The news from Olympus.
Last month I had the curious experience, which must be much more familiar to the eminences of the journalistic "profession" than it is to me, of becoming part of a story I had attempted to write. In my case, the story was a humble book review. I had been...

Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard to Perform Live at Batman Premiere.
ENTERTAINMENT CLOSE-UP-8 July 2008-Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard to Perform Live at Batman Premiere(C)2008 - CloseUpMedia - newsdesk@closeupmedia.com Composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard will be performing together live for the first time, on stage at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square IMAX Theater prior to...

'Miles From Home' to Debut at Cannes.
ENTERTAINMENT CLOSE-UP-13 May 2008-'Miles From Home' to Debut at Cannes(C)2008 - CloseUpMedia - newsdesk@closeupmedia.com "Miles from Home," a film produced by writer/director, Ty Hodges, cinematographer/editor Todd Segal, Meagan Good, and Marlon Ollivierre, will make its international debut at the 2008 Marche du Film Festival in Cannes. ...

A new cinematic trend.
Canada marked the 20th anniversary on January 28 of the Supreme Court's Morgentaler decision, making Canada the only nation on the globe with no legal restrictions on abortion whatsoever. To mark the occasion a whole host of commentators tossed off columns in the last week of January that reiterated...

Thriving in a decadent culture: in The Culture-Wise Family, authors Ted Baehr and Pat Boone explain how to hold on to Christian values despite outside influences.
The Culture-Wise Family: Upholding Christian Values in a Mass Media World, by Ted Baehr and Pat Boone, Ventura, California: Regal Books, 2007, 270 pages, hardcover. (For ordering information, see the ad on page six.) If there ever was any doubt that Western culture had reached a crisis,...

Screening the Word: Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900-2001.
Screening the Word: Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900-2001. Ed. by Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitski. (BASEES/RoutledgeCurzon Series in Russian and East European Studies) Abingdon and New York: RoutledgeCurzon. 2005. 228 pp. 65 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 978-0-415-30667-6. Since its emergence as a new medium in...

Cleveland heights: Amy Taubin on American Splendor. (Film).
AMERICAN SPLENDOR, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's tatty, tender, volatile, and, yes, splendid biopic of Harvey Pekar, takes its name from the series of underground comic books that Pekar began publishing in 1976. Issued just about annually, the comics are autobiographical. Their subject is the daily life of...

Shadow Company.
Shadow Company, documentary directed and written by Nick Bicanic and Jason Bourque. Unrated, 86 minutes with over two hours of extras. A Purpose Built Film [c] 2006 It was a scene reminiscent of Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993. Charred American bodies desecrated and dragged through the streets coming...

Chop Suey: photographs to remember you by.
Bruce Weber's Chop Suey is one of the overlooked pleasures of the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival, receiving scant critical attention from the local press during the festival. Judging from its limited distribution, (the film, as far as I know, has had only a brief theatrical screening last fall...

Beautiful People: in praise of the liberal state.
Robin Wood's favorable reading of Jasmin Dizdar's award winning Beautiful People (CineAction #54) inspired me to re-view a film I had originally dismissed as an inconsequential if heartwarming exercise in humanism. (The jacket of the DVD release contains additional plaudits from Amy Taubin and A.O. Scott). Subsequent viewings, however,...