AltWeeklies Wire
Why Is Kim Jong-un So Afraid of Seth Rogen?new

Sony assumed North Korea would hate the movie. The question was: What would it do?
L.A. Weekly |
Amy Nicholson |
12-15-2014 |
Movies
Tags: Kim Jong-Un
Who Killed the Romantic Comedy?new

Rom-coms used to be a cash cow — and wildly popular with audiences. What happened?
L.A. Weekly |
Amy Nicholson |
02-26-2014 |
Movies
Tags: Romantic Comedies
Sundance Festival Goes Back to its Roots... Or Does It?new

This year, the movie that's attracted the scalping scene outside Eccles is The Runaways, a stylish biopic of the all-teen girl band of the same name. The film has been the subject of blog gossip, thanks to casting of Twilight starlet Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett.
L.A. Weekly |
Karina Longworth |
02-05-2010 |
Movies
Sundance Film Festival: What's Happening NEXT?new
Riding high on a return to pop relevancy, the Sundance Film Festival's programming team announced NEXT, a sidebar dedicated to reflecting "a new aesthetic enlisting low- and no-budget filmmaking techniques."
L.A. Weekly |
Karina Longworth |
01-22-2010 |
Movies
From Industry Turmoil, Great Films Arosenew
And so another year comes to an end, and with it a decade (Gregorian contrarians notwithstanding) in which the answer to the question “What is cinema?” underwent more radical transmutations than in any comparable period since the dawn of moving images.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
01-04-2010 |
Movies
The Secret Lives of Queer Leading Mennew

How Howard Bragman, Hollywood's coming-out guru, helps gay actors tell the truth. Bragman's parents were "tolerant and accepting" when he came out in his 20s; Proposition 8 was "extremely painful"; gays and lesbians need to "call people on their shit."
L.A. Weekly |
Patrick Range McDonald |
10-09-2009 |
Movies
Tarantino Picks His 20 Favorite Flicks of the Past 17 Yearsnew
When Ella Taylor asked me to rename my top five films of all time, I rattled off the obvious titles. She then asked, “Any since the last 17 years?”
L.A. Weekly |
Quentin Tarantino |
08-21-2009 |
Movies
Rebecca Yeldham Fights the Good Fight at Helm of the L.A. Film Festivalnew
The 41-year-old Yeldham came onboard as festival director this past March during a tense moment for LAFF and its parent organization, Film Independent. She had to hit the ground running, with barely three months left to plan for the festival's 2009 edition.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
06-19-2009 |
Movies
Dreaming in Film: At Cannes and Its Renegade Festivalsnew
A look at the scene in Cannes, where the best movies aren't necessarily the ones in the competition.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
05-22-2009 |
Movies
Tags: Cannes Film Festival
Looking for 'Slow Cinema' at the Berlin International Film Festivalnew
If this year's Berlinale was dominated and ultimately defined by polyglot international coproductions that, as one British colleague joked, might have been rated "G" for globalization, the festival's most memorable offerings came from filmmakers who looked no farther than their own backyards for inspiration.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
02-20-2009 |
Movies
The Sundance Experiencenew
If the highs weren’t as high as those of some Sundances past — no radical, out-of-left-field debut features or eight-figure sales deals to write home about — neither were the lows as dispiritingly low.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
01-30-2009 |
Movies
Tags: Sundance Film Festival
Sundance's Best So Farnew
Push, Cold Souls, and Paper Heart are reviewed. The color ain't purple.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
01-23-2009 |
Movies
Disappointments and Surprises: Toronto International Film Festivalnew
When good directors go bad. At least, that's what it has felt like around here as one anticipated new film after the next by some of the world's name-brand auteurs — the Coen brothers, Spike Lee, Jonathan Demme — has laid a less-than-golden egg
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
09-12-2008 |
Movies
Thank God It's the End of Summer!new
These are, literally and figuratively, the annual dog days, when the mercury rises and studios satisfy contractual obligations to their unloved stepchildren--movies they made (or bought), then thought twice about and decided to dispose of as quietly as possible during those two weeks of the year when most of the industry are on vacation.
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
09-05-2008 |
Movies
Tags: summer movies
Manny Farber, 1917-2008new
As a critic, Farber advocated more modest, elemental "termite art" — throwaway B movies, Westerns and, later on, important works of European and experimental cinema that he found sui generis, teeming with life, and more invested in individual moments than grandiose objectives
L.A. Weekly |
Scott Foundas |
08-29-2008 |
Movies