Argo opens Friday throughout the Triangle (see times below) Our rating: On Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran, taking 53 hostages and instigating an international crisis that would play out for more than a year. Six Americans managed to escape the siege and take refuge in the home of a […]
Glenn McDonald
Posted inCulture
DVD+Digital: Catherine Keener, aging hippies and Misunderstanding
courtesy of IFC Films In the romantic comedy Peace, Love and Misunderstanding, new to DVD and Blu-ray this week, Catherine Keener plays Diane, a stressed out Manhattan attorney who retreats to her hippie mom’s house in Woodstock when her husband asks for a divorce. Diane brings the kids as well, college student Zoe (Elizabeth Olsen) […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie is a triumph of visual design
Frankenweenie opens Friday (see times below) Our rating: A loving variation on the old boy-and-his-dead-dog story, director Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie is a gleefully macabre kids’ movie and a triumph of visual design. You’ll see some things here you’ve never seen onscreen before. By working simultaneously in three distinctive cinematic formats3-D, black-and-white and stop-motion animationBurton has […]
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The ArtsCenter’s fun and fast-paced 44 Plays for 44 Presidents
44 Plays for 44 Presidents The ArtsCenter Through Oct. 7 Just in time for election season, The ArtsCenter in Carrboro has mounted the fun and fast-paced 44 Plays for 44 Presidents, a collection of staged shorts concerning history, politics and the U.S. executive branch. Beginning with George Washington, 44 Plays addresses the presidents in succession, […]
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Burning Coal’s spiky Jailbait
Jailbait Burning Coal Theatre at Murphey School Auditorium Through Oct. 7 In Jailbait, a spiky drama playing at the Murphey School Auditorium as part of Burning Coal’s Second Stage series, high school sophomores Claire and Emmy decide to play dress-up and sneak into a 21-and-over dance club. Their planbarely thought throughis to get drunk, flirt […]
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DVD+Digital: Dirty jokes, Danish bacchanals and Klown
courtesy of Drafthouse Films The comedy of the idiot man-child has been a running theme in American movies of late, with an endless parade of films celebrating the joys of perpetual adolescence. The 2010 Danish hit KLOWN, new to DVD and Blu-ray this week, proves that the trend isn’t a strictly American phenomenon, and there’s […]
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DVD+Digital: Sex, death and Steve Martin
courtesy of Lionsgate Home Entertainment This week’s Cognitive Dissonance Double Feature begins with THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, a twisty and postmodern horror movie from writer/producer Joss Whedon and his posse. New this week to DVD and Blu-ray, the film has been available via select video-on-demand for a while following its theatrical run this summer. […]
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Raleigh’s SPARKcon arts fest opens up
SPARKcon Sept. 13-16 Downtown Raleigh Raleigh designer Aly Khalifa realized that he had reached a landmark of sorts earlier this year. He was on the other side of the globe, and people wanted to know about SPARKcon, the unique street festival he helped found in 2006. “I was on a fellowship this year, traveling through […]
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DVD+Digital: Titanic, 9/11 and the mad riot of home video
courtesy of Paramount Pictures The weird array of home video releases in any given week is stunning. Those few mainstream titles that cycle through Redbox and Blockbuster are just the tip of the iceberg. Every Tuesday brings a flood of material on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download — foreign films, classic reissues, independent movies, TV […]
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The Words: Bradley Cooper and Jeremy Irons in a phony literary puzzler
courtesy of CBS Films THE WORDS** starsOpens Friday In 1922, Ernest Hemingway’s wife Hadley was traveling from Paris to Switzerland by train when she made a rather historic mistake. Getting up briefly to buy a bottle of water, she left behind a suitcase containing virtually all of her husband’s fiction writing up to that point. […]