Spock). Director J.J. Abrams knew enough not to destroy one of the great love/hate affairs of all tv/film – the push-pull between the hot, brash young space captain and the Vulcan genius given existential angst by his human genes. And without sacrificing anything in the way of opulent, futuristic effects — the malevolent Romulan colony is fabulously imagined, and the vintage Starship Enterprise is shown off to nostalgic fare-thee-well — the film keeps its focus tight on the two principals, their backstories and the romp through space as they acquire their mythic sidekicks.
“Dammit Jim — I’m a doctor, not an engineer.” It’s a total hoot to hear the classic McCoy line (more…)
by Christina Waters | Apr 1, 2009 | Art, Movies |
In 1967-68 Nickelodeon Theater founder Bill Raney took off in a VW van – with his wife JoAnne and their infant son, Zerky — for a year of quintessential hippie adventures around the world. Literally. From Portugal to Greece to Afghanistan to Thailand, with pitstops everywhere in between.
During the journey, Bill started writing letters to his little boy about the trio’s daily foibles and sweet moments, so that when Zerky grew up he would have a record of this amazing journey. But Zerky would never read those letters.
The following year – 1969 – Bill had just opened the new art theater in Santa Cruz, when both JoAnne and Zerky died. After 36 years stuffed into a back drawer, the letters Bill wrote were recently re-discovered and in a heroic labor of love (I’m still in tears over his introduction to the book), Bill published his chronicles as a legacy to his lost son.
The result – briskly edited from Bill’s letters and his late wife’s diary of the trip – is the rugged, fascinating, and ultimately almost unbelievable account of a year that couldn’t ever be repeated today.
Letters to Zerky will be unveiled at a kick-off book talk and event at the Nick, at 11am on Easter Sunday, April 12. Go find out that there was a whole lot more to the crusty movie maven than simply a crewcut and a few velour shirts.
by Christina Waters | Feb 13, 2009 | Home, Movies |
Randy “The Ram” Robinson is a broken-down hack, prolonging his former pro circuit glory days with the help of drugs, booze, pain-killers, and sheer grit. As embodied by former wunderkind Mickey Rourke, The Ram is a born loser who knows how to do just one thing — thrill the suckers who want to see blood. And that thing has taken a shattering toll on his aging body and squandered soul.
The Wrestler is about as close to the center of that blood-splattered ring as most of us will ever get, and director Darren Aronofsky dives into the low-rent New Jersey wrestling circuit like a Quentin Tarantino in his prime. Rourke gives himself utterly to the camera, every scar, every trick, he doesn’t flinch about revealing his character’s sweetness, good-heartedness, despair and decline. While it’s his outrageous physical appearance — the stringy blonde locks, the mangled muscles — that we’re supposed to read, it’s Rourke’s husky, intimate, desperate voice that stayed with me long after the film was over and The Boss was singing over the credits.
The grey northeast never looked more wasted or (more…)
by Christina Waters | Jan 19, 2009 | Home, Movies |
Yes it stars the Diva of Drama, Meryl Streep. Yes it also stars the highly praised Philip Seymour Hoffman. But no that won’t keep you from regretting that you sacrificed $7 and two hours of your life on this bow-wow! Doubt is a soporific study in the vanity of one playwright who somehow talked Oscar-winners into putting on unattractive costumes and fretting around in a play so obvious and stilted that no MFA student would own it.
Doubt is thirty years too late, and 40 IQ points too dumb. The “issues†with which it grapples (I use the term loosely) have been dealt with already! A priest who may or may not have done something with an altar boy, a nun who vaguely suspects (more…)
by Christina Waters | Sep 6, 2008 | Movies |
There’s a bit of cinematic poetry now showing at The Nick – for the last week! – called Man on Wire.
In spellbinding moves, the film tracks the planning behind an astonishing feat of mad, bravura creativity by French wire walker Phillipe Petit. With the help of friends, collaborators and mercenary hippies, Petit plotted an extraordinary bit of performance art – a 45 minute mid-air walk between the two towers of the former World Trade Center. More ephiphany than documentary, the present-day Petit’s passionate narration of the steps leading up to this amazing, and illegal, event is the voice over to footage taken back when the event happened in 1973.
When the incredible walk happens – even though filmgoers know what’s coming – it is sheer, profound poetry. Just to see what this man does – a supernatural act, a once-in-a-lifetime revel. Dionysian in the extreme. The views of Manhattan alone will bring tears to your eyes. Take a look at this image! Sometimes a picture IS worth a thousand words.
Run out this week and see it!
