Entertainment
Commanding laughter: Cohen surprises audiences with a tight regime
Published on May 23rd, 2013
0 comments THE Dictator is funny, in addition to being obscene, disgusting, scatological, vulgar, crude and so on. Having seen Sacha Baron Cohen promoting it on countless talk shows, I feared the movie...
Movie wars II: Carmike fights back with $1.50 flicks
Published on Nov 19th, 2012
28 comments The recent opening of the Stonefield Regal 14 has hit Charlottesville movie theaters like a tidal wave, with the 4-screen Regal Seminole already closed and the downtown Regal becoming an arthouse. In...
FunStuff: Charlottesville events November 22 and beyond
Published on Nov 19th, 2012
3 comments Run like a turkeyBe one of those hot dogs who smugly burn giga-calories before the Thursday Thanksgiving gluttony begins. Registration for the  31st annual run at Boar's Head is already closed...
Slamdancer: Indie mensch Mirvish reveals secret society
Published on Oct 31st, 2012
0 comments Dan Mirvish is getting the check-engine light on his minivan checked in Los Angeles as he's speaking with a reporter, a seemingly mainstream activity for a filmmaker known as a subversive. Mirvish co...
En garde: Carradine offers 'shocking' details from 'The Duellists'
Published on Oct 30th, 2012
1 comments In The Duellists, a French Hussar (Keith Carradine) insults a fellow soldier (Harvey Keitel) during the Napoleonic Wars. For years afterward, they engage in a series of brutal duels, driven by the...
Festival origins: Founder Patricia Kluge tells how it all began
Published on Oct 30th, 2012
2 comments On the 25th anniversary of the Virginia Film Festival, Patricia Kluge and former Governor Gerald Baliles both are being honored for its founding. According to Kluge, however, someone else first...
One-man band: McElwee persists in first-person documentary
Published on Oct 30th, 2012
0 comments In the mid-1980s, filmmaker Ross McElwee considered shooting a documentary about General Sherman’s march through the South. And he did shoot a documentary following Sherman’s trail, but in wholly...
Rogue cinema: Boyd Tinsley makes film you can feel
Published on Oct 29th, 2012
1 comments For violinist Boyd Tinsley, it's always about the music– even when the medium is the movies. In films like Star Wars, Psycho, and North by Northwest, the music creates the tension, says Tinsley...
Fat kid: Lillard's directing debut rules the world
Published on Oct 28th, 2012
1 comments Some people recognize Matthew Lillard from Scream. Others know him from Scooby-Doo. Sitting in the airport in Dallas on the day he's talking to a reporter, someone tells him they just saw him in SLC...
Flick picks: What local filmmakers want to see
Published on Oct 28th, 2012
1 comments The curtain is getting ready to rise on the 25th Virginia Film Festival, and there's the recurrent problem: what to see? Sometimes, it's simply too much to weed through more than 100 films for the...
Revolutionary: How to film upheaval-- and pick up girls
Published on Oct 3rd, 2012
2 comments The filmmaker was living in Argentina in the 1970s, a tumultuous and dangerous place that saw the return of General Juan Perón in 1973, the reign of his widow Isabel Perón, her ouster in a military...
Not fade away: Virginia Film Fest announces 25th line-up
Published on Oct 2nd, 2012
0 comments Lots of new films are on the bill for the 25th Virginia Film Festival among the 100-plus scheduled, but there's still more to come. Four other headliners for this year's November 1-4 flickathon had...
FunStuff: Charlottesville events September 27 and beyond
Published on Sep 23rd, 2012
5 comments Map the dark or calligraphy?We're never quite sure where Rosamond Casey's art is going to take us– whether it's a Rorschach game like Catch the Baby, or the creation of imaginary characters...
Civil Kickstarter: Film on Julian Bond needs $24K
Published on Sep 21st, 2012
6 comments A documentary on noted civil rights leader and retired UVA professor Julian Bond has received no support from any of the institutions with which Bond, former chair of the NAACP, is associated....
Street theater
Published on Sep 17th, 2012
0 comments Act I of The Madwoman of Chaillot is underway Friday evening, September 14, with the Bank of America as a backdrop. The show continues Thursdays-Saturdays at 6pm through September, with a September...
Dramatic tension: Kielbasa counts down to opening night
Published on Sep 16th, 2012
0 comments Jody Kielbasa is tired. When we spoke with him, the Virginia Film Festival director had been in Richmond the previous night, trying to celebrate his wife's birthday while dealing with emails during...
Rashida forever: Rom-com sparkles with plot twist
Published on Sep 12th, 2012
0 comments "Celeste and Jesse Forever" is a good-hearted romantic comedy about a likable couple — so likable, indeed, that it swims upstream against the current of our desires. The two have been happily...
Violence in Virginia: Moonshiners vs. the law in Franklin County
Published on Sep 4th, 2012
1 comments Lawless is a well-made film about ignorant and violent people. Like Killer Joe of four weeks ago, I can only admire the craftsmanship and acting, and regret its failure to rise above them. Its...
Force of nature: An unknown cast creates a whirlwind
Published on Aug 9th, 2012
0 comments Cut off from the mainland, surrounded by rising waters, the Bathtub is a desolate wilderness of poverty where a small community struggles to survive. Hushpuppy considers it "the prettiest place on...
A waning moon: Dark Knight stumbles (but eventually rises)
Published on Jul 25th, 2012
0 comments The Dark Knight Rises leaves the fanciful early days of the superhero genre far behind and moves into a doom-shrouded, apocalyptic future that seems uncomfortably close to today's headlines. As urban...
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