Photo: Mark Hancock • he’s thin-skinned;• he’s a big tipper; • he’s hard to work with; • he’s morally sound; • he’s loyal; • he is not a misogynist (“just ridiculous,” he said of that accusation); • he doesn’t care if people like him, only if he’s doing a good job;• he’s emotional and passionate; […]
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Posted inArts & Culture
Thunderstruck
I am a huge Oklahoma City Thunder fan. Kevin Durant is my favorite athlete. I went to his basketball summer camp a couple of years ago and got to meet him. He was chilled — a real nice guy. When I heard he was going to star in his own movie, Thunderstruck, I was interested. After […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Elena
Moral bankruptcy looms over Elena, a noir-ish Russian-language drama that screens Thursday through Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, but director Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return) would have us withhold judgment of the dreary, compromised characters he presents. In lengthy, often static shots, Zvyagintsev urges his audience to study every inch of the bleak […]
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Beasts of the Southern Wild
Just as did director Guillermo del Toro in Pan’s Labyrinth, first-time feature director Benh Zeitlin requires a suspension of disbelief to become part of a world seen and understood through a young girl’s eyes. Just as the creative force of Ofelia’s imagination in that 2006 film fought back against Franco’s fascism, this one, embodied in […]
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I Wish
In the Japanese-language film I Wish, two brothers are coping as best they can with their parents’ separation and impending divorce. Twelve-year-old Koichi (Koki Maeda) is pensive and anxious, not cripplingly so, but enough for him to worry — not without some justification — why no one in his town seems alarmed about living in […]
Posted inNews
Bear clod
BY PHIL BACHARACH Ted is a foul-mouthed, hooker-loving pothead prone to comments of racism, homophobia and misogyny. Ted is also a stuffed teddy bear. That’s the premise, plot and central joke of Ted, the movie-directorial debut of Seth MacFarlane, creator of TV’s animated series Family Guy. It’s a funny enough idea, but stretched mighty thin […]
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Miss Minoes
Tibbe (Theo Maassen, Black Book, Interview) is a newspaper reporter so shy, he risks unemployment because he can’t bring himself to talk to people. Luck comes to his apartment window in the form of Minoes (Carice van Houten, Black Death, TV’s Game of Thrones), a young woman who gives him a scoop that turns into […]
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Cinema Verite
How that came to be is depicted in the made-for-HBO film Cinema Verite, directed by the American Splendor team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, with Diane Lane (Secretariat) and Tim Robbins (Green Lantern) respectively starring as Pat and Bill, the heads of the Loud family. Shooting their every move — every highlight, every […]
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Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion
As kids’ movies of that era go, it’s unspectacular, but also harmless, charming and agreeable. Let’s put it this way: The phrase “a fine howdya do” is spoken without irony. Marshall Thompson (“It! The Terror from Beyond Space”) is Dr. Tracy, the veterinarian in an African village whose natives fear a lion. But it’s Clarence, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion
As kids’ movies of that era go, it’s unspectacular, but also harmless, charming and agreeable. Let’s put it this way: The phrase “a fine howdya do” is spoken without irony. Marshall Thompson (“It! The Terror from Beyond Space”) is Dr. Tracy, the veterinarian in an African village whose natives fear a lion. But it’s Clarence, […]