Articles tagged "josh brolin"

News

Backstage at the Oscars: ‘Milk’ screenwriter speaks out

by Barry Koltnow [The Orange County Register (MCT)]

[23.Feb.09] :. HOLLYWOOD - “Milk” screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who gave a politically tinged acceptance speech on stage, continued his political bent backstage, calling on President Obama to repeal...

PopWire

 

News

This year’s Supporting Actor?

by Rafer Guzman [Newsday (MCT)]

[19.Feb.09] :. When it comes to the best supporting actor Oscar, the winning hand could be held by The Joker. That, of course, is the late Heath Ledger, whose eye-popping turn as The Joker in “The Dark...

PopWire

 

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008 Feature

The New Classics - The 30 Best Films of 2008

by PopMatters Staff

[16.Jan.09] :. Unlike previous years, where classics came crawling out of the celluloid woodwork with regular reckless abandon, 2008 was more calm… and considered. That's not to say that choosing 30 top titles was hard. The difficulty in placing them in some manner of rank order suggests the actual depth of quality involved.

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008

 

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008 Feature

Iconic - The Top 20 Male Performances of 2008

by PopMatters Staff

[14.Jan.09] :. Like the gladiators of old, 2008 resembles a battle of formidable acting gods, especially when looking over the 20 choices presented below. Indeed, if anything, choosing a winner requires more of a leap of faith than any amount of critical skill - they all were that good.

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008

 

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008 Feature

Tough and Tender - The Top 20 Female Performances of 2008

by PopMatters Staff

[14.Jan.09] :. Twenty talented ladies, 20 performances worthy of multiple little gold men. Unfortunately, as in all years, someone has to come out on top. But after looking over this impressive list, picking the preeminent turn of 2008 seems almost impossible.

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008

 
Featured Article

Short Ends and Leader

‘Milk’s Legacy More Timely Now Than Ever

by Bill Gibron

[11.Dec.08] :. Harvey Milk was more than a politician. He was more than a grass roots illustration of San Francisco’s struggling gay rights movement and underrepresented population. He was much more than a...

Short Ends and Leader

 

Sean Penn hopes film on America’s first openly gay politician will help modern-day movement

by Rick Bentley [McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)]

[4.Dec.08] :. SAN FRANCISCO - It has been 30 years since San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to hold such a high office, was shot to death by a former supervisor, Dan...

 

‘Milk’ exposes paradox for screen’s leading men

by Mark Caro [Chicago Tribune (MCT)]

[26.Nov.08] :. Gus Van Sant’s “Milk” isn’t just a mainstream-minded Oscar candidate; it’s also a rallying cry. With Sean Penn starring as Harvey Milk, the openly gay San Francisco...

 

Milk

by Cynthia Fuchs

[26.Nov.08] :. Milk urges optimism and action, even as it also recalls the loss of its charismatic subject.

 

The Man Who Wasn’t There: Wrestling with Oliver Stone’s W. and the Enigma of George W. Bush

by Josh Timmermann

[6.Nov.08] :. Stone doesn't "get" Bush’s true historical legacy (any more than the rest of us do in 2008), but he cannily realizes that, warts and all, Bush is an undeniably pivotal figure.

 

Audiences turn a deaf ear to preachy Hollywood films

by Rene Rodriguez [McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)]

[31.Oct.08] :. Used to be, going to the movies was a way to escape the bustle and stress of the real world for a couple of hours. Lately, the multiplex has become a more tumultuous place. Choose the wrong picture,...

 

W.

by Cynthia Fuchs

[17.Oct.08] :. The readymade caricature George Bush is as much a reflection of his moment as he is an occasion for Oliver Stone's latest stab at revisionist history.

 

‘W.’ is Brilliant Political Theater

by Bill Gibron

[16.Oct.08] :. How did it happen? How did a man with limited governing skills, a track record of career calamities, a laundry list of personality (and parental) issues, and a jerryrigged jailhouse conversion to...

 

Talk, Talk, Talk: December 2008

by Bill Gibron

[12.Sep.08] :. Just like the end of an inspiring speech that may or may not succeed in making its point, these final four weeks before 2009 tend to define or defeat the entire awards season purpose.

 

Talk, Talk, Talk: October 2008

by Bill Gibron

[10.Sep.08] :. What studio suit thought this was a good idea? With four months to schedule your high priced efforts, you instead unload almost 30 overpriced pictures on an unsuspecting movie audience.

 

How to play at being a villain: Bardem, Ledger reignite media interest in craft of acting

by Joe Williams [St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MCT)]

[14.Aug.08] :. The verdict is nearly unanimous: As the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” Heath Ledger gives a great performance. But what exactly does that mean? As we watch a movie, the mysterious alchemy...

 

There will be confusion: Deliberately vague films leave critic cold

by Christopher Kelly [McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)]

[24.Feb.08] :. Walking out of a press screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” in early November, I turned to a fellow critic in the hopes that he might explain a plot point that...

 

Joel and Ethan Coen’s ‘No Country for Old Men’ is favored for the Oscar

by John Anderson [Newsday (MCT)]

[22.Feb.08] :. LOS ANGELES - On a Sunday night this past January, as the filmmaking brothers Ethan and Joel Coen were picking up one of several New York Film Critics Circle Awards for “No Country for Old...

 

Digital Dynamite: The 30 Best DVDs of 2007

by PopMatters Staff

[25.Jan.08] :. It was the year of the behemoth box set, the multi-disc triumph that tried to give long suffering fans everything their demanding little digital hearts ever desired. Here are PopMatters' 30 picks for the best DVDs of the year.

 

A Gallery of Good Works: The Best Films of 2007

by PopMatters Staff

[11.Jan.08] :. From Julian Schnabel's artsy The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to the legendary Coen Brothers splendid adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, PopMatters counts down the 30 best films of 2007.

 

Performance Art: The Best Acting of 2007 - Male

by PopMatters Staff

[9.Jan.08] :. From the tender and eerie precision of Sam Riley's depiction of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis in Control to yet another superlative performance by Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, PopMatters highlights the best male actors of 2007.

 

The Best Big Screen Eye Candy of 2007

by Daynah Burnett

[4.Jan.08] :. When flipping through my mental catalog of the year's films, certain scenes stand out. This past year offered a veritable feast of visual goodies.

 

Iraq War-themed films can’t find an audience

by Soren Andersen [McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)]

[2.Jan.08] :. What if they made a war movie and nobody came to see it? No biggie. Individual films fail all the time for all kinds of reasons. Filmmaking is a crapshoot. Always has been. Always will be. The...

 

Sex and violence are not always gratuitous, directors say

by Duane Dudek [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MCT)]

[12.Nov.07] :. What has more sex and violence than an episode of “The Jerry Springer Show”? The multiplex. You can pass through any neighborhood in America and not know what goes on behind the closed...

 

Q&A with ‘No Country for Old Men’ makers Joel and Ethan Coen

by Colin Covert [Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (MCT)]

[9.Nov.07] :. Joel and Ethan Coen are in almost constant motion. Three days after completing photography in New York City on their upcoming spy comedy “Burn After Reading,” in the lull before beginning...

 
PopMatters Pick

Film Review

No Country for Old Men

by Cynthia Fuchs

[9.Nov.07] :. The desolate landscape and moral layout evoke old Westerns, but the film, based on Cormac McCarthy's novel, also reconsiders the genre's conventions, comparing now and "the old times."

Recent Film reviews

 

American Gangster

by Cynthia Fuchs

[2.Nov.07] :. As much as American Gangster loves Frank's intelligence and charisma, it must also condemn his criminality.

 

A new script for Hollywood war movies

by Carrie Rickey [The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT)]

[11.Oct.07] :. Anti-war demonstrators storm the Pentagon in the movie “Across the Universe.” A career soldier protests the Iraq conflict in “In the Valley of Elah.” The tactics of an elite...

 

Hollywood goes to war: Mainstream movies focus on Iraq, terrorism

by Cary Darling [McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)]

[1.Oct.07] :. Writer Matthew Michael Carnahan makes a living pounding out movie scripts, where flights of fantasy and retreats from reality are the daily stock in trade. But a couple of autumns back, while...

 

Tight-lipped Tommy Lee Jones on ‘In the Valley of Elah’

by Howard Gensler [Philadelphia Daily News (MCT)]

[21.Sep.07] :. TORONTO—Oscar-winning actor Tommy Lee Jones, likely to be nominated again for one or both of his fall movies, “In the Valley of Elah” (opening Friday) and “No Country for Old...

 

In the Valley of Elah

by Cynthia Fuchs

[20.Sep.07] :. Paul Haggis' film posits Hank as an old-school man of honor, both punished and revered for his traditional "values."

 

Movies don’t always have to be picture perfect to gain our loyalty

by Duane Dudek [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MCT)]

[9.Apr.07] :. Tarantino compares the "grindhouse" experience with the raw power of "punk rock."

 
PopMatters Pick

Film Review

Grindhouse (2007)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[6.Apr.07] :. Where the olden days movies were fierce, these are more nostalgic for a moment that's amplified in the remembering. These retreads are surely giddy, but they're also indulgent, just as they mean to be.

Recent Film reviews

 

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez Talk Grindhouse

by Steven Rea [The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT)]

[6.Apr.07] :. The celebrated directors discuss their new double-feature, a salute to the grindhouse film era, and offer a hit list of grindhouse classics for your viewing pleasure.

 

The Dead Girl (2006)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[28.Mar.07] :. An anthology of five stories organized around the titular corpse, the movie is a bleak but oddly robust homage to women's survival and defeat in the face of violence, oppression, and non-options.

 

The PopMatters ‘Short Ends & Leader’ Spring Film Preview

by Bill Gibron

[2.Mar.07] :. In order to separate the worthy from the worthless, PopMatters' "Short Ends & Leader" editor is highlighting 10 new films he's looking forward to this spring.

 

Into the Blue (2005)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[30.Sep.05] :. Jessica Alba looks fabulous.

 

Into the West

by Lesley Smith

[7.Jul.05] :. Into the West is honest about the role of women, both Caucasian and Native American.

 

Mister Sterling

by Cynthia Fuchs

[16.Jan.03] :. Presiding over this commotion is the series' preternaturally cool hero, the highly principled and motorcycle-riding Bill Sterling (Josh Brolin).

 

Hollow Man (2000)

by Jon Munn

When he and the team are unable to reverse the effect and he's stuck in a transparent state indefinitely, Sebastian becomes not just mean, but insane.