Taking a page out of the National Theatre Live’s playbook, the Royal Shakespeare Company has finally started broadcasting their productions to cinemas around the world, and then, unlike NTLive, making them available on DVD. Following the broadcast of Gregory Doran’s Richard II, the RSC has just broadcasted Doran’s productions of the next two Henriad plays. […]
Essays
Life Itself: After a life at the movies, Roger Ebert lives on in the movie of his life
I grew up watching “Siskel and Ebert and The Movies.” It was a weekly ritual in my house, helping us decide what to see that weekend. The show struck something deep, and inspired me to start writing film reviews at a very young age: I was in grade 6 and I started my own magazine. It was through their television show that Siskel and Ebert became the world’s most powerful and influential film critics.
Sam Mendes delivers a lucid, dark, and funny King Lear for NTLive
Sam Mendes’ NTLive King Lear is an almost flawless production of the play at the National Theatre, which was broadcasted live to cinemas worldwide. The phenomenal Simon Russell Beale stars as a megalomaniac Lear who is slowly losing his mind.
Obvious Child is a sweet and funny romantic (abortion) comedy for the 21st century
Gillian Robespierre makes her directorial debut with Obvious Child, a sweet and funny romantic comedy in which the pair of lovers must cope with getting an abortion before they become something more than a one night stand.
An intriguing stranger is bad news in the entirely original Borgman
A hobo and a charmer, Camiel Borgman (a restrained and compelling Jan Bijvoet) may seem sympathetic at the start of writer-director Alex van Warmerdam’s bizarre but compelling Borgman, but then again, Ruth Gordon seemed too lovable to be in the business of buying babies for the devil. Although Borgman can accurately be described as part psychological […]
‘Ivory Tower’: why US college financing is broken
Like its Sundance competitor “Fed Up”, which tackled rising obesity rates, Andrew Rossi’s documentary, “Ivory Tower”, takes on another major problem in American society: the rising cost of college tuition and whether it’s even worth what we’re paying for it. Both docs do a thorough job of illuminating many facets of a complex and important problem, but […]