POSTED // Oct 23,2009 - “I love Mormons,” was the last thing filmmaker Reed Cowan said to me. “I just want them to love me back.” Cowan is the writer, director and executive producer of the upcom

POSTED // Feb 4,2009 - If you embrace movies as works of art, not just as works of commerce, then here’s why you should embrace Coraline: Not a frame of it looks like it was crafted with a thought to who might actually want to buy a ticket. nI mean that as a compliment, and not a backhanded one. In contemporary Hollywood, there’s only one paradigm for selling any kind of feature animation, and that’s s...

POSTED // Feb 4,2009 - Panicked letters have been flooding in about the Feb. 17 (maybe) Digital TV Transition—not to The Only TV Column That Matters™, of course, but I’m always here to help. The following is a compendium (means summary) of concerns compiled into convenient FAQ (means Frequently Asked Questions, or Frost Ain’t Qualified) form. Prepare to have your Fears All Quelled (another FAQ). ...

POSTED // Jan 28,2009 - "The ’90s fucking sucked,” observes Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke) at one point in The Wrestler. He’s referring specifically to the music—how “that pussy Kurt Cobain” killed the era of the hair-metal classics he loved—but it’s obvious he’s also referring to his own life. Once a golden-haired star of big-time professio...

POSTED // Jan 28,2009 - Super Bowl XLIII Sunday, Feb. 1 (NBC)nSporting Event of Some Sort: The Pittsburgh Steelers vs. the Arizona Cardinals at Tampa Bay, Fla. The Only TV Column That Matters™ only knows about the Super Bowl because it’s being pimped to death across the NBC/Universal broadcast and cable spectrum—even with football-centric episodes of Burn Notice, Monk and Psych on USA this week! (Thanks...

POSTED // Jan 21,2009 - Richard Yates’ novel Revolutionary Road was one of the most staggering literary experiences I’ve had in years; I just didn’t see it coming. Sure, I picked it up—as I do most of my fiction reading—because I knew a movie version was on the way, and I had a vague awareness that it was about suburban disaffection. But I was several chapters into its jagged, stomach-punch ...

POSTED // Jan 21,2009 - Burn Notice Thursday, Jan. 22 (USA)nReturn: In the second half of Season 2, we’ll finally learn why Michael Westen (yes, he survived that cliffhanger explosion—you were concerned?) was fired from the spy game, as well as mysterious Carla’s role in his burn notice, and … wait, no? It’s back to Freelance Job of the Week? Saving another woman in distress? With gratuitou...

POSTED // Jan 14,2009 - nIn 1985, a struggling little operation called the U.S. Film Festival turned a corner when it was taken over by Robert Redford’s nonprofit Sundance Institute. The rest is 25 years of snow-covered independent cinema history. nWith the festival’s 25th Sundance-supervised incarnation on the horizon, that history continues to be written. By way of looking back—and wondering what we&r...

POSTED // Jan 14,2009 - That Defiance is not relentlessly grim—even as it’s, you know, still fairly grim—is a credit to director Edward Zwick, whose track record on intense storytelling ranges from the starkly brutal (the 1983 TV movie Special Bulletin, about a nuclear terrorist attack on American soil) to the laughably off-key (2003’s The Last Samurai). Here, though—in the tale of three rog...

POSTED // Jan 14,2009 - Battlestar Galactica Friday, Jan. 16 (Sci-Fi)nReturn: When the first half of Battlestar Galactica’s fourth and final season left off six years, er, months ago, the humans and the Cylons (including the one yet to be revealed) had joined forces and finally reached Earth. Unfortunately, the planet was a monochromatic blue wasteland, the result of a nuclear holocaust and perhaps some ’80s ...