News Rick on 29 Feb 2008
New Line is no more. Variety reports that parts of its operation will be folded into parent company Warners, but it will mean the ouster of contentious studio heads Bob Shaye (right) and Michael Lynne, as well as most of its 600 staffers.
Time Warner said New Line would continue to have development, marketing, business [...]
News Rick on 26 Feb 2008
I can honestly say that Sunday’s Oscars were the most satisfying in years, and not just because I beat out my wife at the prediction game, either. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t very good at predicting: just one pick better than 500 (alas, it seems my rule of thumb “If No [...]
Ingmar Bergman Rick on 22 Feb 2008
Do you love Ingmar Bergman but would also love to see an affectionate send-up? Do you hate him, think his films are the most pompous pieces of flammable celluloid ever to haunt the planet? Feel just . . . feh! about him but have nothing else to do? Well, have I [...]
Analysis & Commentary Rick on 20 Feb 2008
I turned on one of the HD movie channels the other day — I love HD! — and there’s Al Lettieri, lying in a veterinarian’s office, menacingly fingering a little black kitten. “Don’t kill that cat,” I want to scream, but he doesn’t. Not yet, anyway. Big Al is one of the [...]
Review Rick on 19 Feb 2008
Note: this is part of a series which began here.
My wife and I have this huge disagreement over Fellini. She thinks he’s an over-the-top hack who’s never met a plot he liked. She’s seen pictures of painted dwarves, overweight, dancing whores, and strange conga-lines snaking about under a patently fake, Italian moon. [...]
News Rick on 18 Feb 2008
Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1922 - 2008
French writer and director Alain Robbe-Grillet has died. Although he is perhaps best-known among cinephiles as the screenwriter for Alain Resnais’ masterpiece Last Year in Marienbad, he directed several films on his own, including Trans-Europe-Express (1963) and Eden and After (1970). Robbe-Grillet was also an influential [...]
News Rick on 16 Feb 2008
Yet another party has sued New Line over a cut of the receipts from The Lord of the Rings — heirs of the Tolkien estate and a group of publishers has sued for at least $150 million. According to the New York Times, the suit alleges that
“they have never received a penny from a [...]
Analysis & Commentary Rick on 15 Feb 2008
Warning: There be spoilers ahead!
Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood explores themes that include the dynamics between fathers and sons, the corrosive effects of greed, and the role of religion in the rise of industrial capitalism. This last is perhaps the most striking, but it’s also the most misunderstood. It’s been [...]
News Rick on 13 Feb 2008
Japanese director Kon Ichikawa is dead at 92. A contemporary of Akira Kurosawa, Ichikawa directed his first feature,in 1946 and his last in 2006. He began his career in the animation department at what would become Toho studios, and moved to assistant director of live pictures in 1935 before making A Girl [...]
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