Like Boggy Creek, 1976’s Sundown states it is based on a true story. Unlike Boggy Creek, Sundown actually is. Better late than never, it makes a simultaneous DVD and Blu-ray release courtesy of Shout! Factory. Set in postwar Texarkana, the film depicts the fear that gripped that the heretofore optimistic town of 40,000 after a […]
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Posted inArts & Culture
Iron Man 3
So leaden are the jokes, so scattered is its focus, it threatens to court disaster. Then, against all odds, the movie rights itself to recapture that Marvel-ous spirit of the 2008 original. It’s almost as if Shane Black (directing for only the second time, and his first since 2005’s woefully underseen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) […]
Posted inArts & Culture
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 […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Sweeney
The Sweeney was a cop drama that ran for four seasons in the 1970s in the UK. I’ve never seen it, so I can’t tell how faithful the 2012 Sweeney is. I can only judge it on its own, and it’s a fantastic crime thriller. As Jack Regan, Hugo’s Ray Winstone leads the Flying Squad, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Argo
It’s a testament to the skills of the filmmakers that Argo delivers a deluge of suspense even when its ending is never in doubt. Up for seven Oscars on Sunday, it was released earlier this week on Blu-ray and DVD. There’s no way the movie industry could have resisted this stranger-than-fiction yarn. The film chronicles […]
Posted inMusic
Fold me now
Ben Folds has been at this so long that the first release of his second band was 10 years ago. “That’s my old shit now. That’s fucked up,” he said, laughing. But even if “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” his first album of piano pop under his own name after the dissolution of ’90s indie critical darling […]