“Charlie don’t surf!” was the mad Colonel’s cry in Apocalypse Now. Today, the same shorthand applies to African-Americans.
Here it comes, lumbering toward us in a few days… The octogenarian Oscars, replete with a resurrected host Billy Crystal, nine Best Picture noms, only two nominated songs, be-gowned starlets and the usual promise that the whole thing will be shorter this year–two hours-ish, they say.
Since it found success with The Blair Witch Project in ‘99, “found footage” as a genre continues to find…itself. With Blair and Paranormal Activity, its purpose was authenticity.
Here we are, up to the waist in the award’s season, but almost no one honors the truly terrible misfires. We’re not going after the obvious, just-barely-there flicks–like The Human Centipede, for instance–but the high profile, often star-driven vehicles like The Green Hornet, an unparalleled yick-fest.
Harry Pott–I mean, Daniel Radcliffe–stars in The Woman in Black, a movie better known for showcasing the world’s most famous boy wizard in what’s officially his first adult on-screen role since the J.K. Rowling-penned series.
Film Review / We get so few dramas about real culture icons, we should rejoice when an eccentric director like David Cronenberg gives us such a fascinating one: the relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. The film examines the friendship, and then falling out, between the two indisputable titans of psychology and psychoanalytical methods, revolutionary in all sort of implications, even when incomplete or wrongheaded.
Film Review / Four years after 9/11, Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was published. Still fresh in the wake of the tragedy, it utilizes harrowing images from the day in an inventive way, enlisting experimental typography and a flip-book of the iconic The Falling Man photo in reverse.
The Doris Duke Theatre offers up a month of luvin’ movies in “Dangerously Romantic: Films to Fall in Love With.” Comedies, dramas, fantasies all make an appearance these next two weeks, one with a complete real-life dinner, in celebration of Cupid’s month. The Weekly, lovers ourselves, checked out a few of them, and comments on the whole batch.
Steven Soderbergh movies are well-made. Always.
Superbly acted, elliptically-plotted and visually candid, Shame, starring the priapic Michael Fassbender and a surprising Carey Mulligan (Drive), is getting all the world’s press because of Fassbender’s sometimes nudity and portrayal of sex-as-Hell. That is to say, it’s about the hellish world of a sex addict, New York division.
Set during the 1937 Japanese siege of Nanking, The Flowers of War pivots around two groups of very different Chinese women who must rely on the stereotypical drunken Western rogue male, played by Christian Bale, to rescue them from a fate worse than death. Given that one group is a band of famous whores, the Ladies of the Qin Huai River’s Jade Paradise, and the second consists of a dozen helpless convent girls, you might think we’re in for some mildly titillating banter, a scary moment or two, sealed by a chaste kiss.
A film named Carnage directed by Roman Polanski–the man who gave us Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown and a scandal over his rape of a 13 year old girl–would seem to raise expectations in predictable ways. Oh boy, you might think.
My first, and pretty much only experience riding a horse took place on a cloudy day on a worn-down dirt road outside a tiny French village called Borderune. I rode alongside my girlfriend and a small posse of old French ladies, taking in the beautiful countryside, when our guide began galloping ahead of us, causing all of our horses to do the same.
In The Iron Lady–good, if slightly muddled, slightly too long–Meryl Streep (a Golden Globe winner for this role) gives the best film performance since Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot. And she keeps on giving.
Let’s begin at the end. The screen cuts black.
In Young Adult, Charlize Theron plays Mavis Gary, one of the most loathsome human beings to ever walk the Earth in couture high heels. She’s a semi-successful young adult novelist renowned for a series of books written for teenage girls about high school society, a franchise that is on its last legs.
Sober up from the cray shenanigans of Mission: Impossible–Ghost Protocol with the much less hyper, but still thoroughly absorbing, chess game of a thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Adapted from John le Carré’s classic ‘60s Cold War thriller, the film follows secret agents who conduct dry, British espionage/cat-and-mouse games without shiny BMW prototypes or gravity-defying glue gloves.
I have a special spot in my heart for Cameron Crowe. Over the years, he’s taught me how to be one of many messy teens (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), woo someone with a stereo (Say Anything), be a directionless twenty-something (Singles), question your job and its purpose (Jerry Maguire), all while belting every word to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” (Almost Famous).
Until its last quarter hour, you won’t find a better, more beautifully realized, more intricate film than helmer David Fincher’s English-language version of writer Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo–the runaway best-seller pulp potboiler made into a Swedish film (also excellent) two years ago. The first hour is near-perfection in laying out Larsson’s rather old-fashioned plot in terms of 2lst-century cinematic techniques–which this film buff, anyway, thinks are well-nigh breathtaking.
That I actually enjoyed the trailers while waiting for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was potentially a bad sign. Of course the new “Borat” movie will be simply irresistible, but Battleship?
After what, surprisingly, has been over a decade, it’s become a movie theater comfort to see Tom Cruise determinedly jumping off tall heights and just plain running as quickly as his almost 50-year-old legs will take him. (Can you believe he’s freaking 49?!) Mission: Impossible–Ghost Protocol is the fourth in the franchise, and, although much has been made about co-star Jeremy Renner taking over the leading action figure man reins, it’s still Cruise’s show all the way.
Film Review / “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” As for films this past year, it was more a whimper in between. Within are those that actually had a voice.
Film Review / The makers of the ensemble cast romantic comedy Valentine’s Day, which revolves around Feb. 14, now bring us New Year’s Eve, an ensemble cast romantic comedy, which revolves around Dec.
Film Review / Based on a duo of memoirs by Colin Clark, My Week with Marilyn is a breezy 99-minute look behind the behind-the-scenes making of 1957 picture The Prince and the Showgirl, in which a young Clark lands a tiny assistant job on the highly anticipated Sir Laurence Olivier comedy and an unexpected glimpse into a Hollywood icon’s psyche. But before seeing, don’t forget that just three seconds ago at the box office you asked for a ticket to My Week with Marilyn, not My Entire Life Spent From Beginning to End Forever and Ever Until Eternity with Marilyn.
Given the city’s crumbling infrastructure and rail controversy, it’s hard to believe anyone would want to be the next mayor of Honolulu. But a few do want the job, including the incumbent, Mayor Peter Carlisle, the former Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney who won a 2010 special election to fill the remainder of Mufi Hannemann’s term.
I’d never been to a Honolulu City Council meeting until a few weeks ago. Features, not politics, was my beat.
Victoria Holt Takamine is a kumu hula, a cultural activist and a teacher and has an impeccable pedigree to back up all these titles. Born of an alii family whose kuleana was in Moanalua, she graduated as a hula teacher under the legendary Auntie Maiki Aiu Lake and taught hundreds of students in her own halau (Pua Alii ‘Ilima) and at the University of Hawaii.
On April 25, a state judge dismissed trespassing charges against a Kauai man after finding that he had been exercising traditional native Hawaiian rights hunting wild pigs on private land. Kui Palama, 28, was arrested on Jan.
The city plans to dish out $3.5 million from its Affordable Housing Fund and either purchase or renovate a structure to provide transitional housing for Honolulu’s special needs homeless population. “Our community has invested considerable effort and resources in addressing homelessness,” Mayor Peter Carlisle said in a statement, “but there remains a population whose disabilities or chronic conditions make it difficult for them to participate in traditional shelter programs.” Carlisle is referring to those homeless with mental illnesses, addictions and physical disabilities.
Makaweli Poi faces an uncertain future after its owner, a corporate subsidiary of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) ordered the West Kauai mill to suspend operations May 23. Mona Bernardino, chief operating officer of the corporation, Hiipoi LLC, says the move to shut down Makaweli Poi was prompted mainly by financial concerns.
A resolution adopted by the City Council will solidify an agreement between the City and County of Honolulu and the University of Hawaii Water Resources Research Center (UH-WRRC) to conduct an analysis of impacts from ocean sewer outfalls on the marine environments off of Oahu. The city will pay UH-WRRC as much as $2.5 million for biological and sediment studies in portions between now and June 30, 2017 .
Along with the deep, verdant growth of spring sprouts an unyielding desire to spend more time in the open air. That’s why it should come as no surprise that National Bike Month falls in the sun-drenched time of May.
Of the many letters you publish against rail, how many offer an alternative that won’t send us into further economic demise? Billions of gallons of oil are imported for us from every oil-producing nation on this planet so that we can buy billions of gallons of gasoline.
TheBus is taking a back seat to rail. At the May 3 Downtown Neighborhood Board meeting, an audience member asked city Transportation Director Wayne Yoshioka when we could expect the bus route cancellations and changes to be reversed.
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