Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:29:02 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Grady Hendrix :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Grady+Hendrix istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/takashi-miikes-crime-wave/84573/ Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST For most New York film buffs, the Japanese director Takashi Miike "arrived" in August, 2001, when "Audition," his date-ending horror show, was greeted with raves in the press (Elvis Mitchell compared him with Yasujiro Ozu). Fans lined up around the block at Film Forum, only to walk out in droves as the movie's spring-loaded jaws clamped shut on their soft brains in its final 20 minutes. "Audition" was a patient, cruel film about a television executive who decides to hold casting sessions for a... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/french-crime-wave-is-dressed-to-kill/83436/ Fri, 8 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST When was the last time you wore a tuxedo? A wedding you didn't want to attend? Some mandatory charity event from hell? Your prom? Well, according to the 38 movies in Film Forum's five-week series beginning Friday, "The French Crime Wave," the French wear tuxedos all the time. They put on a tuxedo to shoot out a jeweler's security system from an impossible distance with a high-powered rifle. They don the old penguin suit to play one final hand of cards while casing a casino. Even the bank... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/movies-in-brief-hell-ride/83416/ Fri, 8 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST If Larry Bishop didn't exist, Quentin Tarantino would have had to invent him. Mr. Bishop, the director and star of "Hell Ride," which makes its premiere Friday, was a notorious hell-raiser in 1960s Hollywood. The son of the Rat Packer Joey Bishop, he appeared in dozens of motorcycle exploitation movies such as "The Savage Seven" (1968), then bumped into Mr. Tarantino almost seven years ago. Mr. Tarantino told Mr. Bishop he would produce a directorial project for him if Mr. Bishop would embrace... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/lost-in-space/83171/ Tue, 5 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Imagine a future in which Ralph Nader is President. The United Nations has meaningful input in foreign policy. The word "woman" has been replaced by "womyn." Eating trans fats and red meat is a crime, and gasoline is outlawed. It's an alternate universe where the most smug, soft-headed brand of liberalism has triumphed — and it's the only place I can imagine "Masters of Science Fiction," a collection of sci-fi shorts released today on DVD, finding an audience. "The Twilight Zone" and "The Outer... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/midnight-meat-train-lionsgate-nearly-butchers-its/83002/ Fri, 1 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Sometimes the sizzle is better than the steak, and sometimes the drama swirling around a film's release is a lot more interesting than the film itself. Case in point: this week's release of "The Midnight Meat Train," an R-rated horror movie based on a short story by Clive Barker, the acclaimed horror writer who wrote and directed the now-classic horror flick "Hellraiser," which like "The Midnight Meat Train" was based on a short story in his 1984 collection, "Books of Blood." "The Midnight Meat... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-inglorious-bastards-the-erstwhile-glory/82763/ Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST One of the juiciest bits of movie news to come out of this year's Cannes Film Festival is that Quentin Tarantino is finally ready to stop talking about his remake of Enzo Castellari's 1978 war film, "The Inglorious Bastards," and actually start shooting it. Mr. Tarantino is said to be courting Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio to play the leads in his film about a group of Jewish soldiers who parachute into occupied France in order to bomb a Parisian movie theater where Goebbels's latest... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-very-british-tv-export/82352/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST "Spaced," one of the great television shows of the last decade, is finally coming out on DVD in America. This beloved British sitcom ran for just two seasons, from 1999 to 2001, and was the first project by the crew that made "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz": director Edgar Wright and actors Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Jessica (Stevenson) Hynes. It is as sharp and character-driven as "Friends" was in its heyday, but "Spaced" revels in drug use and pop-culture references. Though it has a... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-happy-sing-along-mamma-mia/82131/ Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Is it possible to imagine the world before musicals? The feeling of being filled up with the goodness of life until not only do you burst into song, but the world around you starts dancing, too, is such an essential component of human existence that it's no surprise it was invented by the Greeks, who also gave us democracy and Plato and now provide the sun-kissed locations for "Mamma Mia!" the movie version of the blockbuster Broadway musical based on the ABBA songbook. On a glossy Greek isle... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/satoshi-kons-theory-of-animation/80784/ Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST Trying to get someone who's not an anime fan interested in attending this weekend's Japanese animation retrospective at Lincoln Center, "Satoshi Kon: Beyond Imagination," is probably a losing proposition. You can point out that Mr. Kon has won international acclaim for his direction of animated films and television series, but to most Americans, Japanese anime is a suspicious medium of miniskirted schoolgirls with enormous breasts, giant robots shaped like miniskirted schoolgirls with enormous... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/indonesias-black-magic-woman/79620/ Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST As one of the programmers of the upcoming New York Asian Film Festival, I've spent the last six months watching slapstick comedies from Malaysia, war epics from Thailand, and crime films from the Philippines. The festival's mission is to bring over movies that are hits in their home countries but too populist and genre-oriented to make it onto America's ever-shrinking art-house circuit. After seven years of programming, I've split Asia up like a giant video store: Action films are from... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/dirty-harry-uses-the-force/79124/ Tue, 3 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST When one sits down to watch the "Dirty Harry" series, which is finally being released in its entirety by Warner Bros. as a DVD boxed set, fully loaded with special features and new transfers, one question seems to burn in the mind: People actually paid to see these movies? Produced between 1971 and 1988, when violent crime seemed to be on a never-ending upswing, the five films in the series — "Dirty Harry" (1971), "Magnum Force" (1973), "The Enforcer" (1976), "Sudden Impact" (1983), and "The... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/movies-in-brief-the-children-of-huang-shi/77321/ Fri, 23 May 2008 00:00:00 EST If you haven't seen a Roger Spottiswoode movie, then you would assume his filmography is one of Hollywood's worst: It includes "Turner and Hooch," "Air America," and "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!" But each of these movies is cursed with a reputation for being far worse than it actually is. None of them are good, mind you, but the touching story of Sylvester Stallone and Estelle Getty taking on black-market gun dealers is far better than it should be, and the same can be said for Mr... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/when-exploitation-ruled-the-nation/76704/ Tue, 20 May 2008 00:00:00 EST They just don't make pornography like they used to. As television feasted on the corpse of Japanese cinema in the late 1960s and early '70s, the five major movie studios suddenly found themselves willing to do anything to hold on to the few remaining moviegoers. So they turned to sex and violence, which grew increasingly lurid and over-the-top as the studios vied for a shrinking pool of eyeballs. As it turned out, the man of the hour was director Teruo Ishii, whose love of "ero-guro," or the... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/blood-guts-and-the-decade-of-lead/75493/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST The history of America's exposure to Italian cinema is like the prom date who shows up all awkwardly earnest with a corsage in hand, but after a couple of drinks punches the DJ and steals a car. Between the 1960s and the '80s, America's genteel cultural gatekeepers ushered in a stately promenade of Italian cinema — Federico Fellini's "La Strada," Vittorio De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief," and other neorealist masterpieces from previous decades. But in the late '80s, the home video market, hungry... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/harold-and-kumar-go-up-in-smoke/75299/ Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST "Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay" is an act of pure genius — not because it's a great film, but because if it does well at the box office, its makers will be hailed as political satirists of the highest order who have provided a much-needed laugh break in the midst of the soul-deadening war on terror. And if it flops, they'll be box-office martyrs, misunderstood and underappreciated by nervous Americans with a case of the "too soon!" jitters. Either way, they'll get far more respect... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/saving-baron-munchausen/74354/ Tue, 8 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST It's time to rewrite the book on Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen." This 1988 film has long been considered a footnote in Hollywood history, an extraordinary financial boondoggle that went millions over budget and was shut down by a bond company before landing with a resounding thud in the handful of theaters that showed it. If it's remembered at all, it's for Uma Thurman's brief, nude appearance, rising from the sea as Venus on the half shell. Now that it's been released in... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/bam-restores-a-polish-masterpiece/74209/ Fri, 4 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST While I'm not a big fan of the Grateful Dead, I'm eternally grateful to Jerry Garcia for saving "The Saragossa Manuscript." Back in the 1960s when rock music, movies, drugs, and politics were one big, simmering witch's brew, the Polish director Wojciech Has's "The Saragossa Manuscript" screened at the San Francisco Film Festival. Garcia saw it, fell in love, and bought a print which he gave to the Pacific Film Archive on the condition that they would screen it for him whenever he asked. Martin... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/finding-love-on-the-straight-to-video-shelf/73983/ Tue, 1 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST From the 1950s through the 1980s, grindhouse movie theaters threw anything on-screen that could turn a dime, from badly dubbed foreign imports to exploitation quickies padded with stock footage. Sex, sadism, sin, and shock were what sold, and even the worst miscarriage of cinema could make money with the right title and a gratuitously gruesome poster. Now, the movie sewage that used to gush out onto Times Square is flooding the New Release shelves of your local Blockbuster. Recently, numerous... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/fun-with-the-human-testosterone-shot/73572/ Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST A while back, a friend of mine and his wife were trying to get pregnant. They were having difficulties and were unable to afford fertility treatments, so it became a long, frustrating process. Finally, at the end of his rope, my friend pinned a photograph of Charles Bronson over the marital bed. Six months later his wife was pregnant. With twins. Never underestimate the power of Bronson. Best known for his stone face and its expressive squinting, Charles Bronson epitomized a strain of 1970s... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/icelands-most-wanted/72071/ Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST It's incomprehensible to me that Baltasar Kormakur's "Jar City," which begins a one-week engagement today at IFC Center, has become one of Iceland's biggest box office hits of all time, mainly because it makes Icelanders look like a bunch of creeps. So dirty and unshaven that you can practically smell their rancid, unwashed sweaters, the cops, criminals, junkies, and thieves of this 2006 film are either raping people and beating each other up or eating fresh eyeballs and tongues from the... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/they-came-from-another-land/71875/ Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST Coming on the heels of George A. Romero's 1968 classic "Night of the Living Dead," the second movie in the undead bible was an Italian production, shot by a Spanish director and set in the bucolic British countryside. Though it has been known by dozens of titles — from "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" to "Don't Open the Window" (the inspiration for Edgar Wright's "Don't" trailer in Quentin Tarantino's "Grindhouse") — Blue Underground finally releases the definitive version of "The Living Dead at... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/history-with-a-sense-of-humor/71345/ Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST During the past 30 years, we've gotten used to motion pictures respectfully embalming our history. Movies such as "Amistad," "Seabiscuit" and "Dances With Wolves" seem airless and false, exchanging life's rugged vitality for prissy tastefulness and predictable "underdogs beat the odds" formulas. The Chinese movie industry, on the other hand, treats history like a soccer ball, kicking it around, booting it into mud puddles, and leaving it scuffed and torn, waiting for the next director to come... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/street-smart/71314/ Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST How can a movie this bad be so good? "Step Up 2: The Streets" is a Franken-film, stitched together from the corpses of other dance movies: It's got the legs of "Stomp the Yard," the kidneys of "You Got Served," the arms of "Save the Last Dance," and the kneecaps of "How She Move." The clichés, in order of appearance: Rebellious and talented Andie (Briana Evigan) is part of a step-dance crew, but her aunt is tired of her rule-breaking and gives her one last chance. Andie can either enroll in the... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/jumping-through-time-is-as-fun-as-it-looks/71317/ Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST Critics aren't like normal people. We watch movies for money, mostly because we're giant nerds, and we like movies that Advance the Art of the Motion Picture. This is why most critically acclaimed films stumble at the box office — because normal people just want to go to the movies and have some fun. As a professional pretentious person, it would be easy to harsh on "Jumper," which is out today. But if I had to pay for my own tickets, this is exactly the kind of fun little movie I'd want to see... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/understanding-japan-through-its-cartoons/71180/ Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST What kind of world do we live in when the Japan Society dedicates three months to "The Genius of Japanese Lacquer" and only four days to its amazing "Dawn of Japanese Animation" film series? Between today and Saturday, the Society will present dozens of short animated Japanese films made in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s for the first time in America, with English subtitles. Many of the films will be accompanied by the live narration of Midori Sawato, Japan's most renowned benshi (live narrator)... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/britains-dream-americas-nightmare/71116/ Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST If you want to see how far our food shows have fallen, take a comparative look at the British and American versions of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay's reality series. On the British version of the show, "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares" (also aired in America on BBC America), the titular chef is dropped into a restaurant that is hemorrhaging gobs of cash and proceeds to kick it in the rear end until it takes its first shaky steps toward viability. The Fox Network's reality show "Kitchen Nightmares,"... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/spanning-the-globe-for-good-stories/70570/ Fri, 1 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST America: Love it or leave it. Of course, if you like a good story, sometimes the best thing you can do is leave it. Ever since the marketing departments took over Hollywood, stories are out and targeting key demographics is in, with movies becoming more like inspirational greeting cards than examples of great storytelling. Even independent movies have fallen victim to the same mentality, substituting attitude and atmosphere for plotting and characters. And most of the foreign films that rate a... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/china-drops-the-curtain-on-art/70151/ Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST In the foreign film distribution racket, you'd be hard-pressed to find a trendier tagline than "Banned in China," but more often than not it's a case of false advertising. When "Blind Shaft" hit New York in 2004, almost every review parroted the "Banned in China" line from the film's press release, giving the impression that the movie was a brave political statement, when in fact it had been denied a release because the director had neglected to get location permits, something that would have... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/and-if-you-cant-catch-cloverfield/69776/ Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST The surest sign that a movie is a hot item comes when Asylum releases one of its direct-to-video knockoffs to coincide with opening day. Did you like "The Da Vinci Code"? Then you'll love Asylum's "The Da Vinci Treasure." Can't find "Alien vs. Predator"? Then how about "Alien vs. Hunter"? Is Will Smith in "I Am Legend," or is he in "I Am Omega"? So it's something of a compliment that this week sees the arrival of Asylum's counterfeit "Cloverfield" — the unimaginatively titled "Monster."... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/monster-is-smaller-than-it-seems/69707/ Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST It's big. Really, really big. So huge, in fact, that you can see it from practically any street corner in Manhattan. It's so huge people in Japan are talking about it. It consumes everything in its path. It induces panicked, frenzied behavior in adults. Even on a purely technical level it takes your breath away when you realize its scale, when you grasp how much time and money went into making it work, when you understand its complexity. It is the marketing campaign for "Cloverfield," which... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/humor-has-been-terminated/69369/ Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST Ever since the release in 1984 of James Cameron's science-fiction classic "The Terminator," the movie's titular robotic assassins have been known for their lack of humor, their indestructible bodies, and for being played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, so it's fitting that the "Terminator" franchise has been crafted in their image. Seemingly indestructible, it has spawned three movies, dozens of comic books, video games, toys, and now the Fox mid-season replacement series, "Terminator: The Sarah... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/best-movies-no-one-saw/68723/ Fri, 28 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST The best thing about living in New York City is that when the time comes to put together a year-end "Top 10 Movies" list, the choices are practically endless. Sometimes it feels like too many small theaters are showing too many small movies, but if you take enough chances, you're guaranteed to strike gold. Movies from this list screened at the shaggy Cinema Village, the slick IFC Center, and the criminally under-attended ImaginAsian. But special kudos go to the Two Boots Pioneer, which is still... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/holiday-blood-feast-with-burton/68467/ Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST Just in time for the holiday season comes the latest movie from Tim Burton, "Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street." Mr. Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" has become a delightful Christmas classic, and here he reunites with eccentric Johnny Depp to bring Stephen Sondheim's hit Broadway musical to the big screen. Judging by the trailers, it's a great big Yuletide treat: a song-filled, Victorian melodrama — "A Christmas Carol" for goths. Well, imagine that you've gone to see your... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/out-for-justice/67866/ Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST Wonder Woman has had her bottom spanked by glassy-eyed adult babies from Grown-Down Land. She has been rendered helpless by the prehensile moustache of Egg Fu, a 30-foot-tall, communist egg. She has been turned into a gorilla against her will, battled villains as depressing as the Paper Man (who has all the powers of paper) and the Mouse Man (who controls mice with his mind), and her own mother has tried to kill her on more than one occasion. But never before has Wonder Woman faced an enemy as... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/searching-in-vain-for-heartstrings/67491/ Tue, 4 Dec 2007 18:57:03 EST Judging by the critical praise heaped upon Francisco Vargas's 2005 film "The Violin," which begins a one-week engagement today at Film Forum, foreign films don't need to do anything other than look pretty and have the right politics to succeed these days. Shot in lush black and white, Mr. Vargas's film is set during a series of indigenous peasant revolts in Mexico in the 1970s, although you'd be hard-pressed to figure that out unless you read it somewhere or know enough about Mexican history to... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/darwins-law-gets-the-horror-treatment/67316/ Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST Woe unto the filmmaker who doesn't live up to our expectations. Today's object lesson: the Argentinean director Israel Adrian Caetano and his new movie, "Chronicle of an Escape," which makes its premiere at the IFC Center today. The true story of a professional soccer player who was rounded up by a paramilitary task force, accused of being a revolutionary, and imprisoned and tortured for months in a suburban home before escaping, this flick comes weighted down with great expectations. As... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/introducing-africa-to-the-world/67260/ Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST When I first heard the subject of Film Forum's latest retrospective, it filled me with dread. "Sembčne," which begins a two-week run on Friday, features the work of the Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembčne, known as the "Father of African Cinema," an appellation that frequently induces instant boredom. My general assumption about African film was that it wallowed in misery and poverty and was technically underdeveloped, and in many ways, Sembčne's films don't exactly disappoint my prejudiced... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/future-is-then/67009/ Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST Were American science-fiction movies ever as fertile and frantic as they were in the 1970s? The one-two punch of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Franklin J. Schaffner's "Planet of the Apes" in 1968 kicked off more than a decade's worth of sci-fi flicks that were tough, smart, and full of ferocious social commentary. Goodbye to '60s trash such as "Robinson Crusoe on Mars" and hello to '70s social satire such as "A Clockwork Orange," "The Stepford Wives," and Woody Allen's "Sleeper... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/warming-for-dummies/66891/ Fri, 23 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST Just what the world needs: another piece of agitprop about global warming disguised as a documentary. The new "Everything's Cool" is the best movie I've ever seen about global warming for kids in junior high school, but it's the most annoying movie about global warming I've ever seen for adults. Tracking the evolution of the debate on global warming from its contentious beginnings through its post-Katrina mainstream acceptance, "Everything's Cool," by Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand, has... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/ladies-of-the-dark/66718/ Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST The advent of the DVD has unleashed a continual stream of classic film noir re-issues, starring actors like Humphrey Bogart and Joan Crawford, and directed by talents like Orson Welles and Billy Wilder. But with Kino's "Film Noir: Five Classics From the Studio Vaults," we're getting down to the mucky sediment on the bottom with B-list stars and Z-grade budgets — movies that were churned out quickly to capitalize on current events and meant to fill the back sides of double bills. The stars and... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/turbulent-flight-of-fancy/66613/ Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST If you're thinking of getting your children a lobotomy for Christmas, why not take them to see "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" instead? For the price of a single movie ticket you can destroy your wee one's brain without all that messy surgery, leaving plenty of cash for your Christmas shopping. "Magorium" is a magical celebration of the wonder of make-believe, crafted with all the care and love you'd find in a sweatshop. Mr. Magorium (Dustin Hoffman) is a delightful and mysterious old fellow... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/germis-fine-italian-import/66221/ Fri, 9 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST If you want to see the world of cartoonist Charles Addams put onscreen in all its morbid, Victorian splendor, then I recommend you skip the Addams Family movies and instead see Pietro Germi's "Divorce, Italian Style," which begins a two-week run at Film Forum today. It's a blast from the past, shot in 1961, a time when an Italian movie could come to America, be a box-office hit, nab best actor and best director nominations from the Academy, and take home the Oscar for best screenplay. These... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/sad-costume-party/65773/ Fri, 2 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST There's no reason for sane individuals to make documentaries. First they have to find someone doing something interesting, then they have to film them for months, even years, hoping that something dramatic will happen, and finally they've got to take hundreds of hours of footage and give it a beginning, a middle, and an end. The director of "Confessions of a Superhero," Matthew Ogens, has pulled off 2/3 of the job, but that missing 1/3 consigns this documentary to the status of a video... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/filming-the-great-war-of-words/64903/ Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST With newspapers and magazines heralding Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's new translation of "War and Peace" with all the ballyhoo normally reserved for a Lindsay Lohan arrest, and the Metropolitan Opera staging a gargantuan version of Sergei Prokofiev's "War and Peace" in December, Leo Tolstoy's 1,312-page ox stunner of a novel is suddenly, 138 years after its initial publication, hot. This poses a dilemma for New Yorkers who want to be in the know: It's too late to start reading the... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/in-brief-2007-10-19/64905/ Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST 30 DAYS OF NIGHT R, 113 minutes The makers of the new vampire movie "30 Days of Night" have discovered an amazing secret. Apparently, hidden within the video store, there's a section consisting of hundreds of what are known popularly as "horror movies." Somehow, the director and screenwriters of "30 Days" have gained access to these forbidden movies and they've taken all of their scenes, dialogue, and situations, and pasted them into "30 Days of Night." The result is a movie that you feel... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/hong-kong-shakes-its-china-syndrome/64707/ Wed, 17 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST Consider Anthony Wong, his face as lumpy and raw as an undercooked pancake. He was a character actor specializing in psychopaths and cannibals in Hong Kong before the territory's transfer from British to Chinese control in 1997. But since the handover, he's become one of the city's best-loved actors thanks to his work as a stoic hitman in the crime drama "The Mission" and as a cop wracked with guilt over past mistakes in "Infernal Affairs." Or look at Lam Suet, a fat bag of potatoes with a... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/formatted-to-fit-your-television/64610/ Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST "Has anyone here said or done anything that offended you?" Shelley Winters screams in "The Devil's Daughter," so stoned on her own emotions that she's vibrating. "Your mother wants you to stay!" she brays through her circus orange lipstick, her hair dyed radioactive orange, her fingernails painted into orange claws, orange eyebrows plucked into Cruella de Ville arcs, black Ming the Merciless collar aquiver, and pogoes in place as she prepares for a method acting liftoff. Forget the Lifetime... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/cathays-song/64204/ Tue, 9 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST In June 1964, Chinese film history changed forever. Previously, Southeast Asian cinema had been dominated by two families — the Shaw family, headed by Run Run Shaw, and the Loke family, headed by Loke Wan Tho. The latter was a veritable empire that owned rubber plantations, banks, cinemas, and a movie studio called Cathay. Founded in 1953, Cathay specialized in urbane, Westernized musicals and comedies, whereas Shaw Brothers Studios, with its muscle-headed nationalism, was shooting squarely at... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/little-shop-of-horrors/63746/ Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST When did horror movies become so gentrified? Right this minute there are more talentless hacks churning out by-the-numbers horror flicks for Hollywood than there are bank branches in the East Village. Directors such as David Cronenberg are rejecting their horror roots to make middlebrow art-house fare, and on the screen the once-transgressive shockers of the 1970s and '80s are being remade as glossy teen flicks where the dirt and gore have been replaced by nontoxic Hollywood grime and... GRADY HENDRIX http://www.nysun.com/arts/guys-girls-guns/63584/ Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST For decades, Japanese film history has been held hostage by the good taste of directors like Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi, whose tactful, subtle films are endlessly screened in retrospectives and reissued on DVD. Consequently, the world regards Japanese cinema as little more than a series of trembling melodramas and black-and-white samurai films. That's why the series beginning tonight at the Japan Society, "No Borders, No Limits: 1960s Nikkatsu Action Cinema," is such a liberating blast...