As we embarked on our annual November-December process of catching up with the myriad films missed in the course of the year and zeroing in on our notions of the best, Kathleen Murphy remarked that 2007 hadn't been a year for great films. No, I agreed, only one or two seemed worthy of deeming great (an adjective we take pretty seriously), but there had been a healthy crop of really good, smart, ambitious movies that lingered in the mind. And in its way, that was almost as gratifying, and maybe more reassuring, than half a dozen masterpieces.
To afford perspective on the 2010 Academy Awards contest, we flash back to anticipatory articles on other races the previous three years.
"Boorman has said that he wanted to make Excalibur 'as if it is the story—not a retelling of the myth, but the very events on which the legend was based.' In this, I believe, he succeeded." Thus wrote Kathleen Murphy for a University of Washington film series program note in 1982. John Boorman's film had come out the year before, and now it's out on Blu-ray. Which is a fine thing, not only because of the director's definitive take on Camelot and all that, but also the superb, hands-on cinematography by Alex Thomson.
Another of the all-time greats just went by on Turner Classic Movies. And no, it's not the Pacino–DePalma–Oliver Stone thing.
Yes, that title does beg derision, yet Kathleen Murphy maintains the movie's lively and worthy. In genuine Technicolor, too. Read her at http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/hobo-with-a-shotgun/#Review_0 By the way, Rutger Hauer pushing 70? Life is cruel.
Don't expect vampire gore and supernatural thrills in this long, slow exploration of youthful angst and alienation. In his first English-language movie, writer-director Iwai Shunji - who shot, edited, and composed original music for Vampire - clearly knew precisely what kind of world and weather he wanted to create....
Turner Classic Movies has three terrific suspense films in a row Wednesday night, July 6: Robert Siodmak's The Spiral Staircase (1946), the original film version of Gaslight (1940), and the John Huston picture John Huston didn't get to make, Three Strangers (1946).
Making great-tasting ice cream is the easy part of any ice-cream-making outfit. It's the marketing and negotiating that's hard, the do-everything-you-can effort to get your brand in the supermarket freezer section alongside industry heavyweights Breyers and Dreyer's.
The state of Washington may be facing a deficit of $4 billion and maybe up to $5 billion. So when Reuven Carlyle, the newly elected state Rep. of Legislative District 36 gets to Olympia, listening, learning and working to right the economy will be job on
Following a festival tradition, Orchestra Seattle and Seattle Chamber Singers will put on their annual holiday performances at the First Free Methodist Church on Queen Anne, on Dec. 7 and 22.
The Seattle Department of Transportation is proposing to improve customer service for users of Residential Parking Zones (RPZs), but some customers in areas such as Lower Queen Anne, Capitol Hill and the Pike-Pine corridor may not appreciate the effort.
Soprano Mary Dunleavy allows it is something of an oddity she has performed so often in an opera as sporadically produced in the modern repertoire as Georges Bizet's "The Pearl Fishers." The American opera singer, who makes her Seattle Opera debut in Bizet's opera on Jan. 10 as the priestess Leïla, has also sung the role in New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis.
Chuck Sekyra, the women's soccer coach at Seattle Pacific University, obviously loves his job. His manner is crisp, friendly, intelligent. He seems perpetually eager for the next practice, the next opportunity to work with his players, whom he appreciates as much as they appreciate him.
Pacific Northwest Ballet's "Jewels" delivers a multitude of visual riches.
"It was during this trip [(to the West)] that some important information was passed on to [Dr. Henry A] Smith [Magnolia's first white pioneer].