Walking Dead Caps the Mid-Season With Signs of Life
The concept of a mid-season finale fascinates me. I understand it’s purpose: 51-minute episodes are incredibly difficult to write (apparently extremely difficult, given the low caliber of many episodes in this Search for Sophia season), ratings will jump for the “Pretty much Dead Already” finale and the upcoming midseason premiere: “Nebraska.” It’s the phrasing that...
Herzog and the Urgency of Life: Living the Dash
Werner Herzog’s interview style has been hailed by many to be the most honest and forthright approach by a documentarian. It’s comforting in its austere presentation, and outright maddening. Delving into a Herzog film is a step into his psyche, he bares his chaotic inner workings through the content he opts to include and uses such...
In Time – Movie Review
In Time, starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, introduced a novel concept – out with the money economy, in with currency in the form of green digital wrist clocks that literally count down the seconds until you “time out,” or to remove the euphemism, die. This time can be used to purchase anything from a...
Arrested Development Movie May Happen, Sources Continue to Say
After the series finale of Arrested Development, the rumors about a feature film took off, with wild predictions about when the second coming of Buster, Gob, Michael, Lindsay (Nellie), Kitty, George, Oscar, Tobias, George-Michael, Maeby, Lucille, Lucille Austero, Annyong and co. would manifest itself. The show hinted that a film was a distinct possibility,...
Ides of March, Star-Studded Melodrama
George Clooney plays Democratic presidential candidate and governor of Pennsylvania, Mike Morris, in “The Ides of March.” Morris is the consummate democratic candidate: He’s George Clooney. Of course, the audience will find this movie with a bit of pretense considering George Clooney’s outspoken affiliation with the Democratic party, but the ideals of his character,...
Interdependence and the Dying of the Bees in Connected
Connected surveys the interdependence of our culture, and encourages viewers to realize our potential as a human unit, using the internet and its connective powers to solve issues of pollution, overpopulation, cancer and the countless impending storms that threaten to wipe out Homo Sapiens from the face of the planet, or render the Earth into...
Brad Pitt Fights the Institution Through Moneyball
A quick synopsis After the finish of the Oakland A’s 2001 season, the A’s lost three of their key players (Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi and closer Jason Isringhausen) to free agency. In the offseason, they put together a team using a computer program that quantifies player value by calculating individual key stats and ignoring “star”...
Director Joe Cornish and John Boyega From Attack the Block
Attack the Block, a sci-fi meets comedy meets horror film about an alien invasion in a South London apartment complex, opens this Friday, July 29. I was fortunate enough to sit down and chat with Attack the Block’s writer and director Joe Cornish and main star John Boyega at Hotel Max in Downtown Seattle before...
Attack the Block Ft. Lewis Kendall
Writer and director Joe Cornish offers a movie in which aliens invade the inner city of South London. The only forces willing to not only acknowledge an alien invasion, but accept the responsibility of protecting their block, are a gang of children wielding samurai swords, baseball bats and fireworks. The story takes place over the...
There’s No Saving Salvation Boulevard
Finished art doesn’t offer much insight into its creation. Generally it evokes a visceral reaction in the viewer and a snap judgment that derives from the continuum of revulsion to Stendhal Syndrome. From the more learned of whatever art medium, the historic period, the contingent of the artist’s involved with the piece, the methodology, even...
Film Review: Beats Rhymes & Life
It’s about time. Seminal golden-age hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest get the Hollywood treatment in Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, a feature-length documentary about the Native Tongues affiliate’s rise and current sad state of dissent. Actor Michael Rapaport (you might remember him from My Name is Earl and...
Page One: Inside the New York Times Ft. Lewis Kendall
Page One uses an array of narratives in order to express the dire straits of the Times. Among others, these narratives stand out: the omnipresent notion that print media is dying and beyond salvation, Julian Assange and his team at Wikileaks, the war in Iraq and the Bankruptcy of the Tribune company. At the narrative...
