Is there a more daring, death-defying filmmaker than Werner Herzog? Although he’s now 63 years old, Herzog remains astonishingly productive and continues to court danger in our planet’s most remote outposts. Grizzly Man, his film about a man who lived and died among the Kodiak brown bears of Alaska, recently completed a successful theatrical run. […]
David Fellerath
Bio: David Fellerath is INDY Week's culture and sports editor.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/dfellerath
Posted inFilm & Television
Looking homeward
Tim Kirkman sounds exhausted and exhilarated on the telephone. It’s Thursday evening, the night before an exciting and not-easily realized landmark: the simultaneous opening of an intensely personal and lovingly crafted film in New York City and Los Angeles. Kirkman has just finished a late meal, and he’s also gotten some thrilling news: a good […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Woman on fire
Tony Scott’s Domino, a “sort of” true story about a Hollywood princess turned bounty hunter named Domino Harvey, is exactly the kind of thing that cultural conservatives have in mind when they complain about Hollywood’s glamorization of immorality. It’s also the kind of cinematic overkill that incense-burners have in mind when we complain about the […]
Posted inFilm & Television
The misfits
Last Friday night I went to Raleigh’s Mission Valley Cinema to catch an opening night screening of Serenity, Joss Whedon’s new feature film based on his much-lamented television series Firefly. I was there to join members of a fan club who’d held an informal convention in Raleigh to celebrate the film’s opening. For those such […]
Posted inFilm & Television
The killer inside
A History of Violence opens with a dazzling scene as we meet two menacing thugs checking out of a cheap motel. They loiter near their convertible for a few moments, then the older man walks off-screen to the motel’s office to check out. Meanwhile, the younger goon drives the car slowly down to the office. […]
Posted inNews
Movie Spotlight
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride is set in 19th century Europe, and, indeed, story creators Burton, John August, Pamela Pettler and Caroline Thompson drew from Russian Jewish folk tales of that period to come up with their story of Victor, a young (and implicitly Jewish) man who is betrothed to Victoria, the daughter of impoverished aristocrats. […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Wild things
In a year of great nature films like Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill and March of the Penguins, Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man may be the capper. It’s about a bear fancier named Timothy Treadwell who, along with his girlfriend Amie Huguenard, was attacked and eaten by a desperately hungry bear that was behind in his […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Soldiers’ stories
There’s an extraordinary scene midway through Occupation: Dreamland in which a captain addresses a staff meeting of junior officers in Falluja. Between expectorations of tobacco into a water bottle, Capt. Terence Caliguire asks his lieutenants a series of rhetorical questions. What are we protecting? What are we securing? His questions are met with silence, and […]
Posted inGuides
Children of Marx and Coca-Cola
As the quiet and stifling North Carolina summer gives way to longer shadows and darkening leaves, the year-round residential film-lovers look to area campuses for fresh and diverse film offerings, often free of charge or nominally priced. Townie cinephiles are hidden beneficiaries of the largesse of well-funded film faculties at local educational institutions. However, it […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Return of the native
When I reached Phil Morrison last week, he’d just returned home to New York from an Edinburgh screening of Junebug that was part of that Scottish city’s renowned theater festival. “They just really got it,” Morrison reports happily. “‘What is a junebug?’ was the only thing I needed to explain to anybody.” Even without a […]
