Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
starring: Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Emma Watson, Julia Ormond, Dominic Cooper, Toby Jones, Dougray Scott, Zoe Wanamaker
written by: Adrian Hodges
directed by: Simon Curtis
MPAA: Rated R for some language
starring: Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, Rashida Jones
written by: Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller
directed by: James Bobin
MPAA: Rated PG for some mild rude humor
The Descendants is a very strong contender for the best film of 2011. Directed by Alexander Payne (Sideways, Election) from a script he co-wrote with Jim Rash (Dean Pelton from Community) and Nat Faxon, it tells the story of Matt King (George Clooney), a Hawaii lawyer whose life is turned upside down after his wife is left comatose following a jet-skiing accident. He attempts to rally their daughters, troubled teen Alexandra (Shailene Woodley in a revelatory performance) and tween Scottie (Amara King), but is devastated when Alexandra spitefully informs him their mother was having an affair. As his wife’s condition continues to deteriorate, Matt and his daughters embark on a journey of emotional discovery that eventually leads to Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard, in a surprisingly potent dramatic performance), the other man. It also leads to his wife, Julie, who is played by Judy Greer.
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Interview: Judy Greer on “The Descendants””
On Thursday, November 10, the earth shook a bit more than usual in dear old San Francisco. And I’m not referring to that troubling rash of tremors we’ve been dealing with over the last few weeks. No, I’m talking about the kind of shaking that can only be attributed to a pack of stampeding Twi-hards barreling toward an opportunity to personally accost one of their big-screen idols in the flesh. And the Breaking Dawn Cast & Concert Tour, which came to the Fillmore last week, provided them with one such rare occasion. As a red carpet novice who recently tasted blood and was eager for more, I decided to subject myself to this spectacle in the name of…adventure? Journalism? Bragging rights around 12-year-old girls and the mothers who brazenly steal their Twilight books? Hard to say. But I did it. And it was an eye-opening and occasionally overwhelming glimpse into one of the most powerful and efficient machines in American culture.
starring: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Alexander Skarsgard, Stellen Skarsgard, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, Brady Corbet, Udo Kier, Cameron Spurr
written and directed by: Lars von Trier
MPAA: Rated R for some graphic nudity, sexual content and language
starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Judi Dench, Ken Howard, Jeffrey Donovan, Dermot Mulroney, Josh Lucas, Denis O’Hare, Stephen Root, Ed Westwick, Miles Fisher
written by: Dustin Lance Black
directed by: Clint Eastwood
MPAA: Rated R for brief strong language
Few films have nailed the invincible excitement of young love with the giddy, wrenching precision of Like Crazy. The third feature film in as many years from director Drake Doremus, the film stars Anton Yelchin (The Beaver) and Felicity Jones (The Tempest) as Jacob and Anna, a young couple that meet while attending college together in southern California. When they discover their mutual attraction, they immediately understand the obstacle in their path – Anna is British and only in the U.S. on a student visa – but as they fall deeper and deeper into the first throes of romance, Anna decides to throw caution to the wind and stay with Jacob a few months past the expiration of her visa. Despite the instant gratification this choice provides, it will lead to lasting, disastrous consequences. The film works as a romantic drama as well as a terrifying cautionary tale about the dangers of abusing a student visa.
John Cho recently had a fairly perfect San Francisco day. The Berkeley graduate, 39, was in town with his family during fleet week, observing its many air shows. “It was very loud,” he says. “If I lived here, I would have been really annoyed. But I was visiting, so it was fun.” And if Cho lived here, there’s at least one place you’d have a good chance of finding him: “That Embarcadero thing – you guys don’t know how good you have it. The eating there is ridiculous. I found a three-hour parking spot, then we went to Yank Sing, had dim sum, walked to the Embarcadero, got more yummies, watched the planes, then came back. It was kinda perfect.”
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Interview: John Cho on “A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas””
Antonio Banderas is out on a very polarized and complicated press tour at the moment. While it is not uncommon for an actor to have several projects opening at the same time, there have perhaps never been two more diametrically opposed films opening together than Puss in Boots, a feature-length spinoff of Banderas’ scene-stealing feline fan favorite from the Shrek films, and The Skin I Live In, a shockingly perverse psychological drama that reunites Banderas, now 51, with the great Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar, who first introduced Banderas in such ’80s world cinema classics as Law of Desire and Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown. And so, when Banderas and his frequent collaborator/Puss in Boots co-star Salma Hayek came to San Francisco for a red carpet premiere of their film, we were supposed to be talking about the family-friendly Puss in Boots. But, inevitably, the conversation kept working its way back to his other, considerably more lurid project – whether he liked it or not.
Every year at the Sundance Film Festival, there are inevitably a crop of star-is-born moments where little-known or unknown actors and filmmakers are suddenly catapulted to fame and acclaim thanks to a particularly well-received film. But surely one of the most surprising Sundance discoveries in recent memory is Elizabeth Olsen, 22, younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. After growing up on the sets of her sisters’ projects, Olsen studied acting at NYU (she recently graduated), and is now making her feature-film debut in Martha Marcy May Marlene, a tense character study that also marks the incredibly promising feature-length debut of writer/director Sean Durkin.