Tonight: Network at the Artisphere
Sure, the mere mention of Sidney Lumet's opus on television conjures the urge to scream out that one is mad as hell and prepared not to take "it" anymore. Paddy Chayefsky's script was meant as the harshest satire, of course, but there were still only three networks back then. In today's [...]
Tonight: 12 Angry Men at the Artisphere
Cable news anchors smarting over yesterday's not-guilty verdict in the Florida trial of Casey Anthony would do well to sit down with Sidney Lumet's 1957 directorial debut. The dozen anonymous citizens chosen to deliberate over an unseen murder are far more than a "kooky jury." For 96 minutes, Lumet [...]
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival kicks off today, and Jerrry Williams, aka Swamp Dogg, is the guy to see. The man behind seminal 1970 soul/country/R&B/rock album Total Destruction To Your Mind (and 1971's Rat On!, infamous for its hilariously bad cover art, above), has kept it real for quite some time now; as Steve Kiviat writes [...]
Tonight: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at NoMa Summer Screen
Sure, Robert Redford's been milking the role for four decades, but why shouldn't he? In a series of so-called "train movies" playing this summer at the NoMa Business Improvement District's outdoor film series, it's difficult to top the best train robberies ever attempted on screen. [...]
Thursday: Ironclad at the U.S. Navy Memorial
John Adams, Harvey Pekar, Kenny "Pig Vomit" Rushton—Paul Giamatti is a schlub for all seasons. Giamatti features as King John of England in the decidedly un-Shakespearean Ironclad, a heavy-metal take on the First Barons' War which erupted in 1215 after John refused to sign the Magna Carta. Writer and [...]
Thursday: Majesteit at West End Cinema
If this high-strung political drama looks familiar, well, it's because it's not the first recent film about an aging, but steely-resolved European monarch who finds herself trapped between the traditions of royalty, contemporary politics, and family turmoil. Though an English-subtitled trailer was unavailable, Majesteit—a story about Queen Beatrix of the [...]
Wednesday: Blue Velvet at the Artisphere
Artisphere wraps up its series of David Lynch films with the second-most-talked-about severed ear in history. Between Isabella Rosselini's gutsy performance as Dorothy, the pain-loving pleasure-seeker, and Dennis Hopper's turn as the disgusting Frank Booth, Blue Velvet cemented Lynch as a master of the disturbed and ripped the wholesome sheen [...]
Artisphere might be going through a financial rough patch, but perhaps its latest group of film screenings can shore things up a bit. The Rosslyn arts center begins a four-week David Lynch retrospective tonight with The Elephant Man, the 1981 biography of a deformed man held captive as the star of a Victorian freak show. The [...]
It took Éric Rohmer eight years to produce his second feature. Much of that Terence Malick-like break between films can be attributed to the fact that his debut, The Sign of Leo, went largely unseen. Not even the attachment of Claude Chabrol name as producer could give it a good push in France. Rohmer was [...]
Bloody, visceral, and pulpy, recent Thai cinema is not always for the weak-stomached. Such is the case with most of the lineup for the Embassy of Thailand's upcoming Thai Film Week. Spread across this weekend and next, the embassy is presenting a selection of films from the past decade. A pair of sad, romantic dramas—The [...]
