Author: Steven Strauss

A Weekend in the Cinema: GET OUT

On By Steven StraussIn Remember All the Movies, Terry, We'd Go SeeLeave a comment

After looking at the slate of wide releases for this past weekend, I initially decided to skip my recently launched “A Weekend in the Cinema” series out of a sheer lack of desire to see more than one of the movies (no offense to Collide and Rock Dog – an animated flick literally about a rock-and-roll playing dog – but like, nah b)…that is, until I actually saw the sole offering of interest, Get Out.

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Movie Roundup (Tweet-of-Consciousness)

On By Steven StraussIn Remember All the Movies, Terry, We'd Go SeeLeave a comment

THIS WEEK’S LINEUP
A United Kingdom (Amma Asante)
Alone in Berlin (Vincent Perez)
American Honey (Andrea Arnold)
Fences (Denzel Washington) / It’s Only the End of the World (Xavier Dolan)
The Founder (John Lee Hancock)
John Wick: Chapter 2 (Chad Stahelski)
Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back (Hark Tsui)
Kedi (Ceyda Torun)
Keep Quiet (Sam Blair / Joseph Martin)
La La Land (Damien Chazelle)
The Lure (Agnieszka Smoczynska)
Moana (too many to list, so I’ll just go with: Disney)
Mr. Gaga (Tomey Heymann)
My Life As A Zucchini (Claude Barras)
Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo (Olivier Ducastel / Jacques Martineau)
The Red Turtle (Michael Dudok de Wit)
The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi)
Split (M. Night Shyamalan)

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Theatre Roundup (Tweet-of-Consciousness)

On By Steven StraussIn Boogaloo Down BROADWAY, Look Over Yonder See Them OFF-BROADWAY LightsLeave a comment

THIS WEEK’S LINEUP
Bull in a China Shop (LCT3)
Dear Evan Hansen (Broadway)
Escaped Alone (BAM)
THE GABRIELS: Election Year in the Life of One Family (Public)
Hamilton (Broadway)
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway)
The Object Lesson (NYTW)
The Present (Broadway)
The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart (McKittrick)
Sunday in the Park with George (Broadway)
Tell Hector I Miss Him (Atlantic)

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Now There’s Something Coming Through the Air…

On By Steven StraussIn Missives from Down Under 2017, Missives from the 'River' Road1 Comment

As a longtime listener of Set Lusting Bruce, I was honored when host extraordinaire Jesse Jackson (not THAT Jesse Jackson) asked to interview me on his wonderful podcast, which you can listen to by clicking here. Spoiler alert: Bruce (Springsteen) is the main subject of our conversation. If you like it despite my incessant stuttering, you really should listen to Jesse’s older episodes, and then subscribe to his iTunes network feed. Relevant links are below, but before I go, I just wanted to thank Mr. Jackson once again for the invitation. If you at all enjoy our chat, all credit should go to him; the success of an interview – which are harder than they look – depends waaaay more on the interviewer than the interviewee. 

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THE OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS: The Most Unappreciated Annual Movie Event

On By Steven StraussIn Remember All the Movies, Terry, We'd Go SeeLeave a comment

The Academy Awards are a hot topic right now leading up to Sunday, but very few talk about…THE SHORTS!!! Most people don’t know that the nominated Live Action (good), Animated (better), and Documentary (best) short films are currently playing in movie theaters near many of you (if not, they’re also online and on demand, but everyone who CAN see these in theaters should do so; they deserve the big screen treatment). Since it’s really the most unappreciated and flat out best annual movie event (FAAAAR more enjoyable than the actual Oscars ceremony), I decided to write a bit about this year’s entries:

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A Weekend in the Cinema: A CURE FOR WELLNESS; THE GREAT WALL; FIST FIGHT

On By Steven StraussIn Remember All the Movies, Terry, We'd Go SeeLeave a comment

For much of my life, I’ve made a concerted effort to see wide release movies together in their opening weekends. Though rival studios only really focus on one element when choosing release dates – $$$$$ – unintentional connections can still be forced made between the flicks because most contemporaneous art tends to comment on shared factors intrinsic to the time and environment in which they’re produced. As such, I shall attempt to explore these ideas – BRIEFLY, I swear – every Monday through the lens of the weekend’s slate after having the opportunity to see them all (within reason). Though they’re almost always far superior offerings, because of their ever-changing release dates from city to city, independent films will be excluded from this series, which I’m dubbing “Weekends in the Cinema” (SONDHEIM!!!). Without further ado…

The three movies released wide this past weekend – A Cure for Wellness, The Great Wall, and Fist Fight – are all throwbacks in their own way:

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