U2’s hardcore fans unearthed an important piece of the band’s history earlier this month with the discovery of an audience recording from an August 1979 gig the group played at Dublin’s Dandelion Market. It’s the earliest U2 concert recording known to exist, containing not just early versions of “Out of Control” and “Stories For Boys,” but also two songs that have never been heard before: “In Your Hand” and “Concentration Cramp.”
Some of the songs later appeared on their debut LP Boy, released in October 1980. U2 promoted...
Some of the songs later appeared on their debut LP Boy, released in October 1980. U2 promoted...
- 7/5/2019
- by Andy Greene
- Rollingstone.com
The Star Wars universe is on a seemingly unstoppable roll at the moment, and that looks set to continue well into the future. After the smashing success of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, not to mention Rogue One and The Force Awakens, Lucasfilm has already begun making plans for their next spinoff, one which will revolve around none other than Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Stephen Daldry is in talks to direct and from what we understand, the project is still without a script and in the very, very early stages of development. As such, it’s unclear if Ewan McGregor will pick up the lightsaber for this Star Wars offshoot, though given how keen the Scot has been in the past, we’re inclined to believe he’ll sign on without a second’s hesitation.
Not only that, but the actor has now been spotted sporting a very Obi-Wan-esque look, while also...
Stephen Daldry is in talks to direct and from what we understand, the project is still without a script and in the very, very early stages of development. As such, it’s unclear if Ewan McGregor will pick up the lightsaber for this Star Wars offshoot, though given how keen the Scot has been in the past, we’re inclined to believe he’ll sign on without a second’s hesitation.
Not only that, but the actor has now been spotted sporting a very Obi-Wan-esque look, while also...
- 1/8/2018
- by Matt Joseph
- We Got This Covered
Kenobi: A Star Wars Story kinda’ rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?
It’s by no means the official title of Lucasfilm’s planned Obi-Wan movie, but one talented Reddit user has taken it upon himself (or herself!) to design a mock poster for the upcoming spinoff. Besides, after Rogue One and Solo, we imagine the Powers That Be will be adhering to a pretty strict title format when it comes to their anthologies.
Steeped in the rich history of Star Wars, this inspired piece clearly takes visual cues from Sideshow Collectibles’ famous statue, which imagined the great Obi-Wan Kenobi between trilogies (read: between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope) on Tatooine. Toss in the famous twin sunset and Redditor ‘Rikard_’ may well have delivered your new phone wallpaper. ‘Tis the season for Star Wars mania, after all.
Inspired Fan Poster For The Obi-Wan Kenobi Spinoff Emerges...
It’s by no means the official title of Lucasfilm’s planned Obi-Wan movie, but one talented Reddit user has taken it upon himself (or herself!) to design a mock poster for the upcoming spinoff. Besides, after Rogue One and Solo, we imagine the Powers That Be will be adhering to a pretty strict title format when it comes to their anthologies.
Steeped in the rich history of Star Wars, this inspired piece clearly takes visual cues from Sideshow Collectibles’ famous statue, which imagined the great Obi-Wan Kenobi between trilogies (read: between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope) on Tatooine. Toss in the famous twin sunset and Redditor ‘Rikard_’ may well have delivered your new phone wallpaper. ‘Tis the season for Star Wars mania, after all.
Inspired Fan Poster For The Obi-Wan Kenobi Spinoff Emerges...
- 12/27/2017
- by Michael Briers
- We Got This Covered
Ask the Dust
Screened
Santa Barbara International Film Festival
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- Much admired by Charles Bukowski and occupying a hallowed place in the literature of Los Angeles, John Fante's slender 1939 novel "Ask the Dust" pulses with the bruised but hopeful poetry of outsiders' yearnings. The love-hate romance at its center involves not only the tug of war between writer Arturo Bandini and waitress Camilla Lopez but the tension between WASP America and the rest of us, self-realization and shame, the skyward-reaching city and the wild natural continent.
Screenwriter Robert Towne, a great chronicler of Los Angeles in "Chinatown" and "Shampoo", would seem the perfect big-screen translator of the influential book, here taking the helm as well as scripting. To an extent he is, but Towne also inexplicably softens the story's noir edge, lapsing into melodrama and hammering at his themes instead of delving deeper into his characters. Despite what are likely to be mixed reviews, the project's literary/cinematic pedigree and topliners Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek will be certain lures when the film opens March 10 in limited release, after its world premiere at the Santa Barbara fest.
Towne's fourth directorial outing is an exceptionally handsome evocation of 1930s Los Angeles (shot in South Africa), with cinematographer Caleb Deschanel ("The Passion of the Christ") casting the proceedings in a burnished desert glow, a dreamy grit like the Mojave sand that permeates the city streets. The film is faithful to the book's tone of dark ache and much of its detail and for the most part terrifically cast. But Towne can't overcome an essential challenge of the material: Arturo and Camilla are constructs and ciphers as much as they are vivid characters -- difficult roles, to be sure. Neither the screenplay nor the actors manage to get far under their skin.
The story opens as Arturo Bandini (Farrell), subsisting on oranges and cigarettes and six weeks in arrears on his $4-a-week rent, ponders what to do with his last nickel. It has been five months since the good-looking young man arrived in L.A. from Colorado, with high hopes, an Underwood and a suitcase full of copies of his one published story. Determined to be a great writer of fiction, he rents a furnished room at the Alta Loma, a residential hotel built against the slope of Bunker Hill.
Arturo meets Mexican beauty Camilla when she's waiting tables at the Columbia Cafe, the downtown establishment where he spends that last nickel on an a cup of undrinkable joe. Their attraction quickly finds expression in cruelty. With a pointed stare at the huaraches in which Camilla glides about the dining room, Arturo takes great pleasure in shaking her out of her haughty self-confidence, arousing her shame about not being a "real" American. A pas de deux of one-upmanship begins, each expertly finding the other's sore spots -- easy to do when their insecurities are nearly identical. In the unenlightened parlance of the day, Camilla and Italian-American Arturo are both "spicks," a point Towne's script stresses repeatedly. It also adds an excruciating bit of business in which Arturo teaches Camilla to read English.
Towne's grasp of the story's existential core is shaky, but he turns the story's central romantic episode into a piece of exquisite cinema: Arturo and Camilla rushing naked into the moonlit Santa Monica surf, their exultation quickly turning to angry tussling. With haunting imagery, Deschanel captures the beauty of the two leads, tossed by the silver waves.
Farrell puts across the conflicted, virginal Catholic boy beneath the swagger, pretending to be worldly while fearfully resisting the more experienced Camilla's bold overtures. The film doesn't shy away from the ugliness of their strange courtship, but their games grow tiresome and never accrue much emotional weight. Losing steam in stretches of flat melodrama, the film lapses into bathos, nearly veering into "Love Story" territory.
Playing a character quite a bit younger than herself, Hayek has never looked more beautiful, and Camilla's tempestuous spirit finds full expression in her performance. Still, the sense of who Camilla is doesn't deepen as the story progresses. For his part, Farrell often struggles to indicate anything beyond observer Arturo's surface reactions, and the character remains opaque, even in a disturbing interlude with Vera Rivkin. Idina Menzel ("Rent") is heartbreaking as the wounded soul who sweeps into Arturo's room like a Santa Ana, all devouring gaze.
There are plenty of tantalizing performances at the edges of the narrative, especially the wonderful, pitch-perfect work by Donald Sutherland (who starred 30 years ago in the film adaptation of another revered L.A. novel, "Day of the Locust"), playing Arturo's dissolute neighbor Hellfrick. Eileen Atkins contributes a nuanced cameo as the landlady with a distaste for Mexicans and Jews, and Jeremy Crutchley makes an impression as informative barkeep Solomon. Providing the amused, avuncular voice of real-life American Mercury editor H.L. Mencken, Arturoıs benefactor and deity, is real-life critic Richard Schickel.
Towne and Deschanel never lose sight of Los Angeles as a naive, impermanent interloper, most dramatically in an earthquake sequence full of buckling pavement and crumbling buildings. The South African landscape is an evocative if not an accurate substitute (there's nary a Joshua Tree in sight). Dennis Gassner's production design and Albert Wolsky's costumes re-create the period with fittingly subdued detail, as does the music of Ramin Djawadi and Heitor Pereira.
ASK THE DUST
Paramount Classics
in association with Capitol Films a Cruise/Wagner, VIP Medienfonds 3, Ascendant production
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Robert Towne
Based on the novel by: John Fante
Producers: Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner, Don Granger, Jonas McCord
Executive producers: Redmond Morris, Mark Roemmich, David Selvan, Andreas Schmid, Andy Grosch, Chris Roberts
Director of photography: Caleb Deschanel
Production designer: Dennis Gassner
Music: Ramin Djawadi, Heitor Pereira
Co-producers: Galit Hakmon McCord, Kia Jam, Andreas Schmid
Costume designer: Albert Wolsky
Editor: Robert K. Lambert
Cast:
Arturo Bandini: Colin Farrell
Camilla Lopez: Salma Hayek
Hellfrick: Donald Sutherland
Eileen Atkins
Vera Rivkin: Idina Menzel
Sammy: Justin Kirk
Solomon: Jeremy Crutchley
Voice of Mencken: Richard Schickel
MPAA rating R
Running time --117 minutes...
Santa Barbara International Film Festival
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- Much admired by Charles Bukowski and occupying a hallowed place in the literature of Los Angeles, John Fante's slender 1939 novel "Ask the Dust" pulses with the bruised but hopeful poetry of outsiders' yearnings. The love-hate romance at its center involves not only the tug of war between writer Arturo Bandini and waitress Camilla Lopez but the tension between WASP America and the rest of us, self-realization and shame, the skyward-reaching city and the wild natural continent.
Screenwriter Robert Towne, a great chronicler of Los Angeles in "Chinatown" and "Shampoo", would seem the perfect big-screen translator of the influential book, here taking the helm as well as scripting. To an extent he is, but Towne also inexplicably softens the story's noir edge, lapsing into melodrama and hammering at his themes instead of delving deeper into his characters. Despite what are likely to be mixed reviews, the project's literary/cinematic pedigree and topliners Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek will be certain lures when the film opens March 10 in limited release, after its world premiere at the Santa Barbara fest.
Towne's fourth directorial outing is an exceptionally handsome evocation of 1930s Los Angeles (shot in South Africa), with cinematographer Caleb Deschanel ("The Passion of the Christ") casting the proceedings in a burnished desert glow, a dreamy grit like the Mojave sand that permeates the city streets. The film is faithful to the book's tone of dark ache and much of its detail and for the most part terrifically cast. But Towne can't overcome an essential challenge of the material: Arturo and Camilla are constructs and ciphers as much as they are vivid characters -- difficult roles, to be sure. Neither the screenplay nor the actors manage to get far under their skin.
The story opens as Arturo Bandini (Farrell), subsisting on oranges and cigarettes and six weeks in arrears on his $4-a-week rent, ponders what to do with his last nickel. It has been five months since the good-looking young man arrived in L.A. from Colorado, with high hopes, an Underwood and a suitcase full of copies of his one published story. Determined to be a great writer of fiction, he rents a furnished room at the Alta Loma, a residential hotel built against the slope of Bunker Hill.
Arturo meets Mexican beauty Camilla when she's waiting tables at the Columbia Cafe, the downtown establishment where he spends that last nickel on an a cup of undrinkable joe. Their attraction quickly finds expression in cruelty. With a pointed stare at the huaraches in which Camilla glides about the dining room, Arturo takes great pleasure in shaking her out of her haughty self-confidence, arousing her shame about not being a "real" American. A pas de deux of one-upmanship begins, each expertly finding the other's sore spots -- easy to do when their insecurities are nearly identical. In the unenlightened parlance of the day, Camilla and Italian-American Arturo are both "spicks," a point Towne's script stresses repeatedly. It also adds an excruciating bit of business in which Arturo teaches Camilla to read English.
Towne's grasp of the story's existential core is shaky, but he turns the story's central romantic episode into a piece of exquisite cinema: Arturo and Camilla rushing naked into the moonlit Santa Monica surf, their exultation quickly turning to angry tussling. With haunting imagery, Deschanel captures the beauty of the two leads, tossed by the silver waves.
Farrell puts across the conflicted, virginal Catholic boy beneath the swagger, pretending to be worldly while fearfully resisting the more experienced Camilla's bold overtures. The film doesn't shy away from the ugliness of their strange courtship, but their games grow tiresome and never accrue much emotional weight. Losing steam in stretches of flat melodrama, the film lapses into bathos, nearly veering into "Love Story" territory.
Playing a character quite a bit younger than herself, Hayek has never looked more beautiful, and Camilla's tempestuous spirit finds full expression in her performance. Still, the sense of who Camilla is doesn't deepen as the story progresses. For his part, Farrell often struggles to indicate anything beyond observer Arturo's surface reactions, and the character remains opaque, even in a disturbing interlude with Vera Rivkin. Idina Menzel ("Rent") is heartbreaking as the wounded soul who sweeps into Arturo's room like a Santa Ana, all devouring gaze.
There are plenty of tantalizing performances at the edges of the narrative, especially the wonderful, pitch-perfect work by Donald Sutherland (who starred 30 years ago in the film adaptation of another revered L.A. novel, "Day of the Locust"), playing Arturo's dissolute neighbor Hellfrick. Eileen Atkins contributes a nuanced cameo as the landlady with a distaste for Mexicans and Jews, and Jeremy Crutchley makes an impression as informative barkeep Solomon. Providing the amused, avuncular voice of real-life American Mercury editor H.L. Mencken, Arturoıs benefactor and deity, is real-life critic Richard Schickel.
Towne and Deschanel never lose sight of Los Angeles as a naive, impermanent interloper, most dramatically in an earthquake sequence full of buckling pavement and crumbling buildings. The South African landscape is an evocative if not an accurate substitute (there's nary a Joshua Tree in sight). Dennis Gassner's production design and Albert Wolsky's costumes re-create the period with fittingly subdued detail, as does the music of Ramin Djawadi and Heitor Pereira.
ASK THE DUST
Paramount Classics
in association with Capitol Films a Cruise/Wagner, VIP Medienfonds 3, Ascendant production
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Robert Towne
Based on the novel by: John Fante
Producers: Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner, Don Granger, Jonas McCord
Executive producers: Redmond Morris, Mark Roemmich, David Selvan, Andreas Schmid, Andy Grosch, Chris Roberts
Director of photography: Caleb Deschanel
Production designer: Dennis Gassner
Music: Ramin Djawadi, Heitor Pereira
Co-producers: Galit Hakmon McCord, Kia Jam, Andreas Schmid
Costume designer: Albert Wolsky
Editor: Robert K. Lambert
Cast:
Arturo Bandini: Colin Farrell
Camilla Lopez: Salma Hayek
Hellfrick: Donald Sutherland
Eileen Atkins
Vera Rivkin: Idina Menzel
Sammy: Justin Kirk
Solomon: Jeremy Crutchley
Voice of Mencken: Richard Schickel
MPAA rating R
Running time --117 minutes...
- 2/3/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Ask the Dust
Screened
Santa Barbara International Film Festival
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- Much admired by Charles Bukowski and occupying a hallowed place in the literature of Los Angeles, John Fante's slender 1939 novel "Ask the Dust" pulses with the bruised but hopeful poetry of outsiders' yearnings. The love-hate romance at its center involves not only the tug of war between writer Arturo Bandini and waitress Camilla Lopez but the tension between WASP America and the rest of us, self-realization and shame, the skyward-reaching city and the wild natural continent.
Screenwriter Robert Towne, a great chronicler of Los Angeles in "Chinatown" and "Shampoo", would seem the perfect big-screen translator of the influential book, here taking the helm as well as scripting. To an extent he is, but Towne also inexplicably softens the story's noir edge, lapsing into melodrama and hammering at his themes instead of delving deeper into his characters. Despite what are likely to be mixed reviews, the project's literary/cinematic pedigree and topliners Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek will be certain lures when the film opens March 10 in limited release, after its world premiere at the Santa Barbara fest.
Towne's fourth directorial outing is an exceptionally handsome evocation of 1930s Los Angeles (shot in South Africa), with cinematographer Caleb Deschanel ("The Passion of the Christ") casting the proceedings in a burnished desert glow, a dreamy grit like the Mojave sand that permeates the city streets. The film is faithful to the book's tone of dark ache and much of its detail and for the most part terrifically cast. But Towne can't overcome an essential challenge of the material: Arturo and Camilla are constructs and ciphers as much as they are vivid characters -- difficult roles, to be sure. Neither the screenplay nor the actors manage to get far under their skin.
The story opens as Arturo Bandini (Farrell), subsisting on oranges and cigarettes and six weeks in arrears on his $4-a-week rent, ponders what to do with his last nickel. It has been five months since the good-looking young man arrived in L.A. from Colorado, with high hopes, an Underwood and a suitcase full of copies of his one published story. Determined to be a great writer of fiction, he rents a furnished room at the Alta Loma, a residential hotel built against the slope of Bunker Hill.
Arturo meets Mexican beauty Camilla when she's waiting tables at the Columbia Cafe, the downtown establishment where he spends that last nickel on an a cup of undrinkable joe. Their attraction quickly finds expression in cruelty. With a pointed stare at the huaraches in which Camilla glides about the dining room, Arturo takes great pleasure in shaking her out of her haughty self-confidence, arousing her shame about not being a "real" American. A pas de deux of one-upmanship begins, each expertly finding the other's sore spots -- easy to do when their insecurities are nearly identical. In the unenlightened parlance of the day, Camilla and Italian-American Arturo are both "spicks," a point Towne's script stresses repeatedly. It also adds an excruciating bit of business in which Arturo teaches Camilla to read English.
Towne's grasp of the story's existential core is shaky, but he turns the story's central romantic episode into a piece of exquisite cinema: Arturo and Camilla rushing naked into the moonlit Santa Monica surf, their exultation quickly turning to angry tussling. With haunting imagery, Deschanel captures the beauty of the two leads, tossed by the silver waves.
Farrell puts across the conflicted, virginal Catholic boy beneath the swagger, pretending to be worldly while fearfully resisting the more experienced Camilla's bold overtures. The film doesn't shy away from the ugliness of their strange courtship, but their games grow tiresome and never accrue much emotional weight. Losing steam in stretches of flat melodrama, the film lapses into bathos, nearly veering into "Love Story" territory.
Playing a character quite a bit younger than herself, Hayek has never looked more beautiful, and Camilla's tempestuous spirit finds full expression in her performance. Still, the sense of who Camilla is doesn't deepen as the story progresses. For his part, Farrell often struggles to indicate anything beyond observer Arturo's surface reactions, and the character remains opaque, even in a disturbing interlude with Vera Rivkin. Idina Menzel ("Rent") is heartbreaking as the wounded soul who sweeps into Arturo's room like a Santa Ana, all devouring gaze.
There are plenty of tantalizing performances at the edges of the narrative, especially the wonderful, pitch-perfect work by Donald Sutherland (who starred 30 years ago in the film adaptation of another revered L.A. novel, "Day of the Locust"), playing Arturo's dissolute neighbor Hellfrick. Eileen Atkins contributes a nuanced cameo as the landlady with a distaste for Mexicans and Jews, and Jeremy Crutchley makes an impression as informative barkeep Solomon. Providing the amused, avuncular voice of real-life American Mercury editor H.L. Mencken, Arturoıs benefactor and deity, is real-life critic Richard Schickel.
Towne and Deschanel never lose sight of Los Angeles as a naive, impermanent interloper, most dramatically in an earthquake sequence full of buckling pavement and crumbling buildings. The South African landscape is an evocative if not an accurate substitute (there's nary a Joshua Tree in sight). Dennis Gassner's production design and Albert Wolsky's costumes re-create the period with fittingly subdued detail, as does the music of Ramin Djawadi and Heitor Pereira.
ASK THE DUST
Paramount Classics
in association with Capitol Films a Cruise/Wagner, VIP Medienfonds 3, Ascendant production
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Robert Towne
Based on the novel by: John Fante
Producers: Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner, Don Granger, Jonas McCord
Executive producers: Redmond Morris, Mark Roemmich, David Selvan, Andreas Schmid, Andy Grosch, Chris Roberts
Director of photography: Caleb Deschanel
Production designer: Dennis Gassner
Music: Ramin Djawadi, Heitor Pereira
Co-producers: Galit Hakmon McCord, Kia Jam, Andreas Schmid
Costume designer: Albert Wolsky
Editor: Robert K. Lambert
Cast:
Arturo Bandini: Colin Farrell
Camilla Lopez: Salma Hayek
Hellfrick: Donald Sutherland
Eileen Atkins
Vera Rivkin: Idina Menzel
Sammy: Justin Kirk
Solomon: Jeremy Crutchley
Voice of Mencken: Richard Schickel
MPAA rating R
Running time --117 minutes...
Santa Barbara International Film Festival
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- Much admired by Charles Bukowski and occupying a hallowed place in the literature of Los Angeles, John Fante's slender 1939 novel "Ask the Dust" pulses with the bruised but hopeful poetry of outsiders' yearnings. The love-hate romance at its center involves not only the tug of war between writer Arturo Bandini and waitress Camilla Lopez but the tension between WASP America and the rest of us, self-realization and shame, the skyward-reaching city and the wild natural continent.
Screenwriter Robert Towne, a great chronicler of Los Angeles in "Chinatown" and "Shampoo", would seem the perfect big-screen translator of the influential book, here taking the helm as well as scripting. To an extent he is, but Towne also inexplicably softens the story's noir edge, lapsing into melodrama and hammering at his themes instead of delving deeper into his characters. Despite what are likely to be mixed reviews, the project's literary/cinematic pedigree and topliners Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek will be certain lures when the film opens March 10 in limited release, after its world premiere at the Santa Barbara fest.
Towne's fourth directorial outing is an exceptionally handsome evocation of 1930s Los Angeles (shot in South Africa), with cinematographer Caleb Deschanel ("The Passion of the Christ") casting the proceedings in a burnished desert glow, a dreamy grit like the Mojave sand that permeates the city streets. The film is faithful to the book's tone of dark ache and much of its detail and for the most part terrifically cast. But Towne can't overcome an essential challenge of the material: Arturo and Camilla are constructs and ciphers as much as they are vivid characters -- difficult roles, to be sure. Neither the screenplay nor the actors manage to get far under their skin.
The story opens as Arturo Bandini (Farrell), subsisting on oranges and cigarettes and six weeks in arrears on his $4-a-week rent, ponders what to do with his last nickel. It has been five months since the good-looking young man arrived in L.A. from Colorado, with high hopes, an Underwood and a suitcase full of copies of his one published story. Determined to be a great writer of fiction, he rents a furnished room at the Alta Loma, a residential hotel built against the slope of Bunker Hill.
Arturo meets Mexican beauty Camilla when she's waiting tables at the Columbia Cafe, the downtown establishment where he spends that last nickel on an a cup of undrinkable joe. Their attraction quickly finds expression in cruelty. With a pointed stare at the huaraches in which Camilla glides about the dining room, Arturo takes great pleasure in shaking her out of her haughty self-confidence, arousing her shame about not being a "real" American. A pas de deux of one-upmanship begins, each expertly finding the other's sore spots -- easy to do when their insecurities are nearly identical. In the unenlightened parlance of the day, Camilla and Italian-American Arturo are both "spicks," a point Towne's script stresses repeatedly. It also adds an excruciating bit of business in which Arturo teaches Camilla to read English.
Towne's grasp of the story's existential core is shaky, but he turns the story's central romantic episode into a piece of exquisite cinema: Arturo and Camilla rushing naked into the moonlit Santa Monica surf, their exultation quickly turning to angry tussling. With haunting imagery, Deschanel captures the beauty of the two leads, tossed by the silver waves.
Farrell puts across the conflicted, virginal Catholic boy beneath the swagger, pretending to be worldly while fearfully resisting the more experienced Camilla's bold overtures. The film doesn't shy away from the ugliness of their strange courtship, but their games grow tiresome and never accrue much emotional weight. Losing steam in stretches of flat melodrama, the film lapses into bathos, nearly veering into "Love Story" territory.
Playing a character quite a bit younger than herself, Hayek has never looked more beautiful, and Camilla's tempestuous spirit finds full expression in her performance. Still, the sense of who Camilla is doesn't deepen as the story progresses. For his part, Farrell often struggles to indicate anything beyond observer Arturo's surface reactions, and the character remains opaque, even in a disturbing interlude with Vera Rivkin. Idina Menzel ("Rent") is heartbreaking as the wounded soul who sweeps into Arturo's room like a Santa Ana, all devouring gaze.
There are plenty of tantalizing performances at the edges of the narrative, especially the wonderful, pitch-perfect work by Donald Sutherland (who starred 30 years ago in the film adaptation of another revered L.A. novel, "Day of the Locust"), playing Arturo's dissolute neighbor Hellfrick. Eileen Atkins contributes a nuanced cameo as the landlady with a distaste for Mexicans and Jews, and Jeremy Crutchley makes an impression as informative barkeep Solomon. Providing the amused, avuncular voice of real-life American Mercury editor H.L. Mencken, Arturoıs benefactor and deity, is real-life critic Richard Schickel.
Towne and Deschanel never lose sight of Los Angeles as a naive, impermanent interloper, most dramatically in an earthquake sequence full of buckling pavement and crumbling buildings. The South African landscape is an evocative if not an accurate substitute (there's nary a Joshua Tree in sight). Dennis Gassner's production design and Albert Wolsky's costumes re-create the period with fittingly subdued detail, as does the music of Ramin Djawadi and Heitor Pereira.
ASK THE DUST
Paramount Classics
in association with Capitol Films a Cruise/Wagner, VIP Medienfonds 3, Ascendant production
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Robert Towne
Based on the novel by: John Fante
Producers: Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner, Don Granger, Jonas McCord
Executive producers: Redmond Morris, Mark Roemmich, David Selvan, Andreas Schmid, Andy Grosch, Chris Roberts
Director of photography: Caleb Deschanel
Production designer: Dennis Gassner
Music: Ramin Djawadi, Heitor Pereira
Co-producers: Galit Hakmon McCord, Kia Jam, Andreas Schmid
Costume designer: Albert Wolsky
Editor: Robert K. Lambert
Cast:
Arturo Bandini: Colin Farrell
Camilla Lopez: Salma Hayek
Hellfrick: Donald Sutherland
Eileen Atkins
Vera Rivkin: Idina Menzel
Sammy: Justin Kirk
Solomon: Jeremy Crutchley
Voice of Mencken: Richard Schickel
MPAA rating R
Running time --117 minutes...
- 2/2/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel
Thirty-one years after his much-mythologized fatal OD in a desert motel room, Gram Parsons is shaking off the gilded shroud of legend to step into the spotlight and claim his musical legacy.
The country-rock visionary was the subject of two recent SoCal tribute concerts headlined by compadre Keith Richards. And this impressively researched documentary, which has aired on the BBC and opens Los Angeles' Don't Knock the Rock festival tonight, should stand for quite some time as Parsons' definitive film bio. It also serves as palate-cleansing antidote to the misguided indie feature Grand Theft Parsons, a semi-fictionalized look at the strange post-death trip that ended with a partial cremation in the singer-songwriter's beloved Joshua Tree National Monument.
At a time when country music was decidedly unfashionable, the Florida-raised Parsons brought a passion for the genre to the burgeoning California rock scene. After seeing Elvis live, the teenage trust-fund rebel wanted only to make "cosmic American music." He left his booze-addled, citrus-empire family and found his place in Los Angeles' late-'60s heyday of the Troubadour and the Strip.
During his brief membership in the Byrds, Parsons made his mark with the Nashville-recorded album Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The effect of his friendship with The Rolling Stones, Richards especially, is evident in the country-flavored tracks on Exile on Main Street. The Flying Burrito Brothers, Parsons' post-Byrds venture, released a gorgeous rendition of Wild Horses before the Stones' version came out.
Richards is among the many musicians offering reminiscences in Fallen Angel. Fellow Byrd and Burrito Brother Chris Hillman is forthcoming about his admiration for Parsons' genius and frustration with his drug-fueled unreliability. Emmylou Harris, whose work with Parsons on his posthumously released Grievous Angel represents one of the most inspired vocal pairings ever recorded, shares her bemusement over the hard-drinking Parsons' lack of focus and preparation on their first tour together.
But resourceful director Gandulf Hennig ventures beyond the obvious talking heads, drawing emotional testimony from not only Parsons' wife and the girlfriend who was with him when he died, but friends of the family and bandmates from the young musician's prep-school days -- who attest to his unblinking self-confidence and sense of style even as a teen.
The only voice missing from the docu is Parsons'. There's ample performance footage but, other than excerpts from a letter, no direct quotes. Still, the concise narration written by Hennig and musician/journalist Sid Griffin (the Long Ryders) is a definite asset, and there's a grounded, shimmering power to the film's multivoiced interpretation of Parsons' short life and still-vital music.
The country-rock visionary was the subject of two recent SoCal tribute concerts headlined by compadre Keith Richards. And this impressively researched documentary, which has aired on the BBC and opens Los Angeles' Don't Knock the Rock festival tonight, should stand for quite some time as Parsons' definitive film bio. It also serves as palate-cleansing antidote to the misguided indie feature Grand Theft Parsons, a semi-fictionalized look at the strange post-death trip that ended with a partial cremation in the singer-songwriter's beloved Joshua Tree National Monument.
At a time when country music was decidedly unfashionable, the Florida-raised Parsons brought a passion for the genre to the burgeoning California rock scene. After seeing Elvis live, the teenage trust-fund rebel wanted only to make "cosmic American music." He left his booze-addled, citrus-empire family and found his place in Los Angeles' late-'60s heyday of the Troubadour and the Strip.
During his brief membership in the Byrds, Parsons made his mark with the Nashville-recorded album Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The effect of his friendship with The Rolling Stones, Richards especially, is evident in the country-flavored tracks on Exile on Main Street. The Flying Burrito Brothers, Parsons' post-Byrds venture, released a gorgeous rendition of Wild Horses before the Stones' version came out.
Richards is among the many musicians offering reminiscences in Fallen Angel. Fellow Byrd and Burrito Brother Chris Hillman is forthcoming about his admiration for Parsons' genius and frustration with his drug-fueled unreliability. Emmylou Harris, whose work with Parsons on his posthumously released Grievous Angel represents one of the most inspired vocal pairings ever recorded, shares her bemusement over the hard-drinking Parsons' lack of focus and preparation on their first tour together.
But resourceful director Gandulf Hennig ventures beyond the obvious talking heads, drawing emotional testimony from not only Parsons' wife and the girlfriend who was with him when he died, but friends of the family and bandmates from the young musician's prep-school days -- who attest to his unblinking self-confidence and sense of style even as a teen.
The only voice missing from the docu is Parsons'. There's ample performance footage but, other than excerpts from a letter, no direct quotes. Still, the concise narration written by Hennig and musician/journalist Sid Griffin (the Long Ryders) is a definite asset, and there's a grounded, shimmering power to the film's multivoiced interpretation of Parsons' short life and still-vital music.
- 9/8/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Twentynine Palms
NEW YORK -- By only his third feature, the misanthropy of director Bruno Dumont is already beginning to get wearisome. This latest effort, a tedious road movie in which a young couple drive around the desert, stopping occasionally to have animalistic sex, is presumably intended to be significant because of its shocker of an ending. That would be all well and good if the filmmaker has something significant to say, but "Twentynine Palms" is ultimately a hollow and pointless exercise. Currently being showcased at the Rendez-Vous With French Cinema 2004 series at New York's Walter Reade Theatre, the film opens commercially later in the spring.
Filmed in California's Joshua Tree Desert -- the widescreen compositions of Georges Lechaptois are quite beautiful -- the film chronicles the seemingly interminable road trip undertaken by David David Wissak), an American, and his Eastern European, French-speaking girlfriend, Katia (Katia Golubeva). Proving the adage about being wary of movies in which the characters' names are the same as the actors, David and Katia are virtual ciphers
indeed, they barely communicate even with each other as neither speaks the other's language.
But they do have sex, and quite a lot of it, rendered in highly graphic but ultimately laughable scenes because the onscreen orgasms are so violent and torrential in nature that one fears for the performers' safety. Needless to say, this aspect of the film, with the couplings often taking place outdoors in quite scenic locations, will no doubt figure prominently in the international marketing campaign.
The film's climax, a particularly brutal episode, won't be revealed here, but suffice it to say that memories of "Deliverance" are likely to be stirred. The director has said that he intended "Twentynine Palms" to be a horror film, but the label ill matches the sleep-inducing proceedings on display.
Twentynine Palms
Wellspring
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Bruno Dumont
Producers: Jean Brehat, Rachid Bouchareb
Executive producers: Muriel Merlin in association with the 7th Floor, Allen Bain, Jesse Scolaro, Darren Goldberg
Director of photography: Georges Lechaptois
Editor: Dominique Petrot
Cast:
Katia: Katia Golubeva
David: David Wissak
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 130 minutes...
Filmed in California's Joshua Tree Desert -- the widescreen compositions of Georges Lechaptois are quite beautiful -- the film chronicles the seemingly interminable road trip undertaken by David David Wissak), an American, and his Eastern European, French-speaking girlfriend, Katia (Katia Golubeva). Proving the adage about being wary of movies in which the characters' names are the same as the actors, David and Katia are virtual ciphers
indeed, they barely communicate even with each other as neither speaks the other's language.
But they do have sex, and quite a lot of it, rendered in highly graphic but ultimately laughable scenes because the onscreen orgasms are so violent and torrential in nature that one fears for the performers' safety. Needless to say, this aspect of the film, with the couplings often taking place outdoors in quite scenic locations, will no doubt figure prominently in the international marketing campaign.
The film's climax, a particularly brutal episode, won't be revealed here, but suffice it to say that memories of "Deliverance" are likely to be stirred. The director has said that he intended "Twentynine Palms" to be a horror film, but the label ill matches the sleep-inducing proceedings on display.
Twentynine Palms
Wellspring
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Bruno Dumont
Producers: Jean Brehat, Rachid Bouchareb
Executive producers: Muriel Merlin in association with the 7th Floor, Allen Bain, Jesse Scolaro, Darren Goldberg
Director of photography: Georges Lechaptois
Editor: Dominique Petrot
Cast:
Katia: Katia Golubeva
David: David Wissak
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 130 minutes...
- 7/9/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Twentynine Palms
NEW YORK -- By only his third feature, the misanthropy of director Bruno Dumont is already beginning to get wearisome. This latest effort, a tedious road movie in which a young couple drive around the desert, stopping occasionally to have animalistic sex, is presumably intended to be significant because of its shocker of an ending. That would be all well and good if the filmmaker has something significant to say, but "Twentynine Palms" is ultimately a hollow and pointless exercise. Currently being showcased at the Rendez-Vous With French Cinema 2004 series at New York's Walter Reade Theatre, the film opens commercially later in the spring.
Filmed in California's Joshua Tree Desert -- the widescreen compositions of Georges Lechaptois are quite beautiful -- the film chronicles the seemingly interminable road trip undertaken by David David Wissak), an American, and his Eastern European, French-speaking girlfriend, Katia (Katia Golubeva). Proving the adage about being wary of movies in which the characters' names are the same as the actors, David and Katia are virtual ciphers
indeed, they barely communicate even with each other as neither speaks the other's language.
But they do have sex, and quite a lot of it, rendered in highly graphic but ultimately laughable scenes because the onscreen orgasms are so violent and torrential in nature that one fears for the performers' safety. Needless to say, this aspect of the film, with the couplings often taking place outdoors in quite scenic locations, will no doubt figure prominently in the international marketing campaign.
The film's climax, a particularly brutal episode, won't be revealed here, but suffice it to say that memories of "Deliverance" are likely to be stirred. The director has said that he intended "Twentynine Palms" to be a horror film, but the label ill matches the sleep-inducing proceedings on display.
Twentynine Palms
Wellspring
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Bruno Dumont
Producers: Jean Brehat, Rachid Bouchareb
Executive producers: Muriel Merlin in association with the 7th Floor, Allen Bain, Jesse Scolaro, Darren Goldberg
Director of photography: Georges Lechaptois
Editor: Dominique Petrot
Cast:
Katia: Katia Golubeva
David: David Wissak
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 130 minutes...
Filmed in California's Joshua Tree Desert -- the widescreen compositions of Georges Lechaptois are quite beautiful -- the film chronicles the seemingly interminable road trip undertaken by David David Wissak), an American, and his Eastern European, French-speaking girlfriend, Katia (Katia Golubeva). Proving the adage about being wary of movies in which the characters' names are the same as the actors, David and Katia are virtual ciphers
indeed, they barely communicate even with each other as neither speaks the other's language.
But they do have sex, and quite a lot of it, rendered in highly graphic but ultimately laughable scenes because the onscreen orgasms are so violent and torrential in nature that one fears for the performers' safety. Needless to say, this aspect of the film, with the couplings often taking place outdoors in quite scenic locations, will no doubt figure prominently in the international marketing campaign.
The film's climax, a particularly brutal episode, won't be revealed here, but suffice it to say that memories of "Deliverance" are likely to be stirred. The director has said that he intended "Twentynine Palms" to be a horror film, but the label ill matches the sleep-inducing proceedings on display.
Twentynine Palms
Wellspring
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Bruno Dumont
Producers: Jean Brehat, Rachid Bouchareb
Executive producers: Muriel Merlin in association with the 7th Floor, Allen Bain, Jesse Scolaro, Darren Goldberg
Director of photography: Georges Lechaptois
Editor: Dominique Petrot
Cast:
Katia: Katia Golubeva
David: David Wissak
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 130 minutes...
- 3/22/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Film review: 'My American Vacation'
Chinese-American women of three generations (and one far-flung family) pile into an RV and take a roundabout tour of California's deserts and mountains in "My American Vacation", winner of the best dramatic feature prize at 1999's Worldfest Houston.
A well-intentioned but unpolished family film playing at Laemmle's Grande in downtown Los Angeles, "Vacation" (mostly in English, with a few subtitled scenes) is another in the durable genre of East-meets-West comedy-dramas aimed at ethnic audiences but not without its points of interest for the eclectic moviegoer.
Screenwriter-director VV Dachin Hsu (whose feature debut was 1990's "Pale Blood", co-directed with Michael W. Leighton), born in Hong Kong and a UCLA Film School grad, creates a labor of love with the family-themed "Vacation", a movie with light humor, whimsy, turmoil and even physical danger, but nourished to achieve a soothing effect on the viewer, including a structure inspired by tai chi.
Venerable Chinese film, television and stage actress Tsai Chin (Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blowup", ABC's "Fantasy Island", "The Joy Luck Club") stars as Grandma Lee, widowed mother of grown daughters Ming-Yee (Kim Miyori) and Ming-Na (Deborah Nishimura). Bossy and ambitious Ming-Yee, a single mom raising daughter Melissa (Sasha Hsuczyk) to know her divorced father is a "jerk," is delighted to have Grandma come from Taiwan for a visit.
A journalist and happy with husband Henry (Dennis Dun), Ming-Na is younger than her sister and more carefree. She is not that thrilled to play host to nosy Grandma, who arrives with many loaded-with-meaning gifts. The sisters more or less call a truce, and the whole gang, including Henry, decides to acquire a motor home and head to Colorado.
They don't get very far after choosing an expensive model and packing it up for a trip of ill-defined purpose and length of time. The adventurers make it to Joshua Tree, Lake Isabella and finally Sequoia National Forest but never leave California. With The Great Outdoors as a backdrop, several family and personal conflicts are worked out.
Grandma dishes out much wisdom and mediates frequently between the warring sisters.
The writing is overly episodic, the humor is light, the jokes are often predictable, and occasionally the choice of musical accompaniment is questionable, but one can suspend disbelief enough and overlook manipulative devices to enjoy Hsu's "Vacation" largely because of the heartfelt performances.
Ultimately, the spirit of Chin's character prevails during what becomes a nearly disastrous trip. She pens a series of bogus postcards to her friends back home and dreams of her dead husband as a young man (Roger Fan), while hurting every time Ming-Yee and Ming-Na go at each other. What's not to live for?
So it goes, the joys and pains of a family coming together. East saves West and vice versa, with Grandma almost dying during a scene worthy of an old-time western serial. Meanwhile, the shores of the Kern River and the towering sequoias are wonderful settings for the gentle movements of women performing tai chi.
MY AMERICAN VACATION
American Vacation Prods.
Winn Entertainment
in association with CACC Investment
Screenwriter-director:VV Dachin Hsu
Producers:VV Dachin Hsu, Cindy Sison, Frank Gargani
Executive producer:Winston H. Chin
Director of photography:Dean Lent
Production designer:Fu-Ding Cheng
Editors:Marc Grossman, Clarinda Wong
Costume designer:Sheri Grider
Music:Joel Iwataki
Color/stereo
Cast:
Grandma Lee:Tsai Chin
Ming-Yee:Kim Miyori
Ming-Na:Deborah Nishimura
Melissa:Sasha Hsuczyk
Henry:Dennis Dun
Ming-Yee-Ba:Roger Fan
Running time -- 88 minutes
No MPAA rating...
A well-intentioned but unpolished family film playing at Laemmle's Grande in downtown Los Angeles, "Vacation" (mostly in English, with a few subtitled scenes) is another in the durable genre of East-meets-West comedy-dramas aimed at ethnic audiences but not without its points of interest for the eclectic moviegoer.
Screenwriter-director VV Dachin Hsu (whose feature debut was 1990's "Pale Blood", co-directed with Michael W. Leighton), born in Hong Kong and a UCLA Film School grad, creates a labor of love with the family-themed "Vacation", a movie with light humor, whimsy, turmoil and even physical danger, but nourished to achieve a soothing effect on the viewer, including a structure inspired by tai chi.
Venerable Chinese film, television and stage actress Tsai Chin (Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blowup", ABC's "Fantasy Island", "The Joy Luck Club") stars as Grandma Lee, widowed mother of grown daughters Ming-Yee (Kim Miyori) and Ming-Na (Deborah Nishimura). Bossy and ambitious Ming-Yee, a single mom raising daughter Melissa (Sasha Hsuczyk) to know her divorced father is a "jerk," is delighted to have Grandma come from Taiwan for a visit.
A journalist and happy with husband Henry (Dennis Dun), Ming-Na is younger than her sister and more carefree. She is not that thrilled to play host to nosy Grandma, who arrives with many loaded-with-meaning gifts. The sisters more or less call a truce, and the whole gang, including Henry, decides to acquire a motor home and head to Colorado.
They don't get very far after choosing an expensive model and packing it up for a trip of ill-defined purpose and length of time. The adventurers make it to Joshua Tree, Lake Isabella and finally Sequoia National Forest but never leave California. With The Great Outdoors as a backdrop, several family and personal conflicts are worked out.
Grandma dishes out much wisdom and mediates frequently between the warring sisters.
The writing is overly episodic, the humor is light, the jokes are often predictable, and occasionally the choice of musical accompaniment is questionable, but one can suspend disbelief enough and overlook manipulative devices to enjoy Hsu's "Vacation" largely because of the heartfelt performances.
Ultimately, the spirit of Chin's character prevails during what becomes a nearly disastrous trip. She pens a series of bogus postcards to her friends back home and dreams of her dead husband as a young man (Roger Fan), while hurting every time Ming-Yee and Ming-Na go at each other. What's not to live for?
So it goes, the joys and pains of a family coming together. East saves West and vice versa, with Grandma almost dying during a scene worthy of an old-time western serial. Meanwhile, the shores of the Kern River and the towering sequoias are wonderful settings for the gentle movements of women performing tai chi.
MY AMERICAN VACATION
American Vacation Prods.
Winn Entertainment
in association with CACC Investment
Screenwriter-director:VV Dachin Hsu
Producers:VV Dachin Hsu, Cindy Sison, Frank Gargani
Executive producer:Winston H. Chin
Director of photography:Dean Lent
Production designer:Fu-Ding Cheng
Editors:Marc Grossman, Clarinda Wong
Costume designer:Sheri Grider
Music:Joel Iwataki
Color/stereo
Cast:
Grandma Lee:Tsai Chin
Ming-Yee:Kim Miyori
Ming-Na:Deborah Nishimura
Melissa:Sasha Hsuczyk
Henry:Dennis Dun
Ming-Yee-Ba:Roger Fan
Running time -- 88 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 3/27/2000
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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