Green Zone opens Friday throughout the Triangle Everything in Green Zone is punctuated with exclamation points. The Iraq War is LOUD! The Middle East is DANGEROUS! Helicopters, jeeps, and sprinting soldiers move FAST! No one, not even your friends and allies, can be TRUSTED! It’s not so much an adrenaline-rush as a steroid-transfusion. Unfortunately, if […]
Neil Morris
Posted inFilm & Television
Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland has flair to burn, but its heroine is a cipher
Alice in Wonderland opens Friday throughout the Triangle There is a lot about Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland that’s curiouser and curiouser, but just not much “muchness.” It is a phantasmagorical fever dream that is both absorbing and banal, a looking glass that reflects Narnia, Middle-earth and assorted other child-escapist imaginaria in addition to its […]
Posted inCulture
Now playing for the RailHawks – “The Trialists”
MIDDLE CREEK PARK/ CARYThe outcome of the Carolina RailHawks’ first scrimmage of the 2010 USSF Division 2 soccer season was as incidental as its venue. For the record, the RailHawks defeated Duke University 3-2 in a match held at Middle Creek Park in Cary, an above-average parks & rec facility devoid of seating or a […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Scorsese and DiCaprio team up for Lehane potboiler Shutter Island
Shutter Island opens Friday throughout the Triangle Even Martin Scorsese’s missteps are spectacular. Like Stanley Kubrick and Roman Polanski before him, the 67-year-old Scorsese tries his hand at redefining the horror-thriller genre with Shutter Island. For everyone who will regale in Scorsese’s ageless craftsmanship, others will recoil from a story that trawls mental illness, domestic […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Tim Tyson’s celebrated memoir comes to the big screen
Blood Done Sign My Name opens Friday in select theaters The 1970 murder of Henry “Dickie” Marrow and the protests and resistance that flowed out of it into the streets of Oxford, N.C., and the rest of the state, still packs a wallop 40 years later. Blood Done Sign My Name is based on the […]
Posted inCulture
Paladini re-signs with RailHawks
One of the Carolina RailHawks’ biggest off-season questions was answered today when the team announced that midfielder Daniel Paladini, last year’s team Most Valuable Player, has re-signed with the Railhawks for the 2010 season.
Posted inFilm & Television
Will Crazy Heart be Jeff Bridges’ Oscar moment?
Crazy Heart opens Friday in select theaters “A recovering alcoholic country music singer/ songwriter seeks to turn his life around through his relationship with a young woman and her son.” Older, discerning filmgoers will recognize this synopsis of Tender Mercies, the 1983 Horton Foote-penned film that gave Robert Duvall his only Oscar. More than a […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Can Nicholas Sparks make you cry again with Dear John?
Dear John opens Friday throughout the Triangle For all their schmaltzy underpinning, two things have always buoyed the movie adaptations of novels by New Bern-based author Nicholas Sparks. First is their North Carolina setting (even if they’re not always filmed in the state). Second is their durable casting, particularly romantic leads that include Kevin Costner […]
Posted inFilm & Television
The war comes home in another fine film, The Messenger
The Messenger opens Friday in select theaters The best war movies don’t always take place on the battlefield. Classics such as The Best Years of Our Lives, Coming Home, The Deer Hunter and Born on the Fourth of July are grounded in the unfortunate truth that the theater of war extends to the home front. […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones is dark and static
The Lovely Bones opens Friday throughout the Triangle If anything seemed like a sure thing, it was the film adaptation of The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold’s mega-best-sellerit remained on The New York Times hardback best-seller list for more than a yeardirected by Oscar winner Peter Jackson, helmsman of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, King […]
