There’s not a lot that the new films 21 Grams and Paycheck have in common, but they do share one thing: They both test the limits of memory. But this isn’t to say that they’re pushing envelopes or breaking boundaries. In the case of 21 Grams, the audience is kept so busy assembling the fractured […]
David Fellerath
Bio: David Fellerath is INDY Week's culture and sports editor.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/dfellerath
Posted inFilm & Television
Return of ka-ching
The Return of the King is what is known in the industry as a review-proof movie. Clocking in at three hours, it’s the season’s colossus and it follows on the heels of the first two, phenomenally successful, installments in the series. There’s no way that fans of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two […]
Posted inNews
North Carolina gets its close-up
Although there are many ways to distinguish the personalities and output of Daniel Wallace and Charles Frazier, they do have one striking point of similarity: up until mid-1997, hardly anyone had heard of them. But in June of that year, Frazier published his debut novel, Cold Mountain, with the medium-sized Grove Atlantic publishing company. By […]
Posted inNews
Knocking on Hollywood’s door
Anyone who’s seen even a handful of plays in the Triangle over the last 15 years will be familiar with Mark Miller and Greg Hohn. The two actors have been stalwart performers in the classical repertory, new experimental works and improv comedy, and this winter, they’ll appear in a multiplex near you–Miller in Cold Mountain […]
Posted inFilm & Television
The searching
Today, westerns are thought to be as dear to American culture as the opera is to Italians, or the ballet is to Russians. There may be some truth in this, but in the heyday of the western–an era that for all practical purposes spans John Wayne’s career from 1939’s Stagecoach to his 1975 checkout in […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Stopping for death
Nembutal is a Schedule II prescription barbiturate. When used as directed, it acts as a sedative for insomniacs. But in June of 1998, a 76-year-old retiree named Sam Niver took 58 Nembutal capsules and put a plastic bag over his head. He was dead within minutes. The bag was there for backup, in case he […]
Posted inFilm & Television
What’s happening, right now
“Everything changes when you learn about money,” someone says in Hannah Weyer’s graceful and empathetic documentary, Escuela (School). The speaker is a member of the Luis family, a clan of migrant workers with whom Weyer spent the better part of a year traveling between California and Texas. There’s not much money to be made picking […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Sweet ever after
Just in time for the post-Election Day blues comes Elf, the season’s first Christmas blockbuster. As resistant as I am to forced holiday bonhomie, particularly in early November, Elf is a jolly, light-footed and ingratiating affair. (That it will probably make lots and lots of money is an issue entirely unrelated to Christmas.) The endearingly […]
Posted inNews
In peliculas americanas latinas
Beginning Nov. 2, statewide college campuses will host two weeks of Latin American films. The festival theme is Sept. 11, but not the date of two years ago. Instead, the festival notes the 30 years that have elapsed since the CIA sponsored the overthrow of Chile’s democratically elected Socialist president Salvador Allende on Sept. 11, […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Secret agents
At the Sundance Film Festival last January, I made a point of avoiding The Station Agent, despite the fact that everyone seemed delighted by it. In synopsis form, this film about a lonely dwarf who inherits an abandoned railway depot in rural New Jersey and comes gradually out of his shell just seemed unbearably saccharine […]
