Silver Linings Playbook opens Wednesday (see times below) Our rating: In Silver Linings Playbook, director David O. Russell’s unhinged and fearless romantic comedy, Bradley Cooper plays Pat Solitano, a Philadelphia school teacher recently released from an eight-month stint in the psych ward. Pat’s bipolar condition has cost him his job, his house and his wife. […]
Glenn McDonald
Posted inCulture
DVD+Digital: Box sets, board games and Tarantino XX
courtesy of Lionsgate Home Entertainment John Travolta is a strange dude. In all the on-camera interviews I’ve seen, Travolta has a weird vibrating kind of energy, a spaced-out thing where he seems to be channeling a more remote version of himself from somewhere very far away. This is the traditional time for a Scientology joke, […]
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DVD+Digital: Angry robots, stubborn rabbits and Pixar Short Films
Courtey of Disney/Pixar Is there a more trusted brand name in entertainment than Pixar? The innovative animation studio debuted in 1995 with Toy Story, and has since released 13 feature films and collected 26 Academy Awards. Pixar has yet to make a bad movie, although they came perilously close with Cars 2. It’s the only […]
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DVD+Digital: Drunken sex, tricky endings and Your Sister’s Sister
courtesy of IFC Films Endings are hard. Plenty of writers will tell you they’re the hardest part of any story, and any movie lover can rattle off a dozen films with lousy endings, from memory. So when a movie ends just right, it should be savored. The romantic comedy-drama Your Sister’s Sister — new to […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Wreck-It Ralph is goofily charming
Wreck-It Ralph opens Friday throughout the Triangle (see times below) Our rating: Wreck-It Ralph, the title character in Disney’s agreeably goofy new 3-D animated film, is a 1980s-style arcade game bad guy in the tradition of Donkey Kong. He’s a blue-collar sort of fellow, clocking in each day to suffer ignoble defeat at the hands […]
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DVD+Digital: Satanic cults, Halloween videos and Rosemary’s Baby
courtesy of the Criterion Collection Director Roman Polanski made his Hollywood debut in 1968 with Rosemary’s Baby, a psychological thriller so thoroughly creepy that it has since ascended into the pop culture superconsciousness. Some films just seem to hit a nerve. The film has been re-released to DVD and Blu-ray this week from the archivists […]
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Cloud Atlas dares to be great in epic, visionary style
courtesy of Warner Bros. CLOUD ATLAS**** starsOpens Friday My best friend from childhood, a ravenous science fiction reader, has been bugging me for several years to pick up David Mitchell’s 2004 novel Cloud Atlas. Since my friend once read every Hugo Award winning novel ever written (in a single year, on a dare), I try […]
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DVD+Digital: Michelle Williams, love stories and Take This Waltz
courtesy of Magnolia Pictures In Take This Waltz, a quietly brilliant romantic drama from Canadian actress and director Sarah Polley, we find ourselves in the colorful hipster neighborhoods of urban Toronto. Young married couple Margot and Lou (Michelle Williams and Seth Rogan) have an easy, playful banter around the house, but there are awkward pauses […]
Posted inArt
A Hitchcock homage in Raleigh Little Theatre’s The 39 Steps
The 39 Steps Raleigh Little Theatre Through Oct. 28 Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 espionage thriller The 39 Steps is generally considered the first of the director’s great films. The movie introduces the Hitchcockian plot device known as the MacGuffin, in which the characters pursue a valuable but mysterious something whose real purpose is simply to move […]
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DVD+Digital: Bereaved puppets, Vaudevillian tragedy and Her Master’s Voice
courtesy of Virgil Films Actress and comedian Nina Conti has carved out a healthy alt-comedy career in her native U.K. and earned a small stateside following thanks to YouTube videos of her lateral-thinking ventriloquist act. Conti apprenticed early in life to British experimental theater guru and roustabout Ken Campbell and in fact the two carried […]
