The Pixies’ heyday lasted only long enough to make five albums, but it proved enough time to make the band one of alternative rock’s most influential. Like The Velvet Underground a generation earlier, the Pixies didn’t set the commercial world ablaze, but their records fanned the flames for scores of musicians drawn to the group’s […]
Phil Bacharach
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Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop
Things did not go according to plan. Ratings tanked for both Leno and O’Brien. After less than eight months. NBC returned Leno to the time slot, effectively giving O’Brien the boot. The brouhaha sparked a jaw-dropping level of outrage as TV viewers across the country took sides. If only wars prompted as much public engagement. […]
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Life, Above All
Opening soon exclusively at AMC Quail Springs Mall 24, the South African film is a mostly unflinching look at the enormous and devastating social consequences the disease still exerts in a part of the world where nearly 12 percent of the population has it. The story, while harrowing, sidesteps becoming advocacy cinema by casting itself […]
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Going ape
Norman, 1973. A mother chimpanzee named Carolyn held her infant to her chest as two strangers, a man and a woman, approached her cage. The man pulled out a dart gun, turned to Carolyn and shot the mother chimp with a tranquilizer. Carolyn slumped to the floor of the cage, her hands still clutching the […]
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Win Win
Paul Giamatti (“Barney’s Version”) plays Mike Flaherty, a New Jersey attorney with a struggling practice and mounting debt. When he finds himself with an opportunity to become legal guardian to Leo (Burt Young, “Rocky Balboa”), an elderly client suffering from dementia, Mike stifles his ethics for the $1,500 monthly payments. Promising the court he will […]
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Another Earth
Relative newcomer Brit Marling, who co-wrote and co-produced the picture, portrays Rhoda, an intelligent young woman with a scholarship to MIT and plans to become an astrophysicist. Those dreams disappear in an instant, however, when she causes a car accident that kills a woman and her small child. That wreck leaves a grieving husband and […]
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One Day
Familiarity is hardly a negative in melodrama, however, where its very predictability can be as comforting as a favorite blanket. “One Day,” which opens Friday, understands the role it plays, but it’s smarter and more polished than many of its ilk — and it soars on the appeal of its leads. Adapted by David Nicholls […]
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Cowboys & Aliens
But in one of the pleasant surprises of the summer-movie season, this genre mash-up is lean, handsomely crafted entertainment. It works precisely because it acts as if there’s no joke. You’ve got cowboys, and you’ve got aliens. ’Nuff said. It certainly starts with a bang. A man (Daniel Craig, “Quantum of Solace”) wakes up in […]
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Shallow pals
And if you want your film to withstand the test of time, don’t be tempted to include of-the-moment pop-culture crazes like, say, a flash mob. “Friends with Benefits,” an otherwise springy rom-com, is saddled with two flash mob scenes, an unfortunate turn given how that phenomenon is already taking on the whiff of Macarena rot. […]
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‘Hair’ styles
Inspired by the 1988 film by camp cult icon John Waters, “Hairspray” was reborn in 2002 as a Tony-winning Broadway musical. Following in the footsteps of “The Producers” in an example of Ouroboros-like creative cannibalism, the Broadway adaptation of “Hairspray” was made into a fairly entertaining movie in 2007. Set in 1962 Baltimore, “Hairspray” follows […]