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6 articles from 2008

28 May 2008 9:03 PM, PDT | From blogs.suntimes.com/ebert | See recent Roger Ebert's Blog news

David Mamet's recent "Redbelt" is an example of a kind of movie that needs a name. It's not precisely a thriller, or a suspense picture, or a police procedural, and although it occupies the territory of film noir, it's not a noir. I propose this kind of film be named a Twister, because it's made from plot twists, and in a way the twists are the real subject.

A true Twister is one twist piled on another. It doesn't qualify if the twist is simply an unanticipated ending, as in "Her Life Before Her Eyes," when (spoiler!) we discover that everything after the confrontation with the killer was imagined in the heroine's dying moments. It was her future life that flashed before her eyes. The ending in that film explains and redefines all that went before, and is traditionally called a "twist ending," which is clear enough. It works as a beautiful idea,

Roger Ebert

6 May 2008 6:38 PM, PDT | From fantasymoguls.com | See recent Fantasy Moguls news

David Mamet is among the best playwrights and screenwriters working today. He is a two-time Academy Award nominee, receiving nods for The Verdict in 1987 and the brilliant Wag the Dog in 1992. He was also a Golden Globe nominee for the ingenious 1987 indie hit House of Games, which I recently revisited at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, operated by American Cinematheque. As a scribe, Mamet has had some blockbuster hits, including 2001's Hannibal, which enjoyed a $58 million opening weekend and a domestic cume of $165 million, but, as a director, his films are far better suited to the arthouse than to the megaplex. So why is distributor Sony Classics jumping into the wide-release marketplace with Mamet's new Redbelt on 1,000 screens opposite Iron Man, Speed Racer and What Happens in Vegas?

Steve Mason

5 May 2008 9:03 PM, PDT | From avclub.com | See recent The AV Club news

London-born stage actor Chiwetel Ejiofor first entered cinema with 1997's Amistad, but his breakthrough came five years later, with his memorably adept, sensitive starring role in Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things. That film put him on the map, and roles followed fast and thick, in Spike Lee's She Hate Me and Inside Man, Woody Allen's Melinda And Melinda, John Singleton's Four Brothers, Ridley Scott's American Gangster, and Kasi Lemmons' Talk To Me. Most memorably, he played the chilly antagonist known as The Operative in Joss Whedon's Firefly spin-off Serenity, the more hot-blooded antagonist Luke in Children Of Men, and the flamboyant transvestite Lola in Kinky Boots. Ejiofor's latest starring role, in David Mamet's Redbelt, has him playing a passionately principled jujitsu instructor trying to navigate moral challenges in a typically complicated Mamet web. The A.V. Club recently sat down with Ejiofor

Tasha Robinson

1 May 2008 1:00 PM, PDT | From avclub.com | See recent The AV Club news

Like so many ambitious writers, David Mamet has many faces. There's the street-smart thriller craftsman behind Homicide, Heist, and Spartan. The sly, stagey twist-meister behind House Of Games, The Spanish Prisoner, and Glengarry Glen Ross. The sentimental softie of Things Change and State And Main. (There's also the work-for-hire hack that signed onto the screenplay for Hannibal, and the clumsy, self-satisfied provocateur who wrote Oleanna, but the less said about them, the better.) But no previous project has so thoroughly fused his filmmaking facets as Redbelt, a superior, sophisticated, and unusually gentle character study where the point isn't the twists, so much as watching how one man's belief system holds up through them. Further cementing his well-earned reputation for sensitivity and depth, Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things, Children Of Men) stars as a small-time jujitsu instructor with an unyielding sense of honor that comes into play when jittery...

Tasha Robinson

1 May 2008 9:30 AM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news

By R. Emmet Sweeney

Mixed martial arts (Mma) have come a bloody long way since John McCain legendarily dubbed the sport "human cockfighting" in 1996. Its flagship organization, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (Ufc), aired eight of the top 15 pay-per-view programs in 2007 (boxing had four), while two smaller outfits (Strikeforce and EliteXC) have recently inked deals to air events on NBC and CBS. With major media outlets slowly offering more coverage and the sport's popularity continuing to crest, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood got its opportunistic hands on those tantalizing cauliflower ears... right?

Uncharacteristic of the movie business, producers are showing restraint in capitalizing on the fad, perhaps still haunted by McCain's "cock" slam. David Mamet encountered fierce resistance to his new Mma influenced film, "Redbelt," as he tells Sam Alipour of Espn.com: "Everybody in Hollywood passed on it. One of the things I talked about (in

30 April 2008 2:00 PM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news

By Neil Pedley

The Tribeca Film Festival is in full swing, but if you don't live in New York, there's no need to fret. No less than three films ("From Within," "Mister Lonely" and "Redbelt") on this list of coming attractions have played the festival in recent days. Then again, if you are in New York and want to catch something outside the fest, there's always that intimate character drama starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and a red and gold metal suit of armor.

"The Favor"

Writer/director Eva J. Aridjis brings us a quiet tale of angst and alienation starring former New York subway busker Ryan Donowho as Johnny, a high school loner who's taken in by Lawrence (Frank Wood), a quiet pet photographer, after his mother (Paige Turco) is killed in an accident. In order to be the father he needs, Lawrence must fight through Johnny's rebellious

Neil Pedley

6 articles from 2008