'What About Bob,' and other things only Bill Murray can get away with :
Bill Murray might be America's favorite celebrity prima donna.
Bio: Simon Abrams writes about comics, books and movies for The Comics Journal, L magazine, The New York Press and Slant Magazine. You can find a lot of his writing here.
Harold Camping, the 89-year-old evangelist and serial doomsayer, previously announced that the Rapture would occur on May 21st. He has since said that he was mistaken and that the Rapture is actually now scheduled for October 21st. So the third annual Doomsday Film Festival and Symposium this weekend at 92YTribeca couldn’t be timed any better, really. More
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on October 20th, 2011 5:54pmJapanese poet-turned-filmmaker Sion Sono is an acerbic and cynical artist whose works are all personal, complex and fiercely independent.
Most Americans who are familiar with his work know him for one of two films he directed.
If you remember the recent bygone days of the J-Horror craze, when films like The Ring and The Grudge seemed to be everywhere, you might know Sono as the guy who made Suicide Club, a freakishly smart and also seriously unnerving horror-mystery. Noriko’s Dinner Table, a companion and quasi-sequel to Suicide Club, screens this Friday night at the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan.
If you don’t care about Japanese horror films, you probably know Sono as the director of Love Exposure, a four-hour epic love story about two alienated teens whose families and respective religious faiths disintegrate before they learn to become self-aware and self- reliant. More
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on October 14th, 2011 4:46pmLast year, John Landis, the director of comedy classics The Blues Brothers and Animal House, finished shooting Burke and Hare, a horror comedy starring Andy Serkis and Simon Pegg as the infamous titular murderers and grave-robbers. Landis took two recognizably ghoulish serial killers and made them pursue doomed romances. The otherwise unremarkable Burke and Hare is primarily distinguished by the location Landis chose to shoot the film: the back lot of England’s famous Ealing Studios. More
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on October 7th, 2011 11:41pm2011 just might be Steven Spielberg’s year. He’s directed two films that will be theatrically released in a couple of months (War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin). And there have been at least two other films made by accomplished directors that pay homage to his style and his films’ suburban milieu (ex: Super 8).
Unfortunately for us, Spielberg’s films are just as often the inspiration for crappy knock-off artists as they are for genuinely talented filmmakers. More
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on October 1st, 2011 7:59amHaving made 19 feature films over the course of 39 years, several of them masterpieces, Roman Polanski can be excused for having a few clunkers in his oeuvre. The Ghost Writer reminded us just how good his brand of bleakly absurd existential thrillers are. And now, with Carnage, his adaptation of Yasmina Reza's stage play God of Carnage, about to open the New York Film Festival, Polanski is rightfully being celebrated at MoMA with a comprehensive retrospective, including some films he only starred in, like Andrzej Wajda's Revenge. More
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on September 24th, 2011 8:21amThe writing and directing team of David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams is responsible for such formidable comedies as the Naked Gun movies and the first Airplane!. Top Secret!, their last great comedy, screened this week at 92YTribeca.
Abraham’s and the Zuckers’ early collaborations are characterized by the way they effortlessly crammed every scene with anarchic sight gags. Today, that style of frenzied genre spoof has been co-opted by the considerably less inspired film-making team of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who are responsible for such soulless dreck as Not Another Teen Movie and Vampires Suck. More
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on September 10th, 2011 5:29amLove it or hate it, a key part of writer-director-star Evan Glodell’s indie hit Bellflower is its characters’ decisively post- post-modern viewership of The Road Warrior.
Though the characters in the film don’t call it Mad Max 2 but rather just “Mad Max,” the films’ characters are obsessed with Road Warrior villain The Humungus, later given the title of “Lord Humungus” in Bellflower. More
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on September 3rd, 2011 8:08amIt’s not unusual for a famous director to become a celebrity producer. Film-makers like Quentin Tarantino and Eli Roth use their names to sell films that they’re either helping to get distributed or were an executive producer on. But there’s a big difference between the films that Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro produces and the ones that he “presents.” The Mexican director produces many films, but a project like Puss in Boots is understandably not as personal a project for del Toro as The Orphanage, a film he was both the executive producer and “presenter” of. More
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on August 26th, 2011 10:56pmIn the creatively limitless realm of comics, where men come from dying planets to save the human race from itself, having a topless, muscle-bound dude learn lessons of loyalty and fidelity while kicking ass and taking women is not a big deal. For director Marcus Nispel, a guy who’s only interested in showing just how barbaric he can make Conan’s world, it’s a major problem. More
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on August 22nd, 2011 11:54amLike many of today's action stars, the post–World War II actor Robert Ryan was defined by his physique. His sunken, beady eyes, pronounced brow and heavy bags under his eyes gave him a simian appearance. That animalistic quality is the cornerstone of Ryan’s aggressive persona. Like Humphrey Bogart, Ryan looks like a refined savage, one whose tendency to explode manifested itself in cutting one-liners, pensive squints or plain physical violence. More
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on August 12th, 2011 4:09pm
