Doug McGrath’s Infamous: The Best Truman Capote Movie I’ve Seen All Year!
If you must see only one Truman Capote movie in your life, let it be this one Do I really want to see a movie about Truman Capote leaving Manhattan[…]
Author: Alan Vanneman
Alan Vanneman is a writer living in Washington, DC. He is the author of two dead-tree novels, Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra and Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara, both published by Penzler Press. Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara is available as an audiobook from Blackstone/Downpour. He is also the author of three new Nero Wolfe novellas recreating Rex Stout’s famous fat detective, a FREE ebook, and Author! Author! Auden, Oates, and Updike, a collection of two short stories and a novella, available both as an ebook and print on demand. All of his fiction can be accessed here at his blog Literature R Us. Portions of his article "Alfred Hitchcock: A Hank of Hair and a Piece of Bone," which originally appeared online in Bright Lights, have been included in a textbook anthology by Allison Smith, Trixie Smith, and Stacia Watkins. The Departed: Crime All the Time
Scorsese gets all Irish on our asses, and it works I admit it. I thought Marty had lost it. I thought he had gone all lazy and cute and Hollywood,[…]
From Aaron Spelling’s Vault of Horror: Charlie’s Angels on DVD!
“I expect to be erect any time now.” “An eighth-grader’s mind trapped in an eighth-grader’s body.” That’s how one critic summed up Aaron Spelling. Aaron had him killed, of course.[…]
One night on the Sleazoid Express
Tom Sutpen’s classy review of Sleazoid Express, by Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford, certainly brought back the memories, to wit: After I came back from Vietnam in December 1969 I[…]
The Departed: Scorsese gets all Irish on our asses, and it works
I admit it. I thought Marty had lost it. I thought he had gone all lazy and cute and Hollywood, with no fire in the belly. And for the first[…]
The Ant Bully: 3-D to the IMAX
I have seen the future, and it works, pretty well. The Ant Bully is pitched younger than just about any cartoon I’ve seen. There are no “over the kids’ heads”[…]
The New York Times: Protecting the gorgeous for over 100 years
When the Gray Lady interviews someone as cute as Jude Law, she doesn’t take off the kid gloves. If anything, she puts on an extra pair. In a recent article[…]
Chimp versus film critic: which is smarter?
You know the old gag: set a dozen chimpanzees in front of a set of typewriters, and sooner or later they would type out every sentence in the English language,[…]
The Don Goes Digital: Don Giovanni — Mozart’s Dramma Giocosa for the Ages
Jürgen Flimm and Brian Large supply a stage production that lives on DVD A stage production that doesn’t look stagy on home video? I said it couldn’t be done, more[…]
Finding the Funny, One Dick Joke at a Time: Comedy Central’s Pam Anderson Roast on DVD
Enough engorged vagina jokes to feed a family of four for an entire year! Some pleasures — a blow job from Angelina Jolie, for example1 — lie permanently out of[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Forbidden Fruit? Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible III
Is it a sin to see this film? There is no doubt that Tom Cruise is guilty of acting like a movie star in public. He’s jumped on Oprah’s couch,[…]
The Devil Wears Product: Anne Hathaway Almost Loses Her Cherry to the Big Apple in The Devil Wears Prada
“You’re making fashion history” — not! Is it possible to have a size 4 ass without a size 4 soul? Nuh-uh, says Hollywood, which knows a lot about both, in[…]
The Muscles from Bois de Bologne: David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli Kick Gallic Butt in Pierre Morel’s District B-13
Do not be alarmed, monsieur. We come from France. We are here to eat your sausages. Is France as fucked up as the U.S.? According to Pierre Morel, the answer[…]
Jesus, Mary, and Sophie! Tom Hanks Faces Torture by Elevator in Ron Howard’s Da Vinci Code
So middle of the road you can’t see the fucking curb Jazz for people who hate jazz? Who needs it? Chinese food for people who don’t eat Chinese? No way![…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
Looking at Charlie — First National, Shoulder Arms, and The Kid: An Occasional Series on the Art and Life of Charlie Chaplin
“LOST CHILD WANTED — Last seen with a little man with large flat feet and a small moustache” In 1917, for the first time in his life, Charlie Chaplin took[…]
Drive S/He Said: Felicity Huffman in Duncan Tucker’s Transamerica
The odd couple takes it on the road You’ve got to give them credit — Oscar and Felix, I mean. They don’t rest on their laurels. They’re always out there,[…]
How Slick Is Too Slick? Jason Reitman’s Thank You for Smoking
A movie only a preppie could love A good preppie cares about three things: good Scotch, good pussy, and a good school for his son. Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) achieves[…]
When Portentous Met Pretentious: Rian Johnson’s Brick
“I’ve got all five senses and eight hours’ sleep! Don’t fuck with me!” “The trouble with making movies is that by the time you’re old enough to make them, you[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
When Fred Met Red: Fred Astaire, Red Skelton, and Vera-Ellen Commingle in Three Little Words
It’s Bert and Harry, together again! Why are you not excited? Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby are not names to conjure with, unless you’re excessively fond of conjuring, but back[…]
Tentacles No Knives Can Cut: Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale
All in the family, unfortunately Home is the place where, when you have to go there They have to take you in.” “They fuck you up, your mum and dad,[…]
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