Kathleen Murphy has seen the future of movies, and it's the past: What are the odds of a silent movie, shot in black-and-white and the boxy old 1:33 screen ratio, wowing audiences at this year's Cannes Film Festival? Or that the star of such a throwback—Jean Dujardin, star of the OSS 117 spy spoofs—should show up in Entertainment Weekly as a potential Oscar nominee? Place your bets with confidence, my friends. Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist is a winner, easily one of the best films of 2011. Neither parody nor nostalgic wallow, this surefooted excursion into cinema's past is all artifice, but artifice so artful it feels and looks more real than many a movie unreeling in widescreen color. Unfettered by irony, inspiring the kind of spontaneous emotional response we yearn for at the multiplex, The Artist immerses us in joyful illusion, a world of movies within movies. Read on at http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/the-artist.1/
Brittany Price was looking after Sophie, a 6-year-old lab/retriever mix, as she does often for her sister.
OK, you can still see a slightly abbreviated version of this year's—uh, last year's—“Critics Wrap” online, courtesy of Seattle Channel. The Dec. 15 event at the Frye Art Museum featured Herald and KUOW-FM film critic Robert Horton, MSN.com and Straight Shooting's Kathleen Murphy, Jim Emerson from the Scanners blog at Roger Ebert's site, and The Stranger's Andrew Wright. And now they're floating in cyberspace forever: http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=3371124
Kathleen Murphy and I have participated in the year-end observances at MSN.com's Movies department in recent years. The Ten Best part for 2011 just went up today, Dec. 15, featuring the lists by a dozen MSN.com contributors and brief writeups on the ten films that finished on top.
Early on in his career, Stephen King became a brand name, a corporate author, a guaranteed best-seller with allegedly frightening horror at the center of his, to me, overly plotted works. In the beginning, King was a clumsy writer. "Carrie," a better movie by DePalma than a novel by King, was huge, and King was on his way. "The Shining," etc., followed.But a funny thing happened over the years. King worked on his writing style
When the three musketeers slide down ropes to land centerstage at Seattle Repertory Theatre, the real adventure begins. Once again, it's "one for all and all for one." Panache and swordplay are de rigueur in Alexandre Dumas' swashbuckling classic, "The Three Musketeers." You've probably seen at least one of the movies based on Dumas' novel. Most likely, it was the
Kathleen Murphy writes: In Billy Wilder's delightful comedy One, Two, Three (1961), the East German secret police tortured a hapless dude by playing "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" over and over and over. Trust me, no enhanced interrogation technique could work more effectively than a prolonged dose of high-decibel screeching from the rodent stars of Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. Eighty-seven minutes, the duration of this auditory assault, would be sufficient to slaughter every brain cell and induce blithering idiocy.No blithering idiocy to be found at http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/alvin-and-the-chipmunks-chipwrecked.1/
I've written a feature for Movies.MSN.com, occasioned by the release of War Horse and focusing on notable films that take their own distinct looks at the subject of war. The full package can be found at http://movies.msn.com/movie-guide-winter/photo-gallery-feature/10-war-movies-you-need-to-see/?photoidx=1. Meanwhile, you can read two of the individual writeups if you click just below.
Kathleen Murphy writes: From her first moments on-screen, Meryl Streep commanded the camera's—and our—rapt gaze. It wasn't just her luminous beauty. Even in early supporting roles, Streep's acting radiated such remarkable passion and intelligence the Golden Girl stole center stage from anointed stars like Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. Delivering stellar performances that sometimes look effortless, sometimes like intricate clockwork, this is an actress who consumes her characters, inviting their souls to put on her face for a time. Even in parts through which she could easily sleepwalk and still shine brighter than most, La Streep suddenly takes fire, turning dross into gold. Over three decades, Meryl Streep has racked up an astonishing 16 Academy Award nominations, more than any other actress, even Katharine Hepburn. Hard to believe that Oscar has crowned Meryl Streep queen only twice, for her supporting performance in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and her shattering turn in Sophie's Choice (1982). "I've played so many extraordinary women, I'm mistaken for one," quips Streep. Now she's taken on another famous female, a diva every bit as legendary and autocratic in her sphere as chef Julia Childs (Julie & Julia), Vanity Fair editor Diana Wintour (The Devil Wears Prada), or novelist Isak Dinesen (Out of Africa). Will Streep's controversial portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady seduce Oscar into going home with Hollywood's perennially slighted first lady? While we wait to find out, let's revisit some of the other extraordinary women Meryl Streep has tried on for size during her long, illustrious career. The Iron Lady is receiving at http://movies.msn.com/movies/gallery.aspx?gallery=26154&photo=2913e251-c6dd-4e56-81f0-07f55626f35d
Here's how Queen Anne & Magnolia News' representative in the National Society of Film Critics voted in the 2011 derby. And since I was voting long distance, my votes don't figure in the results of any category that went beyond a first ballot. Except morally and spiritually, of course.
There were so many surprises at Saturday's Weezer show at the KeyArena, that it's hard to know just where to start.But perhaps the most significant was witnessing the unrivaled chemistry among its four members and the multi-faceted talents that each possessed. The
"Too much sanity may be madness!" wrote Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes. "And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be."
Should student enrollment at Center School ever grow beyond 300, principal Lisa Escobar would recommend splitting the school in half as a way to preserve the dynamic that sets her school a part from regular high schools.
The National Society of Film Critics, among the last of the critics groups to chime in with annual awards, voted Saturday, Jan. 7, to determine honors for film year 2011. The winner for Best Picture here, as in many other year-end accountings, was Lars von Trier's haunting, maddening, transcendent Melancholia. The film just barely edged out its closest competition, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life....
Kathleen Murphy writes: First-time director Ralph Fiennes brings one of Shakespeare's lesser-known tragic heroes to ferocious life in Coriolanus, played in modern dress but voiced in the Bard's eloquently corrosive language. Fiennes acted this antisocial über-soldier, based on a legendary Roman general, on the London stage in 2000 and came to believe that Coriolanus' rise and fall might be better expressed on-screen: "I just felt it was a play about now." And so it is, in spades. Fiennes' reading underscores the soul-killing compromises demanded of democratic leaders, especially during times of economic turmoil; the power of the media to yo-yo public opinion; and the eternal tension between exceptional citizen and democracy's common men. Deftly orchestrating bloody action sequences (Hurt Locker cinematographer Barry Ackroyd is on board), the dangerous dynamics of fickle crowds and scenes of lacerating intimacy, Fiennes drives Coriolanus with a strong directorial hand, his style as singleminded—and arguably, arrogant—as that of the character. The play's been smartly streamlined by John Logan, and Fiennes' cast speaks Shakespeare's dialogue so naturally, the 17th-century poetry never jars with the "now" in which it's spoken. Prithee march on to http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/coriolanus.3/