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 […]
Glenn McDonald
Posted inCulture
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 […]
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DVD+Digital: French heist films, sad little girls and A Cat in Paris
courtesy of New Video Considering the volume and variety of family-friendly animated films that come down the pike, it’s curious that they all offer essentially the same movie-watching experience: A kid-friendly story with kid-friendly jokes, the occasional stealthy double entendre aimed at parents, and varying levels of animated wizardry. With the good stuff, you’ll get […]
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An unreliable narrator in the unsettling documentary The Imposter
The Imposter opens Friday in select theaters (see times below) Our rating: Talk about your unreliable narrators. The unsettling documentary The Imposter tells the bizarre story of French con man Frederic Bourdin, who, in 1997, impersonated a missing Texas teenager and lied his way into the United States. Bourdin not only fooled European cops, U.S. […]
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Ben Affleck’s directing career continues to impress with Argo
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 […]
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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) […]
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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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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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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 […]
