By Steve Murray | Sep 24, 2011
As he did with last year’s “The Social Network,” Aaron Sorkin (with co-screenwriter Steve Zaillian) takes an unlikely subject and turns it into a dramatically compelling movie. Consider “Moneyball” the unofficial kickoff to the 2011 Oscar season. Based on Michael Lewis’ book about the Oakland Athletics' almost-pennant-winning 2002 season, it stars Brad Pitt -- in his most lived-in, adult performance -- as the team's general manager, who determines to pull his lower-end, scrappy team out of their rut by breaking the traditional rules of the professional baseball business.
Those rules include paying huge salaries to players with star personalities and, often, ...
By Steve Murray | Sep 22, 2011
Separated by 35 years, two films showcase directors (both named Nicolas) applying a stylish gloss to B-movie genres: a sci-fi yarn and a heist-action flick, respectively. The results are mixed.
The title and premise are the best things about “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” in an anniversary rerelease at Landmark Midtown Art (opening September 23). Director Nicolas Roeg’s ambitious, underbaked, sex-filled but unsexy time capsule from 1976 has become a cult movie. That’s probably because, from a distance, it seems impossible that it could be anything but trippingly awesome, at least when you look at the people involved.
Consider: David Bowie, ...
By Steve Murray | Sep 15, 2011
Now best known for enormous abstract paintings executed with a single brushstroke, British-born artist James Nares was something of a punk when he arrived in New York in 1974. After all, it was the punk era in then-blighted Manhattan. Nares was part of the movement, performing with the band the Contortions at CBGB’s and opening impromptu art galleries in friends’ lofts around the city.
He also made some do-it-yourself super-8mm short films, recently unearthed and restored by Anthology Film Archives. Atlanta curator Andy Ditzler will screen some of them Friday, September 16, as part of his Film Love series, and they’re ...
By Steve Murray | Sep 1, 2011
When Ken Kesey and his acid-tripping busload of cronies end their two-week cross-country trip in 1964, they crash a friend’s New York apartment for an all-night party and meet their hero, Jack Kerouac. As these Merry Pranksters dance around playing instruments, badly, the author of “On the Road” grimly dumps cans of Budweiser down his throat.
“He was not enthused with our craziness,” one of the female bus riders recalls. You can’t really blame him.
An equally appealing and annoying feat of demystification, the documentary “Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place” puts us inside that paint-splattered bus, up on ...
By Steve Murray | Aug 26, 2011
If you’re in the mood to walk down some twisty cinematic alleys, you’re in luck. On August 31, the Emory Cinematheque series kicks off “Dark Streets & Dangerous Dames: Film Noir (1944-1996).” All screenings are free, on Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. in White Hall, Room 205, on the Emory University campus.
The first film in the series, all in 35mm, is “Out of the Past” (1947, below), director Jacques Tourneur’s hard-boiled, sexy and gloriously downbeat movie that was wanly remade in 1987 as “Against All Odds.” It stars Robert Mitchum as a small-time private eye, Kirk Douglas as a caddish gambler ...
By Steve Murray | Jun 27, 2011
UPDATE 6/27/11: The memorial service for Linda Dubler will take place Wednesday, August 3, at 5 p.m. in the Rich Theatre at the Woodruff Arts Center.
Film lovers lost a real friend and pioneer with the passing of Linda Dubler on June 18. In terms of film programming, she virtually single-handedly turned Atlanta into the international city it aspires to be. Sick for several years with myelofibrosis, a form of bone marrow cancer, she spent her last days at Hospice Atlanta.
As program and festival director of IMAGE Film and Video Center, Dubler fostered appreciation for challenging independent and experimental work. When ...
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