At some as-yet-undefined point in the history of the 20th century, alongside the invention of the television, the atomic bomb and The Sonny and Cher Show, we began to look at our own culture with less earnestness. Or so we’ve been told. The story goes that we became culturally self conscious and our lexicon became […]
David Fellerath
Bio: David Fellerath is INDY Week's culture and sports editor.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/dfellerath
Posted inFilm & Television
Last anybody heard, Main Street U.S.A. is scheduled to begin production mid-May
Bull Durham was a witty, literate film that helped establish Kevin Costner as Hollywood’s top leading man and launched the careers of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins as the power couple of Hollywood’s liberal smart set. Now if the persistent promises and rumors pan out, Oscar nominees Amy Adams and Philip Seymour Hoffman could become […]
Posted inFilm & Television
The coming of the Lord
You can’t always judge a work of art by the response it generates. Moby Dick was ignored when it was published, leaving the once-popular Melville to spend the rest of his life working a civil service job on the New York docks. Emily Dickinson never read Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, but she said she heard […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Coming to America
For those who resist formulaic feel-good movies, The World’s Fastest Indian presents something of a dare. This is a story about men and their toys–exactly the people who may sneer at the film’s misty-eyed sentimentality. Despite director Roger Donaldson’s almost pathological need to charm and cloy, his account of a real-life New Zealand speed freak […]
Posted inArt
The Black Panthers revisioned
Last week when mourners remembered the graceful and brave wife of Martin Luther King, white conservatives were disappointed to discover that the passing of Coretta Scott King and the passage of time had not gotten them off the hook with black Americans. A movement that was once dangerous, radical and of urgent interest to the […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Nothing left to lose
Deep in the heart of Freedomland, there’s a good movie trying to be free. That film coulda been a contender, with a pair of strong performances by Edie Falco and Samuel L. Jackson anchoring a tough tale adapted by Richard Price from his own novel. Price has a long, smart résumé that includes Clockers, Sea […]
Posted inUncategorized
The Trials of Darryl Hunt
For the second consecutive year, North Carolina’s justice system has come under the microscope of a well-regarded documentary film. Last year, two highly regarded films examined different cases. The Staircase looked at the failure of Michael Peterson’s high-priced murder defense, while After Innocence spotlighted Durham’s Ronald Cotton, a man who was wrongly convicted of rape, […]
Posted inFilm & Television
A week in sun and snow
This year at Sundance, long-simmering resentments finally erupted among industry bigwigs. Todd McCarthy, the chief critic of the trade publication Variety, laid into the festival with a rant that attacked everything from the quality of the films to the lack of comfortable seating. Grousing about Sundance is an annual ritual, but even if the festival […]
Posted inFilm & Television
For Ramin Bahrani, N.C. native and one of the newest faces in world cinema, the work never stops
Ramin Bahrani’s parents were apprehensive about their son’s desire to be a filmmaker. “Initially they were concerned that I meant Hollywoodthat lifestyle of sex, violence and drugs,” says the 30-year-old North Carolina native. But Bahrani’s parents, who’d settled in Winston-Salem after leaving Iran in 1968, long ago came to understand that their son was interested […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Cackalackydance
The Slamdance Film Festival has always trotted along behind Robert Redford’s Sundance fest. While other competitors have come and gone, Slamdance has persevered as the primary Sundance alternative and a necessary second-guesser to the tastes of the Sundance programmers. As recently as last year, Mad Hot Ballroom received its blastoff from the Slamdance launch pad […]
