As aficionados of Puppy Bowl can attest, attaching stories to the comings and goings of animals is surefire entertainment. Veteran nature filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert pitch their documentary, The Last Lions, as a single-mother weepie-thriller about a lioness and her cubs with an impassioned psychological commentary, majestically intoned by…
If Jane Eyre is not the greatest of the Great Books with a permanent position on required-reading lists, it may be the most frequently filmed: At least ten cinematic versions of the story have been made, dating back to the dawn of the silent era — more, if you count…
Cheerfully diffident, garrulous yet uninflected, blithely self-absorbed, the mumblecore brand proliferates: Last year’s star vehicles Greenberg and Cyrus introduced the concept of mega-mumble. The low-budget musical Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench pioneered mumble-chord; Tiny Furniture was part psycho-drumble, part sit-cumble. Premiering with the latter at last spring’s South…
In a way, there’s nothing sadder than obsolescence, a thing no longer useful left to fall into misuse and disrepair — and there’s maybe no better example of that than the pay phone. That’s why, for the past couple of weeks, we’ve been highlighting one Sad Payphone of the Week,…
Given the rigid tropes that govern pretty much all high-budget movies about high school, it’s sometimes hard to believe that the people who write and direct them ever actually went to high school. You’ve got the group activities fictional students inexplicably give a shit about, the 25-year-old actors who look…
Sammi, the psychotic drama bomb is back–and within the first thirty seconds of this episode, Ronnie has already returned to his usual sniffling shit-show behavior. Between his slamming of sliding doors, turning pale, mumbling and pouting, Ronnie is a tantrum-throwing mess. The Situation makes everything worse by imitating the chokehold…
Hulu’s latest thematic bundling of its online TV content takes the form of a bracket trying to determine the best show on TV. It’s a great idea, generally, but it depends on fan voting. So, get excited for the finals showdown between Glee and Modern Family. As with all brackets,…
Last night, something happened that might have long-suffering Boulder art-film lovers rocking in their plush seats with joy: The bright, shiny Boedecker Theater at the Dairy center for the Arts opened to the public for its first state-of-the-art digital screening, featuring the 50th-anniversary restored version of Jean-Luc Godard’s classic Breathless,…
It’s probably safe to say that your worldly possessions won’t be destroyed in an apocalypse on December 21, 2012 (659 days from this publication date, if you weren’t counting), as professed by conspiracy theorists cashing in on the end of the Mayan calendar. And 2012: The True Mayan Prophecy, a…
In The Adjustment Bureau, screenwriter George Nolfi’s directorial debut (an extremely loose adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1954 short story “Adjustment Team”), Matt Damon plays David Norris, a Brooklyn-born, bar-fight-prone congressman rocketing to the front of a Senate race apparently on the strength of his charisma and the idealism of…
Ink still wet on his MIT degree, Matt Franklin (Topher Grace) is back in hometown Los Angeles, waiting for his future to clarify itself while he loiters behind the counter at Suncoast Video, hawking VHSes of Harry and the Hendersons because it’s, like, totally 1988. Inspiration comes when Matt re-encounters…
Last night, Hollywood engaged in its yearly back-pat, bestowing little gold statues on those who brought the greatest dignity to the big screen last year. Amidst all that pomp and circumstance, it can be easy to forget that, as amazing as Natalie Portman was in Black Swan, she was also…
While the rest of America was at home watching the film establishment’s glitzy annual circle jerk, where it elaborately congratulates itself on a year of acceptable filmmaking, my girlfriend and I were in an otherwise empty Chez Artist watching one of the worst indie films I expect to see this…
If you’re a regular reader of Westword, the that headline should’ve tipped you off that now — right this very second — is prime time to vote in our annual Best of Denver Readers’ Poll, the populist sidebar to our own picks of our favorite people, places, songs and inanimate…
Bart Simpson was arbitrarily declared 32 years old today by Twitter trends, a designation that had something to do with the release of the first episode of The Simpsons in 1989 plus Bart’s age, which has always been ten years old. Except the show debuted on December 17, 1989 as…
This weekend, the best and worst of 2010 in film will be categorically determined (right…) by the Academy and Golden Raspberry Awards, respectively. And while statues are nice, everyone knows that money guides filmmaking to a much greater degree than accolades. So we were wondering — does the movie-going public…
Andy Libertone and Rob Watt. On the west side of Spark, Andy Libertone: Old Walls, New Floors includes the artist’s bas-reliefs from the ’70s and his recent freestanding sculptures — hence the old walls and new floors of the title. Though Libertone’s been around for decades, most of these early…
Denver the Last Dinosaur went through a two-season run back in the late ’80s. The show centered on a studiously diverse group of kids in L.A. who hatch a giant dino egg by crashing a BMX bike into it. They name their new pal Denver, and learning opportunities ensue. It’s…
One of last year’s best films, Lee Chang-dong’s rending, hyperventilating followup to 2002’s Oasis focuses on Shin-ae (Jeon Do-yeon), a willowy, not-too-pretty young mother relocating to the obscure burg her dead husband came from, for obscure reasons. Reserved and cagey, Shin-ae herself remains a mystery, as she resists the gang…
Rick and Fred (Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis) are two domesticated husbands whose long marriages (to Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate, respectively) have achieved somnolent routine in suburban Providence, Rhode Island. Yet the wives worry. Rick is a girl watcher; Fred masturbates in the privacy of their parked Honda Odyssey…
Paramount, the distributor of David O. Russell’s The Fighter, celebrated its Best Director Oscar nomination by placing a “For Your Consideration” ad on the cover of Variety, touting Russell as “the comeback of the year.” It was an odd choice of phrasing, considering that The Fighter, Russell’s first feature to…
Oh, MTV. You are so smart. What better a way to preempt the shit show that is Jersey Shore than with a video premiere from the queen of shit shows herself, Britney Spears. After witnessing the boring breathlessness that is Brit’s “Hold It Against Me,” we pick back up at…
