May
The party scenes in Gatsby were exhilarating. I went into the theater anticipating that I’d hate the movie but I found it thoroughly enjoyable.
I also thought the contemporary soundtrack was a good choice as it’s difficult to convey how fun and crazy jazz music was to an audience filled with teenagers who listen to Skrillex.
Very strange to see an Indian actor portraying a Jewish gangster but I suppose they wanted to avoid Fitzgerald’s anti-Semitism.
Mar
Someone finally made a documentary about cats on the internet. Here’s the trailer.
Feb
Kristen Stewart— on crutches, with a bruised arm, maybe stoned on pharmaceuticals— still totally rocked it tonight.
Y’all just h8ers.
Feb
According to White House records, Jimmy Carter watched 480 films during his four years in the White House — around 2.5 movies a week.
The first one he watched: All the President’s Men, about the Watergate scandal that sank Nixon. He also became the first president to watch an X-rated movie in the mansion: Midnight Cowboy, which today doesn’t seem like much, but in 1969 shocked audiences with its sex scenes and drug use. (By the time Carter saw it, the rating had been changed to R.)
The Presidents’ favorite films seem to say much about their personalities. Most enjoyed war movies, westerns, and other “rah-rah” fare. Obama’s favorites (Casablanca, Godfather, etc.) indicate he’s tasteful yet in line with the consensus view (those two films are routinely cited as among the “best ever”). But Carter watching Midnight Cowboy is pretty sweet. Props to the peanut farmer.
(via brooklynmutt)
Dec
Poster for Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects
Dec
This movie will cause your brain to explode.
Oct
This film deserves heaps of praise. It succeeds in personalizing an issue that may sometimes seem abstract. See it if you can.
Sep
Lincoln - Official Trailer
This looks like it’ll be two-thirds greatness and one-third flag-waving sappiness. In other words, classic Spielberg.
Aug
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
Trailer for Alex Gibney’s new documentary on child abuse and the Catholic Church.
Jul
The Obama Effect - Theatrical Trailer
I thought nothing could be worse than the trailer for Atlas Shrugged and then I saw this.
May
Watch: John Huston's censored World War II PTSD documentary, "Let There Be Light"
John Huston’s World War II documentary Let There Be Light is so legendary for its censorship controversy that its sheer power as a film has been easy to miss. Produced by the U.S. Army in 1945, it pioneered unscripted interview techniques to take an unprecedented look into the psychological wounds of war. However, by the time the film was first allowed a public screening—in December 1980—its remarkable innovations in style and subject, which in the 1940s were at least a decade ahead of their time, could be taken as old hat, especially because of the poor quality of then-available prints. This new restoration finally reveals the film’s full force.
The subject of Let There Be Light is what we’d now label PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder—among returning soldiers, and if the term is of more recent invention than Huston’s film, that’s in good part precisely because such sympathetic examinations of the condition were swept under the rug until after the Vietnam era. What World War II soldiers still called “shell-shock” was variously labeled “psychoneurosis” or “neuropsychosis” by physicians, and it was under the working title of The Returning Psychoneurotics that the assignment was given in June 1945 to Huston, then a major in the Army’s Signal Corps.
May
Cult Leader Thinks He’s Jesus
Deep in Siberia’s Taiga forest is Vissarion, a cult leader who looks like Jesus and claims to be the voice of God. He’s known as “the Teacher” to his 4,000 followers, who initially seem surprisingly normal. Over time, however, their unflinching belief in UFOs and the Earth’s imminent demise made this group start to look more and more like some sort of strange cult.
