Stephen Gaghan, the writer and director of Syriana, lived in Carrboro in 1989, during which time he wrote fiction, ate Greek grilled cheese sandwiches at Hector’s, watched movies at the Varsity and saw the Pixies play in his favorite dive, Cat’s Cradle. He also developed a taste for UNC basketball. His new film is inspired […]
David Fellerath
Bio: David Fellerath is INDY Week's culture and sports editor.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/dfellerath
Posted inNews
in Europe’s dark forests
This Thursday, just as the trees of the Triangle have relinquished their leaves in concession to another winter, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke will complete a season-long, wide-ranging series called The Forest in the Machine with a screening of a little-seen cinematic gem. Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors was produced in the […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Secrets and lies
From the very first shots of The Squid and the Whale, it’s clear that match point has arrived for the Berkman family. Noah Baumbach’s funny and sad third feature begins in the middle of a family tennis match in which father Bernard and his older son Walt are squaring off against his wife Joan and […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Falling
I’ve always liked Thanksgiving best among the national holidays. In addition to the savory food and family cheer, I like that this day of appreciation for our health and our loved ones is relatively unencumbered by chintz and kitsch. Sadly, that’s changing as Thanksgiving is now, more than ever, merely the kickoff to our annual […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Seasons in hell
The New York theater scene of the 1990s produced two huge and self-consciously important plays. One of them, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, was six hours long and became a lightning rod for gay-haters and religious nuts everywhere. The musical flipside to Kushner’s epic was Jonathan Larson’s Rent, a rock opera that is still running […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Back in black
Back in black A movie about Johnny Cash, believe it or not Regarding Walk the Line, the new Johnny Cash biopic opening this Friday, one thing’s for certain: I’ll never listen to that chugging ballad the same way again. After watching Joaquin Phoenix’s Cash stumble under the effects of speed and barbiturates for the better […]
Posted inNews
Trebek on ice
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be someone like Alex Trebek. He’s on television every night, and every night he marches through the same unchanging quiz show format. He’s a virtual automaton of suave unflappability, night after night. Does he have an actual personality? Is he half as intelligent as the authoritative […]
Posted inNews
For those who work at Wal-Mart, it is an essential paycheck, but it could be more
For the last eight years, my brother-in-law has been one of the 1.2 million Americans who depend on paychecks from Wal-Mart. Ditto for the frail, aging mother of my significant other, a woman who has put in 10 years in the garden section of her store, where she still routinely does heavy lifting and spends […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Sympathy for Lynndie
“These are the times that try men’s souls,” begins the celebrated passage from Tom Paine’s first Crisis paper, which George Washington would read to his troops in Valley Forge. “The summertime soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the […]
Posted inNews
You’ve shopped at the store, now see the movie
With all that’s happening in Washington and Iraq, a muckraking film about Wal-Mart can seem like an arbitrary diversion. Although it doesn’t have the airport paperback sex appeal of Scooter, the blond spy and the war, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price really points to crucial discussions this country ought to be having. In […]
