Given the recent rise in far-right movements across the western World — Trump in America, Brexit and Theresa May in Britain, anti-Merkel forces in Germany — many left-leaning audiences seem to want art to compensate for the perceived immorality around them.
Dear Lord Novitiate is a bore.
As Academy Awards season commences, I’ll be revisiting possible contenders from the past year that I’ve missed. Since the Oscars recently announced the 15 shortlisted full-length documentaries – five of which will eventually be formally nominated – I’m beginning by catching up with those.
Continue reading “2017 Rewind: CHASING CORAL (Jeff Orlowski)”
Like a true disciple of Shakespeare, Kenneth Branagh understands the crucial importance of casting every role in an ensemble with top-tier talent.
Write All Nite will not be conforming to the recent trend of every outlet in the world releasing their “Top 10 ____ of 2017” lists IN EARLY DECEMBER, for a variety of reasons.
One of my favorite sounds to hear in a theater after a movie ends is no sound at all. This silence usually marks a truly special shared experience, like a hushed reverence.
Continue reading “BPM (BEATS PER MINUTE): A Fictional Document of Truth”
Every year, I track all the major off-Broadway theatre company’s seasons to determine whose deserves to be crowned the best of, currently, 2017-2018. It’s still too early to declare a winner, but based on its three revivals this fall, the Signature Theatre looks like the odds-on favorites.
Continue reading “JESUS HOPPED THE ‘A’ TRAIN (Signature Theatre)”
Tony Kushner once likened a complex play to a lasagna. Much like an Italian-minded chef, a writer should try to stuff as many different ingredients as possible into their constructions to expansively deepen the flavor, yet not too many as to make the overall structure tumble under its own excessive weight – a tenuous balancing act that requires precise hands to create such complicated concoctions.
Continue reading “SUBURBICON: When Someone Other Than the Coen Brothers Makes a Coen Brothers Movie”
I voraciously seek out any and all innovatively-designed animated movies, especially those that deviate as much as possible from the customary 3-D block-graphics popularized by Pixar, Dreamworks, Disney, Sony, etc. Given the inextricable relationship between content and form, if artists change the form that these stories take, it will open up vastly different worlds of content, desperately needed in the increasingly-tired animated sector (as I previously detailed here).
Continue reading “LOVING VINCENT: Loving the Animation, Not-Loving Everything Else”
The LEGO Ninjago Movie lacks the crucial comedic focuses of the first two installments in this quickly-expanding series.
Continue reading “THE LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE (Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher, Bob Logan)”
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