If you are thinking about engaging in some other activity after watching Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, be sure to leave some time for decompression. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, the semi-autobiographical Whiplash is a visceral, adrenaline-pumping musical drama that raises — but does not resolve —…
A movie musical based on a stage musical built on pre-existing music certainly has some of its work done for it right from the point of cinematic conception, but even with such a head start, Clint Eastwood still applies enough tender, heartfelt identity to his adaptation, Jersey Boys, to make the screen version a touching…
It’s not easy being mean, err, I mean green. Actually, I can’t imagine either of them being particularly easy, even though both Constantine and Kermit the Frog carry both of them off as they were. Since 1955 (and more recently in 2011’s “The Muppets”) audiences have seen Kermit doing his ‘green’ thing; in Muppets Most…
Folk music has been around ever since there have been folks, but the folk revival of the 1960s was due in large part to the increased topicality of the songs and their relevance to the changing times. Though singers such as Joan Baez and Ian & Sylvia among others continued to sing traditional ballads, singer/songwriters…
In a world of ice, Disney finds great warmth. It’s the sort of cutesy irony that sounds like it should be coated in sugar, but with Frozen, Disney takes the sweet concept and transforms it into their most poignant and powerful picture in over a decade. Or nearly even two decades if you consider that…
They say everyone has a twin (or something along those lines) and that fact is at the heart of Disney’s new Muppet movie, Muppets Most Wanted. Kermit the Frog, we find, has a look alike — save for a birthmark on the right cheek — in Constantine, the worlds most elusive thief. Hilarity, as the…
I suppose every new animated feature has to have a comic relief side-kick that follows in the footsteps of Scrat of “Ice Age” fame. In Walt Disney Studio’s Frozen that sidekick appears to be a snowman named Olaf. His purpose is unclear (other than to make the kids laugh) but from the synopsis of the…
