Specials

A collection of 24 posts

Looking Elsewhere

Specials: No Country for Old Men, The Golden Compass, and Tim Burton

The Coens and The Golden Compass You can now download my conversation with radio show host Paul Edwards as we discuss the Coen Brothers'No Country for Old Men... and then the controversy surrounding The Golden Compass. * The Coens... They're Not Nihilists Among people who write about

Looking Elsewhere

Specials: Apocalypto poster, Pan’s Labyrinth rave, and more

With all of the hubbub over a certain controversial film in recent months, I’d almost forgotten about this... Nice poster. Dumb slogan. NO PANS FOR PAN Salon's Andrew O’Heihr returns from Cannes and raves and raves about Guillermo Del Toro's new fantasy film Pan’

Steven Soderbergh

Specials: Defending "Bubble." Poo-pooing Proulx's poo-poo. New Issues of Paste and Risen! Bad Refs.

Defending Bubble. What to do when friends disagree over movies? Jessica Poundstone wrote in to take issue with Adam Walter's assessment of Soderbergh's Bubble: I'm tempted to do a point-by-point rebuttal of Walter's review, since I disagree with nearly all

Steven Soderbergh

Specials: New Ron Sexsmith music! Greydanus flunks V. Walter on Soderbergh.

NEW RON SEXSMITH MUSIC! My friend Jessica Poundstone, a vigilant Ron Sexsmith fan, send me this today: at his site Ouch. The song is from the upcoming Mitchell Froom-produced album Time Being, coming to stores May 16. Oh, and the secret to relentless blogging, Jessica? It's love.

Looking Elsewhere

Specials: Ebert on "Crash"-lash. Gaiman gets DeNiro and Pfeiffer. Lois Lowry's "The Giver."

IF YOU VOTED FOR CRASH, DOES THAT MEAN YOU HATE GAY PEOPLE? Roger Ebert asks the question that needs to be asked: Just 'cause I didn't vote for Brokeback, does that make me a homophobe? Good question. And by the way, if Hollywood is so homophobic, why

Looking Elsewhere

More specials: Ten mistakes. Frodo onstage. Pixar rats out. Paste. Porn. Lips. And James Cameron.

More Tuesday specials: MUST READ At Town Hall, Erik Lokkesmoe powerfully sums up ten... count them, ten... big mistakes that conservatives tend to make when they meddle (or fail to meddle) in the arts. (Thanks for the link, Bubba.) YES, BUT DOES BILL THE PONY GET TO SING A SOLO?

Looking Elsewhere

Specials: Boycotts! Batman! Bono!

Tuesday specials: DON'T GO READ THIS! (Now you're curious, aren't you?)Sean Gaffney boycotts boycotting! Because, as they said in Field of Dreams, "If you protest, they will come." He also congratulates Cory Edwards, and so do I, for its continuing top

Looking Elsewhere

Specials: Rosenbaum on "Three Burials." Walter on "Crash." And the sequel we've all been waiting for.

Monday specials: "A QUIRKY COWBOY MASTERPIECE" Jonathan Rosenbaum raves about Tommy Lee Jones' directorial debut: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. There are elements in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada that I tend to distrust when they crop up in other movies. There's the

Looking Elsewhere

Specials: Beware Knightley! Moring interviews Emma Thompson. Evangelical NY Times Writer: Oxymoron? Shea on Spear.

WHAT I'M SEEING TODAY Tsotsi. Anybody else here seen it?IS KEIRA KNIGHTLEY'S SMILE DANGEROUS? Can you look away from that smile? It has a strange and dismaying power. I mean, look at her! There's something almost violent about that smile. She's

X-Men

Specials: Sundance review. Walter's "New World" rave. "Lost" money. DaVinci debut. X3 pic. New mom Jessica Poundstone. And Seahawks.

Monday specials:SUNDANCE ME TO THE END OF MEDIOCRE FILMSGreenCine coverage of the Sundance Film Festival is almost too expansive to comprehend. So many movies, so many reviews. From a review of Thank You for Smoking that calls it "I Heart Huckabees For Dummies," to a review of

Politics

Specials: Helprin's caution. "Serenity 2"? How "Hoodwinked" Happened. "The White Countess." SNL.

Sunday's specials: What a friendly neighborhood I live in! This morning, I'm walking around the streets of Shoreline, Washington, and as I'm waiting at a crosswalk, I see in the window of the house next to me... ...a wooden cross... ... a Bush/Cheney poster.

Looking Elsewhere

Specials: Sarris on where "Brokeback" is broken. Pretty woman, Gump may join Mike Nichols. CNN on religious media.

Wednesday's specials: SARRIS DARES TO SHRUG OFF BROKEBACK MOUNTAINCourageously stating some of the obvious problems with Brokeback Mountain, Andrew Sarris demonstrates that he's willing to swim upstream against the tidal wave of hype: Besides, the problem of the economic disparity between lower-middle-class Ennis and

Looking Elsewhere

Specials: Defending Munich. Chesterton's blog. Chattaway on Cassanova and Munich. London Critics.

Friday specials: DEFENDING MUNICHHere's a forceful, well-composed defense of Steven Spielberg's Munich, which I think is his most restrained, mature, and challenging film since... oh... 1987's Empire of the Sun. (It's at Salon, so if you don't subscribe, just

Narnia

Looking Elsewhere: November 26, 2005

Saturday's specials: I'm hoping Pride and Prejudice is the beginning of a turnaround for this movie year. In the next several days, I'll be seeing Woody Allen's Match Point, Andrew Adamson's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and

The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe

Specials: Winter Solstice. Undertow. Bortz scratches. Aslan talks. Hobos bite.

I'm back from a bout with the flu, and a couple of days of recovery on beautiful Whidbey Island, surrounded by sun, surf, sand, and DEER... deer everywhere. I wanted to tell you about what I saw last week BEFORE falling ill... I rented two films on DVD

Quotable

Specials: Gromit! Whedon! LAT on Narnia! More!

Quote of the day: highlighted by Jeff Berryman at The Daily Hopper: "A spinning coin cannot spin forever, nor can our minds remain undecided forever, since not to decide is itself a decision, and as the coin will come down only heads or tails, so we also have only

Looking Elsewhere

Specials: What Serenity character are you? Hopkins is Hemingway.

Today's specials: * Peter T. Chattaway on 13 Lakes. Wow. I'd pay full price for this. Really. It'd be just what I need after a long hard work day... well, that is, if I couldn't VISIT 13 lakes.... * What Serenity character are you?

Narnia

More specials: Serenity clip. Best album of '05? Smog video. Narnia pics.

More specials: * A truly troubling clip that seems to be from Joss Whedon's Serenity. Viewer discretion ... no, make that listener discretion advised. * Josh Hurst just noticed that Sufjan Stevens' Illinois is no longer the "best-reviewed album of the year" ... at least for now. Who

Danny Boyle

Specials: Boyle's Sunshine. Lonergan's Margaret. Burnett's B.R.M.C.

Today's specials: * Danny Boyle's next film boasts a diverse cast. * At long last, Ken Lonergan, director of You Can Count On Me, is preparing another project that looks likely to star Matt Damon, Anna Paquin, and Mark Ruffalo. It's called Margaret. * Just how much

The Incredibles

Today's specials: Richard Thompson. Fagin. Harry Potter. Pixar. And more.

Today's specials: * Richard Thompson's first solo album in ages, Front Parlour Ballads, is earning a bunch of raves and a few surprisingly contrary complaints. * Ho hum... here it comes. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ... the new international trailer. Hmmm. Some very nice effects on

On Movies & Media

Specials: Critics on Cinderella Man & Batman, We3, Radiohead, "Narniacs"

Today's specials: * WHY ARE CHRISTIAN CRITICS SO FOND OF CINDERELLA MAN? I don’t get it. The film is such a calculated crowdpleaser, and so focused on self-reliance, while Christian faith is only acknowledged… not affirmed. There’s nothing truly challenging, revealing, or surprising about the story.

U2

Today’s specials: U2, Ron Howard, The Simpsons’ movie, and... 16 Candles 2?

Today's specials: * U2 hearts Arcade Fire: In the new issue of Mojo, you'll find a disc featuring songs that Bono and the boys think you should hear. And I hate to say "I told ya so" but there's an Arcade Fire track

On Movies & Media

Today’s Specials: Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Howl’s Moving Castle; Christian-defamation; pirated DVD reviews

Today’s specials: * My Reel News at CT Movies focuses on the end of the Disney boycott, but there are a lot of other news links as well. * Peter Chattaway takes a look at Mr. and Mrs Smith and Howl's Moving Castle. * Some folks who are fed up

On Songs & Albums

Today’s specials: Bono corrects Chicago reporter. Summertime fiction. And the man playing Orbison.

Today’s specials: * Greg Kot gets a memorable interview with Bono. (And here's a transcript of the full interview.) * Jonathan Rice gets cast as Roy Orbison in I Walk the Line. On my radar for summertime fiction: * Freddy and Fredericka, a new novel by Mark Helprin described as