While I am not crazy about a director including his own name in the title of a film (after all, we never saw a movie called “Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane” or “David Lean’s Great Expectations” or “Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver”), I can sort of forgive Lee Daniels (who directed the equally obscurely titled “Precious: Based…
While watching Jobs one cannot help but think back on the 1999 TNT made-for-TV movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley,” starring Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates. Well, at least I could not help thinking about that film. It certainly told a much crisper, tighter story of the beginning of…
The first trailer for Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is online thanks to Paramount Pictures, and may I say it is one of the more interesting trailers I’ve ever seen in a long time. Based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by Jordan Belfort it chronicles Belfort’s excesses during the 80s…
The Andean story of how the world was created by a tall white, blue eyed man with long blond-reddish hair and beard who arose from Lake Titicaca in Bolivia has been passed down by word of mouth through generations of South American Indians. Known to the Aymaras as Viracocha (he was also called Kon-Tiki), Quetzalcoatl…
Making a film based upon an iconic figure, such as Lincoln or Gandhi, forces one to walk a thin line between legend and humanization. How do we show the warts (no pun intended in Honest Abe’s case) and foibles and yet still uphold the impeccable character of the subject. Such was the task of writer/director…
There’s a unique sprinkling of cinematic magic that touches the infamous shower scene in “Psycho” so memorably and effectively that watching the scene, dissecting the scene, experiencing the scene is great fun from any angle. So with this automatic reaction hardwired to my senses, I very much enjoyed seeing the scene recreated with moderate gusto…
Coming after the failure of singer/songwriter Paul Simon’s solo album Hearts and Bones, and the messy breakup with Art Garfunkel, his 1986 album Graceland was the most successful of his career and, to many, the artistic highlight. Simon’s return to South Africa to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Graceland is documented in Joe Berlinger’s exuberant…
