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Exclusive download: Corporal, featuring Michael Shannon, presents “Glory”
The Atlantic, The Playlist and The New York Times all have them: 2013 Oscar prediction pieces. Predicting next year’s Oscars within days of this year’s Oscars? Isn’t that a little early? In a word: yes. True, it’s useful to get a quick look at the big prestige movies coming our way this calendar year, to…
We’ve got one week left in 2011, so we’re running out of time to make lists, tear apart other people’s lists, make lists of lists, and list the lists we are going to list later. Better make the most of it. Last night, for example, I spent a couple of hours pouring over the two…
In film nerds circles, yesterday is what’s known as “Super Sunday,” when a whole bunch of critics groups all announce their award winners on the same day. Do a couple of press releases qualify the day for an adjective reserved for presidential elections and internationally televised football games? If your movie wins something, absolutely. Yesterday,…
Ang Lee was not impressed with Terrence Malick‘s epic “The Tree of Life,” though not for the reason you might think. The “Brokeback Mountain” director chatted with Vulture after Monday’s Gotham Awards and said that he’s been so busy planning his new project, an adaptation of Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi,” that he has fallen…
Terrence Malick has been replaced by a pod person. Okay, so technically I don’t have any proof that the director of “Days of Heaven” and “The Tree of Life” has been kidnapped, imprisoned, and replaced by an exact alien duplicate (viva the journalistic standards of blogs!). But how else do you explain this weird and…
If I want to write an article about Terrence Malick, I basically have two options for pictures I can use. The one above, that’s him on the set of “Days of Heaven” back in 1978. The other choice is this popular shot of him circa “The Thin Red Line” in 1998, where he looks like…
After leaving “Tree of Life,” did you find yourself confused and somewhat let down by Terrence Malick’s latest film? Were you too embarrassed to tell your snobby cinephile friends, “Yes, of course it looks beautiful, but what the hell is the point of it all?” Well, breathe easy, friends, because you’re not alone, as even…
Here’s what to watch this week on IFC: Monday Vampires are so over. Werewolves are where it’s at and we are setting the trend by bringing Friday Night Frights to Monday and airing “Ginger Snaps” at 8 p.m. ET. Tuesday It’s Forest Whitaker double feature night! Watch Whitaker in his Oscar-winning portrayal of Idi Amin…
Heat waves have been rolling across the country all week and West Nile infected mosquitos have been spotted everywhere. Yep, we have reached the time of year where it is actually unsafe to go outside. So don’t go wandering the streets or hitting the beach against medical advice. Instead stay safe and cool on your…
Via Jim Emerson, Editor of RogerEbert.com, and Toronto film critic Christopher Misch, comes this hilarious and depressing photograph of a posted sign from the Avon Theatre Film Center in Stamford, CT. It’s a warning to any customer who might be considering seeing Terrence Malick‘s “The Tree of Life:” You can almost see the “Saturday Night…
Today I humbly bow in admiration at the feet of Slate’s Brow Beat for dreaming up something so funny, I wish I had thought of it. They’ve decided to celebrate the impending release of Terrence Malick’s new movie “The Tree of Life” (read my review here) with a little quiz with the awesome title “Name…
Director Terrence Malick is a magician with a movie camera. But watching his new film, “The Tree of Life,” is like watching a magician perform one trick over and over again for 138 minutes. As amazing as that trick is, when it’s repeated endlessly, it loses some of its luster. In “Tree of Life,” Malick…
Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” was a front-runner to make last year’s Cannes Film Festival but the film wasn’t finished in time. This year’s Cannes jury decided it was worth the wait, as it gave “The Tree of Life” the festival’s biggest prize, the Palme d’Or at the annual Cannes awards ceremony (the film…
It sucks not being at the Cannes Film Festival. To keep you up-to-speed on all the latest developments with the minimum amount of pain and jealousy, we’ll be providing frequent roundups of all the biggest news and best reviews. This is the third; for additional installments, along with all our Cannes coverage, can be found…
What to watch this week on IFC: Monday Get your tongue pierced and shoulder tap for some beer to get you in the spirit of “Thirteen,” Catherine Hardwicke’s tale of teen rebellion and parental nightmares airs at 8 p.m. ET. Tuesday If you are a fan of “Black Swan” you must see director Darren Aronofsky’s…
No surprise here. Terrence Malick’s bringing the baby feet to the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, where “The Tree of Life” will play in competition, alongside new films by Pedro Almodovar, Takashi Miike, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, and Lars von Trier. I’m not going to Cannes (unless you want to send me, independently wealthy, art film…
Fox Searchlight just launched the “full version” of their official site for Terrence Malick’s upcoming film “The Tree of Life,” TwoWaysThroughLife.com. It is as beautiful as it is incomprehensible. A home page of stills from the film directs you to a screen with two options: “the father’s way” or “the mother’s way.” There’s also a…
Variety‘s Justin Chang reports that Terrence Malick’s long-awaited film “The Tree of Life” will finally premiere at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. From Chang’s report: “It’s still unclear whether the Fox Searchlight drama starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn will play in or out of competition, a decision that likely will not be made until…
Tom Shone has a few “Good Will Hunting”-centric excerpts from a recent interview he did with Matt Damon on his blog. One particularly tasty anecdote involves Damon and cowriter Ben Affleck getting notes from Terrence Malick, who, Shone notes, “happened to be best friends with Affleck’s godfather”: “We just asked if we could have a…
“The Tree of Life”! “The Tree of Life”! “The Tree of Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiife”! That is all. Well, okay. The trailer for Terrence Malick’s long, long-awaited new film — starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain — has finally officially hit the web. You can watch it below, but I’d recommend checking it out in HD…
Like a mega-mind Great American Novel or hundred-hour Wagnerian opera cycle, Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” remains larger than our concept or evaluation of it, larger than its director’s quasi-cosmic ambitions, larger, really, than itself. Any brief history of movies’ most astonishing follies — which translates to cinema’s biggest badass landmarks, if not necessarily the…
This week sees the release of this year’s Woody Allen movie, “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.” Inspired by a description of writers given by Kurt Vonnegut in “Timequake,” not to mention Allen’s prolific career, in this week’s IFC News podcast we try dividing some of our favorite filmmakers into two categories — swoopers…
Having coalesced only last year, distribution company Apparition (who put “Bright Star” and “The Runaways” in theaters) seems to be dissipating into the harsh light of the tough economy (sorry, but with a name like that, you’re inviting such awful metaphors). They’re down to only a handful of staff, and today it was announced that…
Writer and director Terrence Malick built a name for himself on the dark, twisted, but mostly true story of Badlands. In that film he cast Martin Sheen as a 25-year old psychopath on a killing spree while his 15-year old girlfriend, Sissy Spacek, twirled her baton in the background. The movie was based on the…
With the release of “Iron Man 2,” the Marvel Comics franchise is officially two-for-two — two thoroughly competent, occasionally inspired yet ultimately forgettable films that promise sly engagement with real-world anxieties, then set that promise aside in favor of corporate intrigue and endless scenes of robots bashing the crap out of each other. The first…
