These are heady days for Ip Man — not bad for a guy who died more than 40 years ago. Over the past several years, the celebrated kung fu teacher whose students included Bruce Lee has been in the midst of a sort of revival with his exploits having been fictionalized in a handful of […]
Phil Bacharach
Posted inArts & Culture
Lone Survivor
Based on a 2007 memoir by former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, Lone Survivor details the ill-fated Operation Red Wings. In that 2005 mission, Luttrell and three of his fellow SEALs were dispatched to assassinate a Taliban leader, Ahmad Shah, near Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush Mountains. After getting close to their target, the team was ambushed by […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Wolf of Wall Street
The rise-and-fall story of real-life former penny-stocks swindler Jordan Belfort exudes a definite vibe of Scorsese déjà vu, most notably Goodfellas and Casino, even if the characters here are entitled white dudes instead of Mafiosi. Like Belfort himself, Wolf is wild, vulgar and often a helluva lot of fun. But also like its antihero, the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
American Hustle
Masking baldness is a small ruse, to be sure, but it’s par for the course in David O. Russell’s (Three Kings, Silver Linings Playbook) loping, loopy and very funny caper set in the late 1970s and early ’80s. The story is loosely based on Abscam, a 1980 FBI sting operation that netted bribery convictions of […]
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Muscle Shoals
Even in what has been an impressive year for the rock ’n’ roll documentary — or rockumentary, if you wanna sound like Rolling Stone magazine — Muscle Shoals stands out. How could it not? The film, which screens Thursday through Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, chronicles the irresistible oddity of Muscle Shoals, […]
Posted inMusic
Do you hear what we hear?
“Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” Darlene Love (1963) OK, the Phil Spector-produced classic is hardly obscure, but a song so rich, soulful and downright stirring can’t be excluded. Plus, it features Oklahoma’s own Leon Russell on piano (back in his studio session days) with a performance that was good enough for Spector to toss him […]
Posted inMusic
Music Made Me: Mike Hosty
Photo: Mark Hancock Leon Redbone, Double Time (1977) I stayed up late and watched Saturday Night Live and saw Leon Redbone sing “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” At first, I thought it was a joke, but there was something about the song and the delivery. His finger-style playing technique led me to discover Blind Blake, Jimmie Rodgers and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
To the Wonder
His Tree of Life in 2011 earned praise and derision alike for its ambitions and meandering, largely plotless tale. It was my No. 1 film that year, but I had no idea at the time that it would look like Iron Man 3 when compared to his follow-up, To the Wonder. Now on Blu-ray and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Amour
In other words, the guy is definitely not the lovey-dovey type. But that unblinking, cold-blooded aesthetic is largely what makes Amour, coming to home video after an Academy Award win for Best Foreign Language Film, so remarkable. In its depiction of an elderly Parisian couple coming to terms with illness and looming death, the film […]
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The Place Beyond the Pines
The opening minutes serve as a nifty precursor for the action, both physical and psychological, to follow. Stunt motorcycle driver Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling, Gangster Squad) emerges from a darkened trailer and into a traveling carnival. As the camera trails him over his shoulder, Luke gets on his cycle, enters the caged globe of death […]