I never thought I would say this about “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” (an adaptation of a bestselling book by Seth Graham Smith) but if it had been longer, I think it would have been better.
Looking for a taste of culture this summer? Try experiencing dances from the Vietnamese, Chinese, modern, hip-hop, Tibetan, African and musical-theater performance styles at The Moore Theatre.
The demolition of the Elfrieda apartment building has begun. Many Queen Anne residents mourn the loss of this neighborhood landmark that has quietly sat on the southeast corner of Crockett and Queen Anne Avenue since its completion 100 years ago.
The ancient Romans employed a handy phrase: “The object speaks for itself.”...
“There was music in the cafes at night / and revolution in the air.” That line from Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue” always reminds me of the University District in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when folk music blasted out of such forgotten hovels as the Pamir House and The Last Exit on Brooklyn, and you might hear the Rev. Gary Davies beneath Roosevelt at the University Friends Center, or an impossible combination of jazz musicians and folk singers across the University Bridge at the Llahngaelhyn.
Don’t let the title or subject matter behind the Seattle Repertory Theatre’s latest production, “How to Write a New Book for the Bible” scare you. The play based on a diary that playwright Bill Cain kept while caring for his mother during her final illness. Many of us baby-boomers have recently or will soon be dealing with our aging parents’ final days and so may be inclined to shy away from a play dealing with material that sounds too morbid or close to unpleasant realities. Fight the urge.
In Daniel Espinosa’s “Safe House,” Denzel Washington’s star powers are on full display. He plays Tobin Frost, a dangerous rogue CIA agent who has been exposing highly classified information about the Agency.
Accompanying that Ten Best of '87 article for Pacific Northwest magazine was the current installment of a year-end feature Kathleen Murphy and I—in this case, I solo—have done for nearly every year since 1971. "Moments Out of Time" started out in the Seattle Film Society journal Movietone News. Most years' worth can be found collected at Parallax View. Photo at left displays Ellen Barkin and Dennis Quaid in The Big Easy.
The 37th incarnation of the Seattle International Film Festival (called the 38th, but that's another story) gets off to a promising start with local filmmaker Lynn Shelton's latest, Your Sister's Sister. What happens after that won't necessarily be pretty.
Opening the same week as “Oklahoma”, Book-It Repertory Theatre brings us a different take on life in the high plains with a world premiere adaptation of Seattle author Ivan Doig’s novel “Prairie Nocturne.”
Residents can start voting for their favorite community project on March 12 as part of Umpqua Bank’s “Build Your Block Challenge.”
Kathleen Murphy writes: A feel-good flick that broke box-office records in France, The Intouchables boasts a natural-born movie star in Omar Sy, who's gifted with the kind of charisma and physical grace the camera loves and audiences are helplessly seduced by. That may account for his walking away with France's Best Actor César in a year when Jean Dujardin of The Artist won big everywhere else. Sy's ebullient warmth plays well with the more contained but no less charming François Cluzet, best known outside France for his own César-winning performance in 2006's twisted Hitchcockian thriller Tell No One. The two generate such fun and good will in this Gallic Driving Miss Daisy (or Trading Places, Scent of a Woman, ad nauseam) that you can almost forgive the film's breezy racial stereotyping, cheap comedy and phony-baloney attitudes toward art, culture, class, and quadriplegia. Almost. Stay in touch at http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/the-intouchables/#Review_0
"I never know how each film will end. When I'm filming, I shoot each scene as if it were a short film. It's only when I edit that I worry about the narrative. My objective is to tell a story, but that's the final thing I do." Writer-director André Téchiné said that sometime in the mid-Nineties, but I'd enjoy thinking he was moved to these remarks by his 2011 film Unforgivable (Impardonnables).
In observance of Gay Pride Month, Seattle Art Museum devoted three Friday evenings to "A Real Good-Looking Boy: The Films of Montgomery Clift." First up was Howard Hawks' classic Western Red River, the first film in which Clift was ever cast (though its release was delayed, with the result that the stage actor's screen debut became The Search). Read Kathleen Murphy's essay on the film, following this announcement.
Ridley Scott's Prometheus, which either is or isn't a prequel to the 1979 Alien (depending on which publicist has had the last word), is plenty of reason to summon up Kathleen Murphy's 1992 essay on what was then an Alien(s) triptych.