Tag: cinema
Cars 3 floors past predecessor, gets series back on road
With the weight of its predecessor weighing down on it like 500 Hummers, the newest installment in Pixar’s Cars universe floors it back to where it all began, and finds its footing (err, wheeling?). The first Cars films was an amiable, loving ode to small town values (the “Our Town” sequence a damning fist to…
Wonder Woman an epic step forward in blockbuster filmmaking
In the immortal words of Dolly Levi, “it takes a woman!” It’s precisely the lesson Hollywood needed to learn as it scratched its head, wondering how to keep the highly-lucrative superhero genre afloat in a sea of familiarity and waning patience from audiences and critics alike. They wanted something fresh. They got it. Tinseltown has…
Interview: Jedd and Todd Wider on ‘God Knows Where I Am’
Several years ago Rachel Aviv published an article in the New Yorker about Linda Bishop, a woman who had struggled with mental health issues for much of her life. In October 2007, having been recently released from psychiatric care, Linda began to suffer from paranoid delusions about being pursued. She broke into an empty New…
Message Movies: Liking Films Despite Their Perspectives
You’ve got to admit that CURNBLOG’s readers have a deep memory. Witness a comment posted by “Carlos” in response to my recent article on the movie The Promise (2016) and a statement I made in it that said this: I don’t usually urge cinephiles to run after movies with messages for altruistic purposes, as I,…
D.A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop: 50 Years on from the Monterey International Pop Festival
Held fifty years ago this month on the virtual solstice of the Summer of Love, the Monterey International Pop Festival was a dazzling counterculture coming-out party. Its infectious good vibes and series of revelatory performances that soon passed into rock ’n’ roll legend were captured by documentarian D. A. Pennebaker, fresh off the release of…