| Movie Reviews Perfume The Story Of A Murderer | | Posted Tuesday, January 02, 2007 3:05:01 PM by Blog57 Team | | Among the films being released in a few theaters so that it could qualify for Oscar nominations before the end of the year was Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, starring Dustin Hoffman, Ben Whishaw and Alan Rickman. But the picture, some reviews suggest, may be too arty for its own good. Jan Stuart in Newsday is impressed with the film's "tumultuous" opening scenes and a "stunner" of an ending. However, he concludes, between those scenes, it's "a bit of a drag." Claudia Puig in USA Today sums up: "stunningly rendered, disturbing to watch, perverse and, ultimately, emotionally hollow." A.O. Scott writes in the New York Times: "Try as it might to be refined and provocative, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer never rises above the pedestrian creepiness of its conceit." On the other hand, Lou Lumenick writes in the New York Post that while the movie has a "hollywood-sized budget" of $67 million, "it's European to the very core." It is, he writes, "so visually vivid you can practically smell many of the scenes." And Jack Mathews comments in the New York Daily News that Perfume "is worth every scent." 01/01/2007 .... | |
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| | | Lifetime achievement award for a screen legend | | Posted Monday, October 23, 2006 7:02:44 AM by Blog57 Team | | Iconic actor Al Pacino is to be honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Film Institute, the prestigious organisation announced on Friday. Pacino, an eight-time Oscar nominee for such films as The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico and Scent Of A Woman will be 35th recipient of the award following legends such as Orson Welles, Henry Fonda, Fred Astaire, Elizabeth Taylor, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, George Lucas and Sean Connery. .... | |
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| | | Ahead of his time | | Posted Sunday, October 01, 2006 11:07:47 AM by Blog57 Team | | Turn on your two-way wrist radio and flip on your fedora: Dick Tracy turns 75 this week. On Oct. 4, 1931, after 10 years of pitching comic strips to the Chicago Tribune and its Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate, Chester Gould finally struck gold -- a tough- as-nails, scrupulously honest cop named Dick Tracy, who was a combination of Sherlock Holmes and the real-life Eliot Ness. Gould was a news junkie and, living in Chicago in the 1920s and '30s, grew frustrated with seeing mobsters run the town. Since most of the real-life Windy City cops didn't seem interested in catching the crooks, Gould decided to create his own superdetective to show them how it could be done. He wanted to call his creation Plainclothes Tracy, but his publisher opted for "Dick," a common nickname for a detective at the time.... | |
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| | | Take the QEW to the stars | | Posted Monday, September 04, 2006 9:19:44 AM by Blog57 Team | | The 31st annual Toronto International Film Festival - which begins Thursday and continues through Sept. 16 - looks, on paper, to be one of the most absorbing, even exciting, in years. It will, almost certainly, be a major preview of contenders in the upcoming Oscars. But then the Toronto event almost always is. The Oscars always set the gold standard in America's booming award show business. And, as always, everyone who went to the Toronto International Film Festival last September had an advance look at the movies that would vie for final recognition: "Crash," "Brokeback Mountain," "Capote." If fame-lovers were so besotted with celebrity that they didn't mind risking a loitering charge in Toronto's Yorkville restaurants and hotels (in particular the Four Seasons), they might steal a glimpse of one of the luminaries of those movies buying an "In Touch" magazine or stuffing a face full of quick sashimi and eel roll.... | |
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| | | Prep roundup: Doubles play leads Newman tennis over Medford | | Posted Thursday, August 31, 2006 11:09:34 AM by Blog57 Team | | MEDFORD -- Paige Burgett and Beth Pyan won their singles matches for Wausau Newman in a 5-2 victory over Medford in girls tennis on Tuesday. The doubles teams of Pam Buntin and Jen Meverden, Allie Kallstrom and Melissa Polzer and Malinda Hoffman and Maggie Passini all picked up wins for the Cardinals. Medford's two victories came from the top two singles spots -- Kim Woletz and Breanna Ruesch. "This time of the season is more about improvement than winning and losing," Newman coach Randy Juley said. "Right now we are adhereing to that philosophy." Newman hosts Marshfield Columbus on Thursday. Cardinals 5, Raiders 2 Singles: 1. Kim Woletz (M) def. Emilie Szmanda 6-4, 6-0; 2. Breanna Ruesch (M) def. Meghan Hash 7-5, 6-1; 3.... | |
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| | | Festival voices: Tim Fountain | | Posted Monday, August 14, 2006 1:03:49 AM by Blog57 Team | | ?Never respond to critics,? was the advice a playwright gave me many years ago. ?It?s like feeding rats,? he said, and it?s advice I?ve always taken, until now. The critical response to my adaptation of Midnight Cowboy has made me break my chaste vow of silence. It?s not that the reviews have been bad (far from it) but because some critics believe that adapting a movie for the stage is intrinsically wrong. .... | |
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| | | Anschutz film company joins with Fox | | Posted Wednesday, August 09, 2006 3:05:57 AM by Blog57 Team | | Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz's family-oriented movie company, Walden Media LLC, has formed a joint venture with Fox Filmed Entertainment to market and release movies. The new venture will create a new, as-yet-unnamed company and a new family-film label, but Walden will remain independent with its own production and development staff. .... | |
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| | | Movies Have Taken The Plunge Into This Imagery Before | | Posted Sunday, July 23, 2006 5:02:38 AM by Blog57 Team | | In the middle of a heat wave, the only thing that sounds more tempting than a visit to a swimming pool is a couple of hours in an air-conditioned movie theater. It's even more refreshing if the two are combined. Just the sight of a sun-drenched, crowded pool is bound to trigger a Pavlovian reaction, lowering a person's temperature by a few degrees. And movie directors know it. Swimming-pool imagery has been present in films for decades. It is so common that Roger Ebert, in his cliché compendium "Little Movie Glossary," dictates his "Law of Inevitable Immersion": "Whenever characters are near a body of water, the chances are great that one of them will jump, fall or be pushed into it. If this does occur, it is inevitable that the other character(s) will also jump, fall or be pushed in." That can make for great comedy.... | |
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| | | Monday's baseball highlights | | Posted Tuesday, July 18, 2006 7:02:03 PM by Blog57 Team | | At Anaheim, Calif., Garret Anderson and Orlando Cabrera hit two-run homers and the Angels won their season-high seventh straight game. Maicer Izturis had a career-high four hits and Dustin Moseley (1-0) won his major league debut, allowing four runs and 10 hits in five innings. The right-hander struck out two and didn't walk a batter. RED SOX 5, ROYALS 4 At Boston, Manny Ramirez's sacrifice fly in the eighth inning capped Boston's comeback from a four-run deficit. The Red Sox, who had lost four of five, hoped to stop their slide as they began a four-game series against baseball's worst team. But Luke Hudson shut them out for six innings while Kansas City took a 4-0 lead. ORIOLES 5, ATHLETICS 3 At Baltimore, Melvin Mora and Miguel Tejada hit run-scoring singles in the seventh inning to carry the Baltimore Orioles to their third straight victory, tying a season high.... | |
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| | | Dustin Hoffman Recalls Auditioning for 'The Graduate' | | Posted Saturday, July 01, 2006 1:04:52 PM by Blog57 Team | | Dustin Hoffman feared the worst when he exited his audition for The Graduate and a prop guy who oversaw his tryout insisted he'd need the tokens that fell out of his coat pocket. The nervous young actor felt sure he'd failed the audition back in 1967, thanks to a few choice words from the unnamed man, but he landed the role that was to make him an international movie star. He recalls, "I went to shake the prop guy's hand and all my subway tokens fell out (of my pocket). He picked them up and handed them back to me saying, 'Here kid, you're gonna need these.'" Hoffman talked candidly about his life, movie career and Oscar wins on TV when he became the 200th guest on in depth chat show "Inside The Actors Studio." (This news article provided by World Entertainment News Network) .... | |
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