Spun Jonas Akerlund’s Spun is a movie for and about Generation Now–the restlessly and relentlessly hip–and all too fittingly, it will have an exceedingly short half-life in our collective cinematic memory. Unlike the more successful Scottish film Trainspotting, which had a believable social milieu and the ornately arcane and profane prose of Irvine Welsh, Spun‘s […]
David Fellerath
Bio: David Fellerath is INDY Week's culture and sports editor.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/dfellerath
Posted inFilm & Television
Film beat
The wondrous and strange creature that is American culture took another turn with the cover of Entertainment Weekly. Three nice girls from Texas, who were once stars in a profoundly traditional and conservative medium, are posed naked as the day they were born. Spattered across their bodies like mud are slurs like “Dixie Sluts” and […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Nausea on a sea of blood
Large crowds turned out to see a diverse and accomplished array of films this month at The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham. Throughout the weekend, however, there was controversy and curiosity about one film that was not screened, a 40-minute Lebanese documentary called Noble Sacrifice that festival officials removed from the schedule the […]
Posted inArt
The World in a Frame
Along with approximately one billion other humans on the planet, Durham’s Nancy Buirski was glued to her television last week when Michael Moore stepped up to the microphone to accept his Best Documentary Oscar. As the founder and executive director of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Buirski had a special interest in Moore’s remarks. […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Up the Creek
Last Friday, at the start of a sunny weekend, I drive down to Wilmington to take in the city’s ninth annual Cucalorus Film Festival. I’m unfamiliar with the city, so it’s a pleasant surprise to find the historic district to be so alluring. The oaks, dogwoods and tulips certainly help, as does the balmy breath […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Film Beat
Yesterday I got back from the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film and Music Conference in Austin, Texas, with a severe case of Bush-induced paranoia. The trip back was a good 1,200 miles, plenty of time in which to spin out scenarios by which the country’s right wing will consolidate its takeover of the country. I […]
Posted inFilm & Television
The Beautiful Players
There’s probably no place on earth that embodies Heaven and Hell the way Rio de Janeiro does. The beaches are world-famous, certain sectors of the population are filthy rich and the city is a cornerstone of the world’s ninth largest economy. But in Brazil, the disparity between the rich and the poor is among the […]
Posted inFilm & Television
A Viewer’s Guide
This month, the Sundance Channel will be broadcasting Eugene Jarecki’s The Trials of Henry Kissinger. Those who have access to the channel should make a point of catching it (and perhaps taping it for less television-enabled friends). There’s no date for a video release, so for the foreseeable future this month’s broadcasts will be the […]
Posted inNews
Maybe partying will help
The term “spoken-word performance” is one of relatively recent vintage, and it’s worthy of a skeptical glance. What does this phrase convey, exactly, that words like “lecture” and “poetry” and “comedy” and “sermon” can’t? As it turns out, however, there’s probably not a better term than “spoken word” to describe Henry Rollins’ performance in Durham […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Sin and Sincerity
On the surface, Ron Shelton’s Dark Blue seems to be a fairly routine bad-cop movie with a veteran B-lister (Kurt Russell) in the lead. But the film is adapted from a story by James Ellroy, the author of such stylish and brutal crime novels as L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia, American Tabloid and the tortured […]
