The stars of Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” – Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke and Ellar Coltrane – age in real time in this one-of-a-kind nearly three-hour film. “Boyhood,” which opened Friday, July 11, was shot in short annual increments over a dozen years so the effect as you watch the actors … [Read More]
The jukebox musical “Jersey Boys” about 1960’s rock group the Four Seasons is still going strong on Broadway, where it won four Tony Awards, including for best musical and for John Lloyd Young, who played lead singer Frankie Valli. And fans still swoon over Valli’s falsetto in catchy tunes … [Read More]
Misan Sagay, the brilliant and passionate screenwriter of “Belle,” was in Manhattan recently to promote the film. Director Amma Asante and actors Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Belle), Miranda Richardson and Sam Reid also fielded questions from the press in separate rooms. Sagay discovered the subject of her Jane Austen-like drama a … [Read More]
Amma Asante, the 44-year-old English director of “Belle” has created a luscious period drama that combines Jane Austen sensibilities with issues of social injustice and slavery in 18th-Century England. The movie stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw in a breakout performance as Belle. Sam Reid, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, Matthew Good, … [Read More]
Welsh director Gareth Evans returns to Indonesia for “The Raid 2,” another intensely, hyper-violent martial arts film that ups the ante of its predecessor, “The Raid: Redemption.” The bone-crunching fight scenes are exhilarating and exciting not only for fans of the genre but also for anyone who appreciates fast-paced … [Read More]
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” is Wes Anderson’s least precious and best film. It’s probably going to be his most successful as well. It opened Friday, March 7, in four theaters only and has already earned over $24 million at the box office as of March 18th, 2014. Fox Searchlight … [Read More]
Just before taking off for the Golden Globe, Martin Scorsese took time off from promoting “The Wolf of Wall Street” to champion another film, global art-house director Wong Kar Wai’s “The Grandmaster,” which has been Oscar shortlisted for best foreign film. (“Scorsese is so passionate about “The Grandmaster” that … [Read More]
Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” is the last major film with Oscar prospects to be rolled out this year and it’s a doozy. As you’ve probably heard, it’s nothing like the child-friendly “Hugo,” Scorsese’s last film, which the director said he made for “personal reasons.” Scorsese and … [Read More]
Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi journalists at the New York junket for his new film, “The Past,” that he was sleeping when his publicist called him to tell him that his new film just received a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign film. The director had just flown in from … [Read More]
Darlene Love performed “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” for the 20th year in a row Thursday night on the David Letterman show, with musical director Paul Shaffer and his band, and then hotfooted it to the Rum Room at the Edison Hotel at West 47th Street for some caroling … [Read More]
“Philomena” is based on a true story about an Irish woman – played by Dame Judi Dench in an Oscar-worthy performance – who is on a quest to find the son who nuns stole from her some 50 years before when as an unwed pregnant teenager her family … [Read More]
Richard Curtis, the phenomenally successful screenwriter of “Notting Hill,” “Love Actually,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” makes movies that are the cinema equivalent of Paul McCartney’s pop hit “Silly Love Songs.” Curtis would be fine with that description; at an HBO Director’s Dialogue recently at … [Read More]