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Home » Articles »   By MaryAnn Johanson
 

Arts & Entertainment

The Art of the Cinematic Put-On

When movies attempt to fake you up.

By MaryAnn Johanson
POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Borat isn’t quite a real fake documentary, and An Inconvenient Truth is a real documentary that some folks would prefer to think is fake. But the mockumentary'“mock” sometimes meaning merely “phony,” but almost always also...

Arts & Entertainment

Spring Fling

Home viewing options to get you in a seasonal state of mind.

By MaryAnn Johanson
POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - So you say your DVD player is suffering from a touch of cabin fever and could use a taste of spring? And you say you’ve already seen Ki-duk Kim’s beautiful 2003 meditation Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring, and already sung along...

Arts & Entertainment

Kickin’ Lasses

Tough women can take care of themselves just fine in these DVDs.

By MaryAnn Johanson
POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Hey, Vasquez,” Bill Paxton’s Colonial Marine snarks to his colleague, played by Jenette Goldstein, in 1986’s Aliens. “Have you ever been mistaken for a man?” “No,” she replies. “Have you?” Chicks doing...

Arts & Entertainment

Geek Theater

Charles Ross’ One-Man Star Wars Trilogy explodes with affection for a pop-culture touchstone.

By MaryAnn Johanson
POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Charles Ross stands on a stage, dressed entirely in black, sans props and indeed any theatrical support of any kind beyond some simple lighting changes. In that space, he brings to life the Star Wars films in a way that, to devoted fans, is instantly...

Arts & Entertainment

Cast in a Good Light

Picking just the right actor can make or break a franchise.

By MaryAnn Johanson
POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker. I seem to recall a twinge of dread when I heard the news seven years or so ago that he would be the new Spider-Man'but now I can’t imagine anyone else in the part. It wasn’t that I had pre-existing ideas about...

Arts & Entertainment

The Rest of the Story

Activist documentaries have taken the place of investigative TV journalism.

By MaryAnn Johanson
POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Have you watched the news lately'your local 11 o’clock broadcast, a national cable network, whatever? Did you learn more about Paris Hilton’s legal woes and which team made the NBA playoffs than about real issues that impact you as an American? Real...

Film & TV

Reich and Wrong

Downfall goes inside the fascinating last days of Hitler.

By MaryAnn Johanson
POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - It’s the spring of 1945. Berlin has been reduced to rubble, the Russians are overrunning the city, 10-year-old kids are fighting alongside soldiers in the streets, ordinary Germans are turning on one another with a desperate viciousness. The once-proud...

Film & TV

Not Negotiable

Hostage tries to act like a mature action movie—until it wrecks the vehicle.

By MaryAnn Johanson
POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - There’s nothing wrong with trying to inject some solemnity and sophistication into an action movie. But if you don’t do it right, you end up with Hostage. It’s a movie that behaves like a petulant teenager who wants to be seen as a grown-up...

Film & TV

Jailhouse Wreck

Assault on Precinct 13 is mostly an assault on your sensibilities.

By MaryAnn Johanson
POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - We’re told as Assault on Precinct 13 opens that this is “A Why Not Production,” which pretty much sums up the attitude behind the endeavor: “Why Not steal the title of an old cult favorite and slap it on a shoddy, contrived action...

Film & TV

All’s Fair

A Very Long Engagement combines love and war into a fanciful human comedy.

By MaryAnn Johanson
POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Perhaps only the French, who suffered so grievously as a nation in the Great War, could get away with A Very Long Engagement. This labor of love for Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, based upon Sébastien Japrisot’s novel, combines a particularly...
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