More than just the Hollywood It Girl of the moment, Emma Stone is a real actress, and in The Help, she gets an ostentatious, Oscar-baiting Big Scene in which to prove it. Stone doesn’t need this kind of relic of old-school Hollywood to show off her chops. But this is…
Is there such a thing as a sincerely calculated naiveté? Or, put another way: Does Miranda July have any idea of how annoying she is? On the basis of The Future, writer/filmmaker/performance artist July’s second feature, I’d guess that she must. A fabricator of her own screen image, July —…
Money-back guarantees feel like such a remnant of the old economy. Does the depressed consumer class even expect companies to make good on their advertised word anymore? But maybe the dream of free slices scammed from over-promising pizza parlors springs eternal. At least that’s the game being run on Jesse…
Watching them detox on VH1’s Celebrity Rehab 5 with Dr. Drew, it’s sometimes hard to remember what the twitching, vomiting, weeping, roof-climbing celebrities did before they succumbed to the addictions that landed them on a cable-TV reality show. Some were one-shot wonders, like Amy Fisher, aka the Long Island Lolita,…
The concept of a dive-in movie seems pretty straightforward. You bring the main necessities — swimsuits, floaties, snacks (safely waiting 20 minutes after you eat before entering the water) and a positive mind-set — and the owner of the pool provides a winning flick. Throughout the summer, various water parks…
The latest descendant of the half-century old de-evolution concept that began with Pierre Boulle’s novel, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is an origin story. Predicting an ape-supremacist future, Rupert Wyatt’s film is set in a contemporary America so preoccupied with the Chinese and the coming Singularity that it’s…
This morning I got an alert from Google telling me I was mentioned somewhere on the Internet. Naturally, I clicked on the link so I could read what nice or horrifying things were said. In this case, it was an article posted by my pal Russ Fischer over at /Film…
We get it, OK? We live here too, and we know what’s going on. We’re not even going to mention what everyone keeps talking about. So, by all means keep updating your Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter (and giving us reason to drink), but ask yourself this: Is your bitching going…
A uniquely Freudian entry in the body-switching comedy canon, The Change-Up stars Jason Bateman as standard-issue anal-retentive lawyer/family man Dave, and Ryan Reynolds as Dave’s classically anal-expulsive stoner/playboy childhood friend Mitch. When sober, Dave begrudgingly tolerates Mitch’s wild-animal routine. One night, when both are drunk, Dave admits he’s secretly jealous…
There may be nothing as Old Hollywood as the narrative about a pretty girl summoning up a dose of pluck to triumph over adversity. And yet Brit Marling — the lithe, stunning co-writer and star of 2011 Sundance Film Festival hits Another Earth and Sound of My Voice, who gives…
It may not be on Bravo or have Andy Cohen’s head talking after it airs, but HGTV’s Design Star is just as addictive as any of the Top Chefs, Platinum Hits or Work of Arts out there. The latest season of Design Star premiered with the same panel of expert…
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and though many of you might disagree with that statement because it’s ball-sweat hot (even my metaphorical balls are sweating), it really is the best time of the year because it’s Shark Week. Shark Week! The one week of the year where…
OK, we’re not exactly sure that they were worn on camera. In fact, let’s just assume they weren’t. But whatever, for $20 you could have some faux turquoise chandeliers that were “issued to the set” of Dallas — OG, people — for use in several episodes. Again, not sure if…
As Intern Christina has recapped for us, Harry Potter had a 31st birthday party at Barnes & Noble Lincoln Park Sunday. Butterbeer was enjoyed and Hogwartian festivities took place that were somewhat befitting of a man 31-years-old. K, maybe not. It got us thinking about all those characters of screens…
If you read Gordon and the Whale, then you already know that next month will be our last month as a functioning daily website. I announced the news at 10 a.m. Monday. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t cry — a lot — and listen to Journey’s “Don’t…
In the first scene of Crazy, Stupid, Love, Emily (Julianne Moore) tells Cal (Steve Carell), her high school sweetheart and husband of 20-plus years, that she wants a divorce. She goes on to mention that she had an affair with a co-worker named Dave Lindhagen (Kevin Bacon), at which point…
So much petty drama has clouded the release of Michael Rapaport’s A Tribe Called Quest documentary. One version of the back story casts the first-time director as a doofus actor wannabe who persuades the seminal, but privately splintered, hip-hop crew to participate in a consummate career doc. After two and…
Ditch those stereotypes about girly girls and men’s men and check out what the theater season has to offer in fab cross-dressing, transvestism, drag, travesti and gender bending. These must-sees are either current or future features on Dallas stages — but you can always stream/rent the movie versions. Or see…
As the song in Cabaret goes, what good is sitting alone in your room? Not when there’s a big, wide world out there where you can star in your own imaginary reality show. Shoot, you may already be in one. There are three new reality shows — CMT’s Texas Women,…
Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for Marvel Comics in 1941, Captain America was among the first American comic books intended as an explicit work of patriotic, political propaganda: The cover of the first edition, available months before Pearl Harbor, famously featured the titular costume hero punching out Adolf…
Project Nim, James Marsh’s documentary biopic of the ’70s chimp picked to endure an “experiment” in simian sign language and general neglect, pulls human heartstrings as wrenchingly as any creature feature in nearly half a century. Following brown-eyed beauty Nim, by turns cuddly and ferocious, from an Oklahoma cage to…
Terri, directed by Azazel Jacobs, concerns an obese 15-year-old, a de facto orphan, living in a ramshackle home with a dispirited, perhaps mentally ill uncle for whom he has to care. Although a near-pariah at school, Terri — played by Jacob Wysocki in an impressive debut — is comfortable with…
