Is this movie a comedy? Horror? A—gasp!—drama? Why does Jeremy Renner play Hansel for laughs? Why does Gemma Arterton play Gretel straight, but occasionally for laughs? Why is Famke Janssen so, so, so serious? For that matter, why is she covered in hideous make-up for the most of the movie when she has such an exquisite face?
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Filmmaker forum: New cinema connects independent filmmakers to local audience
Jason Lappa and Jayson Whitehead hope to provide an outlet through the Bantam Theater, which opened in the Michie building’s Market Street courtyard, a space recently occupied by Club 216 (and before that, the original location of Live Arts).
Album reviews: Jamie Bendell, Emperors of Wyoming and Dropkick Murphys
Butch Vig has been associated with a number of alternative bands over the years, having produced Nirvana’s legendary Nevermind and the Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish, in addition to spending time as part of Garbage.
Film review: Broken City
Here’s the deal. There are three key pieces of information that roll up in Broken City’s first three scenes: Billy Taggart (Wahlberg), a New York cop, shoots and kills a suspect he’s chasing; a judge decides the district attorney’s office doesn’t have sufficient evidence to bring charges [...]
Film review: Zero Dark Thirty
The torture debate detracts from a different critical narrative; imagine how we’d howl if the movie whitewashed that part of America’s recent past. But forget the politics. This is a movie. As a piece of drama, Zero Dark Thirty is a marvel.
Film review: The Golden Globes
In the awards show canon, the Golden Globes have secured themselves a lofty place just below Oscar. How is it that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which once called Pia Zadora “New Female Star of the Year” for her role in the soft-porny Butterfly, is now arbiter of taste and soothsayer [...]
Film Review: Les Misérables
I mention all this to give Les Misérables context in the annals of film history. Unlike Playing for Keeps, Les Misérables features a solid cast. Hugh Jackman, a man known for his acting and singing chops, is Jean Valjean, the hero we love.
Virginia Film Festival announces programming with more to come
On Tuesday afternoon The Virginia Film Festival announced the bulk of its programming for the November 1-5 event with special attention to the commemoration of its 25th anniversary. While a few of the choice feature films and special guests are still waiting for final confirmation, festival [...]
Film review: Looper
In 2072, living bodies can be tracked. When they’re no longer living, the authorities are alerted. Pity the mafia, which faces the prospect of not killing anyone it wants killed. Luckily for future bad guys, there’s time travel. The mafia sends the poor souls it wants dispatched to the past. [...]
ARTS Pick: How The West Was Won
There was a time in the film industry when a movie was not wholly judged on its returns, when the merit of a film could be found in its effort to capture the spirit of an important moment in human history. They were called “epics,” they cost a lot of money, and they aren’t made […]
Film review: The Master
With all the hype and brouhaha surrounding the release of The Master, it’s easy to overlook one important consideration: Whether the movie is good. So let’s get that out of the way. The Master is good. Grand photography, lush production design, and big, appropriately showy performances make it [...]
Film review: Finding Nemo 3D
The 3D re-release of Pixar’s 2003 undersea saga may or may not be a bid from director Andrew Stanton to make back some of the cash his John Carter lost at the box office. Or it may just be de rigueur for controlling partner and distributor Disney to slap a 3D stamp on its most […]
ARTS Pick: Blues Control
Life in a big city is taxing in ways you don’t even notice, and sometimes the only sensible thing to do is disappear mysteriously into the woods. New York City’s avant-noise duo Blues Control traded the outer borough sprawl of Queens for Pennsylvania mining country. The result is a healthy [...]
Film review: Lawless
With more precision and presence of mind, Lawless might have pitched itself as an origin story of the whole gangster-movie genre. But like the transparent moonshine its backwoods brooders guzzle down in just such a way as to remind us it’s fake, the movie itself seems conspicuously diluted, [...]
ARTS Pick: The Battle of Chile
Half a decade of global cold war left us with no lack of dramatic subjects for documentaries. To wit, on September 11, 1973, a U.S.-backed counter-revolution and coup in Chile resulted in the assassination of the democratically elected president Salvador Allende. Chilean director Patricio [...]
TV previews: “Robot Chicken,” “Katie,” and “The Voice”
“Robot Chicken DC Comics Special” Sunday midnight, Adult Swim Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice, a bunch of nerds and geek-loving Hollywood stars teamed up to bring us the dorkiest TV show this side of “Who Wants to be a Super Hero?” The permanent teenagers behind stop-motion pop-culture comedy [...]
Film review: Celeste and Jesse Forever
When you’re young and in love, “forever” is a word you dare to carve in tree trunks or wedding cakes. Getting older, if you’re not careful, that same word could mean a purgatory of codependence. Such is the wry wisdom of Celeste and Jesse Forever, a romantic comedy whose main characters spend [...]
TV Previews: “Abby & Brittany,” “Gigolos,” and “Girlfriend Confidential: LA”
Race to the bottom “Abby & Brittany” Tuesday 10pm, TLC There is a growing sentiment that TLC—which originally stood for The Learning Channel—has now become the modern-day equivalent to the circus freak show. An endless parade of extreme human behaviors are put on the airwaves—families [...]
Film review: The Campaign
The agenda of director Jay Roach’s new movie is obviously not to mine the finer nuances of American electoral procedures. This might come as a shock or a relief, depending on whether you go into The Campaign remembering Roach as the politically-minded maker of HBO’s Recount and Game Change or [...]
Editor’s Note: The new c-ville.com
We launched a new website today. People are launching new websites every day, but it’s a big deal for us as a print-focused media company that’s been on the same online platform since 2006. I arrived at the paper last year from a digital startup in a small market that used WordPress and [...]
Film review: Beasts of the Southern Wild
The feature debut from writer-director Benh Zeitlin, working with playwright Lucy Alibar and a New Orleans collective, rides in on a murky flood of festival hype. And what caused that anyway? The inevitable Sundance-stamped confluence of poverty porn and indie quaintness? Wow, already this is [...]
Navigating the labyrinth of local arts influence
Sneak Reviews has been a treasure trove for local film fans for almost 20 years. (Photo by John Robinson) Merriam-Webster defines power as “possession of control, authority, or influence over others.” Some kinds, like political or economic, are easy to measure, even if that power is elusive and [...]