AltWeeklies Wire
The Best Films of 2007
Every year film critics love to bemoan what a lousy lot of movies the previous twelve months have wrought as if the art of filmmaking were hitting an all time low. However 2007 was a tremendous year for high quality movies that elevated the craft.
Can Online Media Be Profitable?
Internet evangelists have blind faith in a future beyond print. The numbers tell a different story.
Tags: media
Going South: 'His Dark Materials' Sink
The hullabaloo surrounding any "anti-religious" theme to Philip Pullman's 1995 His Dark Materials trilogy (the title is taken from Milton's Paradise Lost) takes a distant backseat to screenwriter/director Chris Weitz's spotty filmic adaptation that never locates a throughline to the convoluted narrative.
Tags: Chris Weitz, The Golden Compass
Free Content: Worth Every Cent
Content is dead. Aggregators collect the bucks. But what kind of quality can freebie freelancers create?
Tags: media
Accidentially Camp Thriller Begs for Audience Participation
This sublimely awful suspense thriller is especially enjoyable for the wildly varied collection of talent taking one for the team.
Tags: Awake, Joby Harold
Darabont Turns King Novella into Instant-Classic Horror Picture
It took director Frank Darabont writing a better ending for Stephen King's 1980 novella before he could tackle making the best legitimate horror movie to come out in years.
Musharraf Was Against Us Before He Was Against Us
The dictator of Pakistan was conning us all along. Why didn't anyone notice?
Maui Time |
Ted Rall |
11-09-2007 |
Commentary
Hillary Clinton's Time-to-Make-the-Doughnuts Candidacy
Her vote to raise tensions with Iran prompts liberal supporters to reconsider.
Maui Time |
Ted Rall |
11-05-2007 |
Commentary
'Lions for Lambs' is Years Behind the Times
Overtly pedantic and overstrained, Tom Cruise's first undertaking as co-head of United Artists is a politically top-heavy triptych of simultaneous political conversations made all the more cumbersome due to its extravagant cast.
Tags: Lions for Lambs, Robert Redford
The Coen Brothers Go West
After a string of disappointing projects, Joel and Ethan Coen have hit cinematic paydirt with Cormac McCarthy's 2003 western crime novel No Country for Old Men.
Hail to the Next Torturer-in-Chief
Most of the major presidential candidates plan to keep on torturing.
Maui Time |
Ted Rall |
10-31-2007 |
Commentary
'Rails & Ties' is Too Predictable
Alison Eastwood makes a tentative directorial debut with a made-for-TV-quality script by tin-eared Mickey Levy.
Tags: Alison Eastwood, Rails & Ties
'Gone Baby Gone' Feels Like Two Narratives Pasted Together
For his directing debut Ben Affleck adapts a Dennis Lehane novel that resists being converted into the usual three-act structure like a circle being jammed into a square.
Tags: Ben Affleck, Gone Baby Gone
'Wristcutters: A Love Story' is Wretched
This film takes such an arch tone by tacitly endorsing suicide that it spends most of its time in narrative freefall.
The Future of Joe Strummer on Film
Julien Temple, the director of the notable Sex Pistols documentary Filth and the Fury, proves he's the right man to make a documentary about the Clash's late frontman.
