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Oscar nominees owe debt to books - baltimoresun.com

The Oscar nominees for best picture owe a huge debt to books -- and the creativity of authors. Most of the top films are screen versions of tales that were woven by printed words (or digitized versions).

via www.baltimoresun.com

#oscarnoms

"Rock of Ages" - Some reviews...

"Rock of Ages" - Some reviews...

http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/06/15/movies/review-rock-of-ages-a-musical-starring-tom-cruise.html?nl=movies&emc=edit_fm_20120615

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/14/154606580/rock-of-ages-lookin-for-nothin-but-a-good-time?ft=3&f=1045&sc=nl&cc=movn-20120615

http://www.thewrap.com/movies/column-post/rock-ages-heres-whats-wrong-picture-44121?page=0,2

Sundance shorts stream on Yahoo for online Audience Award voting

Starting today, the short films premiering at Sundance are viewable at sundance.yahoo.com via Yahoo, a sponsor of the festival. Through Jan. 27, Web users can watch the films and vote on them for the Yahoo! Audience Award. The winning filmmaker will be announced  Jan. 28 and will receive $5,000.

via latimesblogs.latimes.com

The Daily Bruin :: Television shows important to college students

My dad has mentioned time and again the portable television he brought with him to college. He and a friend would convene each week to watch “Saturday Night Live” and huddle around the ten-inch black and white screen.

via www.dailybruin.com

The secrets behind J.J. Abrams' top-secret show... - Toronto.com

via www.toronto.com

The Importance of Being Ernest Hemingway - Video Library - The New York Times

via video.nytimes.com

Melena Ryzik has a drink with the actor Corey Stoll, who plays Ernest Hemingway in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.”

PBS Shifts Tactics to Reach Wider Audience - NYTimes.com

The goal is to attract new viewers to PBS and make audiences think of public television more like the top-tier programming of HBO, Showtime and other channels they are willing to pay for. “Think of PBS and the local stations as premium television on the honors system,” said John Wilson, senior vice president and chief television programming executive at PBS.

via www.nytimes.com

Lost Countdown Season Six

The show goes on at vintage movie theaters - Luxury- msnbc.com

The show goes on at vintage movie theaters - Luxury- msnbc.com.

The show goes on at vintage movie theaters
Experience old-school grandeur and modern technology with the latest flick
By Kathryn O'Shea-Evans, Travel and Leisure
updated 1:14 p.m. PT, Wed., March. 11, 2009

In the 1920s — back when people dressed up to see the latest Hollywood feature — movie palaces resembled cathedrals. They lured moviegoers with polished-marble foyers, ceilings glowing with tiny starlike lights, hand-painted murals, costumed ushers and — the pièce de résistance — dramas unfolding on the screen like a cast spell.

Unfortunately, many of the world’s grandest movie palaces have gone the way of silent films — nobody’s making them anymore, and very few have survived in the era of TiVo and Netflix. Luckily, though, there are still a few operating vintage movie houses scattered around the globe — some in some very unlikely places.

See the slideshow of old theatres... http://www.travelandleisure.com/slideshows/best-vintage-movie-theaters ...and, the Web site noted in the article, Cinema Treasures ...

Movie Review - Watchmen - For a Cold War, a Blue Superhero (and Friends) - NYTimes.com

Movie Review - Watchmen - For a Cold War, a Blue Superhero (and Friends) - NYTimes.com.

Movie Review
Watchmen (2009)

For a Cold War, a Blue Superhero (and Friends)
By A. O. SCOTT Published: March 6, 2009

[Above, screenshot, review in New York Times]

The only character in “Watchmen” who possesses actual superpowers — resulting from an accident at a top-secret government research lab in the late 1950s — is Dr. Manhattan, a blue, bald, naked dude with blank eyes and the voice of Billy Crudup. Dr. Manhattan’s existence is busy and fairly melancholy, but I do envy him his ability to perceive every moment of past and future time as a part of a continuous present.

Remembering Gene - Roger Ebert's Journal

Remembering Gene - Roger Ebert's Journal
By Roger Ebert on February 17, 2009 8:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (277) | TrackBacks (0)

Gene Siskel and I were like tuning forks. Strike one, and the other would pick up the same frequency. When we were in a group together, we were always intensely aware of one another. Sometimes this took the form of camaraderie, sometimes shared opinions, sometimes hostility. But we were aware. If something happened that we both thought was funny but weren't supposed to, God help us if one caught the other's eye. We almost always thought the same things were funny. That may be the best sign of intellectual communion.

Gene died ten years ago on February 20, 1999. He is in my mind almost every day. I don't want to rehearse the old stories about how we had a love/hate relationship, and how we dealt with television, and how we were both so scared the first time we went on Johnny Carson that, backstage, we couldn't think of the name of a single movie, although that story is absolutely true. Those stories have been told. I want to write about our friendship. The public image was that we were in a state of permanent feud, but nothing we felt had anything to do with image. We both knew the buttons to push on the other one, and we both made little effort to hide our feelings, warm or cold. In 1977 we were on a talk show with Buddy Rogers, once Mary Pickford's husband, and he said, "You guys have a sibling rivalry, but you both think you're the older brother."

Great retrospective tribute to Gene from his long-time partner, friend, and colleague…

Film - Turning Richard Yates’s Bleak ‘Revolutionary Road’ Into a Movie - NYTimes.com

Film - Turning Richard Yates’s Bleak ‘Revolutionary Road’ Into a Movie - NYTimes.com.

Film
Kate! Leo! Gloom! Doom! Can It Work?
By CHARLES McGRATH, Published: December 12, 2008

RICHARD YATES’S 1961 novel, “Revolutionary Road,” is far from the kind of property that typically becomes a big Hollywood movie, especially one starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in their first post-“Titanic” outing together. For one thing, the book is set back in the mid-20th century — an era that, until “Mad Men” came along to exhume it, was thought to have about as much entertainment potential as the Bronze Age. The story requires armies of boring fedora-wearing commuters to disembark from Grand Central every morning. The characters wear dopey clothes and drive boatlike cars, and everyone drinks and smokes too much — even pregnant women.

DVDs - Home Sweet Home Cinema - NYTimes.com

DVDs - Home Sweet Home Cinema - NYTimes.com.

DVDs
Home Sweet Home Cinema
By DAVE KEHR, Published: November 27, 2008

DVD sales might have slumped recently, but you’d never know it from the super-duper collectors’ editions and cunningly packaged boxed sets coming out this season, each seemingly more lavish than the last. And with Blu-ray players starting to come down in price, this may be the moment to add high definition to your home theater setup.

Here are some of the most notable film-on-DVD releases, ranging from seasonal favorites through discs for the most dedicated cinephile. The prices given are the manufacturers’ suggested retail; substantial discounts can be found with a bit of shopping around.

Critic’s Choice - Horror Movies on DVD - NYTimes.com

Critic’s Choice - Horror Movies on DVD - NYTimes.com.

Critic’s Choice New DVDs: Horror Movies

Halloween usually brings a crimson tide of horror movies on DVD, and this year is no exception.

From Warner Home Video comes the American digital debut of Albert Lewin’s 1945 adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Gray” ($19.97). At once a slightly stuffy literary adaptation in the high MGM manner and a down-and-dirty shocker that resorts to gimmickry — sudden bursts of Technicolor in an otherwise black-and-white film — the movie seems worthy of the schlockmeister William Castle. (Though Castle would have given the trick a colorful name — Gore-o-vision! — and posted nurses in the lobby to care for potential fainting victims.)

This is a handsome, A-level production, most likely inspired by the success of the Victor Fleming-Spencer Tracy version of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” released by MGM in 1941. The luxurious period look of “Dorian Gray” earned it an Academy Award nomination for art direction and an Oscar for the veteran cinematographer Harry Stradling Sr. But its primary asset is the young actor Hurd Hatfield, recruited by Lewin after a long search to play Wilde’s decadent Victorian dandy, who retains his youthful appearance while his hidden portrait festers with all the visible signs of his evil ways.

Synecdoche, New York - Movie - Review - The New York Times

Synecdoche, New York - Movie - Review - The New York Times.

Movie Review
Synecdoche, New York (2008) - NYT Critics' Pick

Dreamer, Live in the Here and Now
By MANOHLA DARGIS, Published: October 24, 2008

To say that Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” is one of the best films of the year or even one closest to my heart is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition that I might as well pack it in right now. That at least would be an appropriate response to a film about failure, about the struggle to make your mark in a world filled with people who are more gifted, beautiful, glamorous and desirable than the rest of us — we who are crippled by narcissistic inadequacy, yes, of course, but also by real horror, by zits, flab and the cancer that we know (we know!) is eating away at us and leaving us no choice but to lie down and die.