Posts Tagged ‘reviews’
March 16th, 2013 | 
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On my birthday this month, I decided to see the Oscar-nominated short films at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany. This was predicated on the fact that I might see Zero Dark Thirty on video, but might be less likely to find these. As it turned out, it was the very last day of its three- or four-week run. The program ran 115 minutes. The films were interspersed with commentary by Luke Matheny who won a couple years ago for God of Love, which as I noted at the time, was probably my least favorite of the nominees. Unlike the commenters for the animated films this year, I didn’t think Matheny brought that much insight to the table. It didn’t help that he was trying to be wryly humorous and the films, for the most part, were not.
Film descriptions were from the Spectrum website.
Death of a Shadow (France and Belgium/Dutch, 20 minutes) Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Asad, Buzkashi Boys, Curfew, Death of a Shadow, Henry, movies, reviews, short films | 
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It’s rare that The Daughter has gone to the Spectrum Theatre in Albany; in fact, I’m not sure she’d EVER been there. While it is the preferred film venue for the Wife and me, it often has films not suitable for sensitive eight-year-olds. But the ads said that the films nominated for Academy Awards in the animated shorts category were “family-friendly.” This is useful to know, because we saw last year’s entries, and A Morning Stroll most certainly NOT Daughter-friendly, to say the least.
On Washington’s Birthday – which was when the Wife and I went last year; a holiday tradition? – the three of us sojourned to the cinema. In previous years, they just showed the movies, but this year, there was interspersed conversations with William Joyce and Brandon Oldenberg, who created last year’s well-deserved winner, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore [watch it]. In fact, one of these guys looked a bit like Lessmore. They talked about the struggle to get their film made and the surreality of Oscar night.
Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare
The youngest character in the long-running show I used to watch for the first eight or nine seasons Read the rest of this entry »
The local Police Athletic League was sponsoring movies at the nearby Madison Theatre Monday morning, $3 for kids, $5 for adults, and this included a small popcorn and a drink. There were three PG-rated choices playing: Life of Pi, which I thought might be too intense for the Daughter; Parental Guidance, with Billy Crystal and Bette Midler, which was the most attended, but not something I particularly wanted to see; and the animated Disney film Wreck-It Ralph. The cartoon won out.
There was an utterly charming animated short called Paperman Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Barack Obama, Disney, inauguration, movies, Osca, Paperman, reviews, Wreck-It Ralph |
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As a television personality, there is probably no one I enjoyed more than Mary Tyler Moore. She appears on my Top Five favorite TV shows of all time, The Dick Van Dyke Show; her eponymous show is on my Top 20 list.
Looking forward to reading her autobiography, I was mystified by the fact that, for much of her professional life, she was a bundle of insecurities. Her success on her own show and Van Dyke’s she attributed to the talented performers, writers and producers around her. Her failures, on other shows and on stage, are her fault. Such insecurity is odd, and not particularly appealing.
There is a certain arm’s length in her retelling of her growing up Read the rest of this entry »
It’s a rom dramedy! It’s a sports movie! It’s about anger management! It’s a floor wax! It’s a dessert topping!
I read all sorts of things about the new movie Silver Linings Playbook (except those last two, which are from an old Saturday Night Live skit). Still, I didn’t get much of clear sense of the film beforehand, except who starred in it.
The Wife and I went to see the movie at the Spectrum 8 in Albany, our favorite cinematic haunt, Saturday past. Read the rest of this entry »
If you know the name Vince Guaraldi, it’s probably because you associate the pianist as the composer of the music for the Peanuts television specials, starting in the mid-1960s. However, Doctor Funk, one of his nicknames, codified in a song he wrote and performed a decade earlier, was a well-respected performer and composer in the Bay Area/northern California jazz scene.
Derrick Bang notes in the preface of Vince Guaraldi at the Piano that he was a reluctant writer of Vince’s legacy, expecting that someone more personally knowledgeable of the performer would surely show up to pen his story. Finding none, he put together an almost encyclopedic recollection of the musician’s life Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: biography, books, jazz, music, reviews, Vince Guaraldi |
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On Black Friday, my wife and I went to the Spectrum Theatre in Albany to see the 1:50 showing of the new Steven Spielberg movie Lincoln. It was sold out! That hasn’t happened to me since the original Star Wars. We bought tickets for the 3:15 show, and were advised to be back by 2:45.
We bought some hot chocolate, then went to a charming little toy store/food emporium. By the time we got back to the theater, there was this long line. I assumed it was to buy tickets; no, the 3:15 was SOLD OUT, and the line was for the ticket holders Read the rest of this entry »