During the five weeks in 1991 that I served as a college-age intern in the Washington, D.C., office of Sen. Terry Sanford, the most frequent question I heard from other interns outside North Carolina was a variation of the following: “How can the same state elect both Jesse Helms and Terry Sanford as its two […]
Neil Morris
Posted inNews
Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea
Only in America could a man-made environmental catastrophe be lamented for its failure to develop into an economic and recreational boon. Yet, such is just one of the paradoxes posed by Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea, a hit documentary on the national film festival circuit over the past several years that finally makes […]
Posted inFilm & Television
The Kingdom has the power, Universe has the void
There have been enough Middle East/ Iraq War-based movies trickling out in 2007 to comprise a film school mini-symposium on what will surely prove to be the most ubiquitous topic and setting over the next decade. Surprisingly, the best of this year’s lot thus far is The Kingdom, an action movie with characters filled by […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Eastern Promises
Following the 2005 critical success of A History of Violence, there’s a natural impulse to view David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises as a formerly maverick director’s continuing foray into accessible, even mainstream, filmmaking. This is ill-founded on two principal fronts. For Cronenberg, an early purveyor of the body/ venereal horror genre, this is his most characteristic […]
Posted inGuides
Foreign affairs
As the N.C. Museum of Art’s summer movies on the lawn give way to its second annual fall film series, area cinephiles can look forward to a lineup headlined by esteemed foreign-film and rediscovered classics. In conjunction with its 50th anniversary, venerable U.S. distributor Janus Films has struck new 35mm prints, each with retranslated subtitles, […]
Posted inFilm & Television
The 11th Hour sounds the environmental alarm
Some might believe the world needs another environmental documentary like it needs a hole in its ozone layer. An Inconvenient Truth, as acclaimed and popular as it was, seems to have done more to service the celebrity of Al Gore and Melissa Etheridge than to trigger a groundswell of eco-change. So, the existence of a […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Pretensions give a boost to Rocket Science but can’t save The Ten
If nothing else, Rocket Science makes you look back on writer-director Jeffrey Blitz’s Spellbound with a keener, more discerning eye. There was always a peculiar undercurrent to his otherwise orthodox documentary about eight teenagers on their quest to win the National Spelling Bee, lingering over the eccentric, semi-stunted lives of its subjects as much as […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Carolina Theatre reopens for the North Carolina Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
North Carolina Gay and Lesbian Film Festival Carolina Theatre, Durham Aug. 23-26 There is a coming out taking place at this year’s North Carolina Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, but not the kind you would necessarily expect. After shuttering its doors for repairs in early June, Durham’s Carolina Theatre reopens in time for the 12th […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Stardust and Becoming Jane
At age 49, Michelle Pfeiffer has nearly reached that inescapable stage in a film actress’s career when opportunities usually come knocking in the form of legal-based TNT television series or Hallmark Hall of Fame movies. Still, after a five-year absence from the silver screen, Pfeiffer has returned in two films over the past month: her […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Jason Bourne and the Simpsons, on the lam from an America gone awry
During a recent appearance on The Tonight Show, Matt Damon said that the strangest question he has been asked, with increasing regularity, during press junkets for THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM is, “Who do you think would win in a fight between Jason Bourne and James Bond?” In truth, over its five-year reign, the Bourne series managed […]
