Thursday, April 14th, 2011
Certified Copy
In the opening scene of Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy, an esteemed English essayist named Miller (William Shimell) arrives fashionably late to a speaking engagement at a modest literary society in Tuscany. Behind the dais, he apologizes for his tardiness with a variation of the same lame jest that the man who introduced him had made [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
I slipped into a 6:40 show of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus at 6:50, hoping to have only missed some previews; instead, I apparently missed out on half the plot. Unless the director, Terry Gilliam, has devised a newfangled approach to storytelling that condenses an hour or more of exposition into a five-minute intro, I [...]
4 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
Where the Wild Things Are
A few months ago, a conservative politician callously derided a liberal bill, claiming that its “empathy” was just a slippery slope to partisanship. One does not need to be partisan—or even political—to realize that empathy is the last bastion of civilized thought. If empathy becomes a “partisan” issue, rather than something generally recognized for its [...]
4 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
Cold Souls
Cold Souls is a diaphanous nocturne—a little metaphysical flower lilting in the gray autumnal light. Paul Giamatti plays himself or, rather, the person we might infer Paul Giamatti to be, given the schlub-everyman he incarnated in American Splendor and Sideways. He’s playing in Chekhov on Broadway, but can’t get out of his own head and [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Monday, July 6th, 2009
The Critic’s Criticism of His Critics
Of late, I’ve had the pleasure of reading some very negative comments made about my reviews. Because blogs are a newfangled, “democratic” medium, I respect my reader’s right to express him or herself that way, but I also reserve my right to respond—as lengthily (or douche-ily) as I please…
Comment 1:
Because God forbid we enjoy [...]