This latest Disney picture, Beauty and the Beast, joins a growing list of live-action movies which traces its origins to animated films, including “The Jungle Book,” “Pete’s Dragon,” “Cinderella” and “Maleficent,” among others. The bar here, however, is just a bit higher, considering the 1991 edition became the first animated feature to earn a Best…
At the point in which Yoshiki, musical ombudsman, drummer, keyboardist/pianist and main songwriter of the Xtremely popular X Japan (simply X in Japan, though not in Japanese, for this is no ideogram, but only an alphabetic, apathetic X), Xtremely so in their Pacific archipelago, mythical prophets in their own land . . . at the…
Social media giant Instagram receives some light ribbing in Martin Sofiedal’s four minute short, Instapocalypse, which suggests that a world-ruining zombie apocalypse was actually caused by the public’s unhealthy obsession with their smartphones. This is all a comical setup, established in a clunky piece of expository dialogue, on which to hang a single scene where…
A woman (Diana Agostini, “The Eyes of Van Gogh”) looks out the window of her remote hillside home. A strange man (Will Brill, “Girls Against Boys”) is talking to her young daughter, who was playing in the garden. She goes out to investigate. He gives her a too-bright smile and asks when her husband will…
There’s been a renewed interest in the Church of Scientology and that’s probably because of the commercial success of HBO’s “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief” and A&E’s “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath” television series (there are a few other documentaries on the topic, but they mostly regurgitate the same talking points)….
When I first watched Gleason, at the London Film Festival back in October, there was barely anyone there. “Fair enough,” I thought. It was after all, a mid-week, lunchtime showing, and a documentary about an American football player, who few Brits will have ever heard of. By the end of the film though, the dearth…
Prior to Kong: Skull Island, there have been at least a half dozen feature films based on the monstrous King Kong character, including the original 1933 classic, 1962’s campy “King Kong vs. Godzilla,” the Dino De Laurentiis 1976 budget-breaker and Peter Jackson’s overlong and ambitious 2005 edition, among others. Despite the various incarnations, the plot…
