Redford defends Sundance’s record on diversity
Film: Sundance Film Festival 2016
Sundance Film Festival founder Robert Redford says the whole reason he started programming films in Utah's Wasatch Mountains was to broaden the world of mainstream filmmaking to include other voices.
By Katherine Monk
PARK CITY, UTAH - It used to be called an “Oscar race.” Now it’s all about race and the Oscars. It’s an issue that’s settled into the tissue of the film industry like a bad infection, threatening to throw the whole system into sepsis, and prompting a wholesale change to the way the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences functions as an organization. Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced new initiatives Friday, hoping to stop the growing momentum behind a celebrity boycott, assuring the public the Academy membership would look a lot different by the year 2020, with more representation from non-white males, and more women. Even here at the Sundance Film Festival, where the mountain air and a host of ...
Dirty Grandpa leaves a stain
Movie review: Dirty Grandpa
Robert De Niro and Zac Efron hit the road, and rock bottom, in this grotesquely sexist and vulgar attempt at comedy that uses crack and pedophilia as fodder.
Star Wars: A Feminist Force Awakens
Podcast: Pop This! Star Wars: The Force Awakens provides a Ton Ton's carcass of content to discuss and, in a pinch, butcher and turn into a sleeping bag in this week's Pop This!
Featuring Lisa Christiansen and Andrea Warner. Produced by Andrea Gin.
A sampling of what you might hear in Episode 11: Star Wars What would I do with a BB8? I have never cared about space at all. I can see Star Wars is part of pop culture canon, but it's a conversational understanding of Star Wars. What you did for me for Real Housewives, I need for you to do me for Star Wars. I don't think I thought of it as a space movie... It just happens to be set in space. I was watching the hero's journey: Joseph Campbell figured out we have an innate story we need to experience. I recommend the hero with a thousand faces. Maybe it's good to watch this movie not stoned out of your gourd. Buy fluoxetine online I feel like this is my literal everyday, I'm invited to save the world and ...
Ten Sundance titles that tweak our critical antenna
Film: The 2016 Sundance Film Festival
This year's festival includes a testament to Kristen Stewart's continuing career in art house cinema, Don Cheadle tooting his own horn as Miles Davis and one movie about a wiener dog, and another about a dog named Weiner.
By Katherine Monk
The festival kicks off in earnest later today with Robert Redford's annual press conference, but before the press corps gets pressed together and becomes a blurb-spouting Borg, I made a list of ten standout titles that may, or may not, get mileage when it's all over: Captain Fantastic: Viggo Mortensen plays a father who’s raised six kids off the grid, and — for reasons as yet unknown — is forced to plug back in the world he left behind. Certain Women: Kelly Reichardt is a true independent who embodies the Sundance ethos, and she returns with Certain Women, an adaptation of Maile Meloy’s short stories that stars Michelle Williams, Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone. Complete ...
Talking ’bout my, my vag-g-g-ina
Home Entertainment: Amy Schumer - Live at the Apollo
The world's hottest comic brings a whole new world of oppression to the stage of the legendary Apollo Theatre for her first standup special on HBO
Talking 'bout my, my vag-g-g-ina
Home Entertainment: Amy Schumer - Live at the Apollo
The world's hottest comic brings a whole new world of oppression to the stage of the legendary Apollo Theatre for her first standup special on HBO
A direct hit to the head of the NFL
Movie review: Concussion
Thanks to a cast that's just as comfortable with comedy as drama, Peter Landesman's forensic examination of the NFL's inaction on head injuries is more than a preachy lesson in institutional denial, it's a gentle testament to the importance of human compassion
Metaphysics on a small scale
Movie review: Anomalisa
Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson create an existential nightmare that lets the viewer play god while the human comedy looks smaller, and more magical, than ever
You never leave high school, or Heathers
Podcast: Pop This! The '80s cult movie about homicidal high school students left a mark on the pop culture psyche, and Pop This picks at the scars three decades later.
Featuring Lisa Christiansen and Andrea Warner. Produced by Andrea Gin.
A sampling of what you might hear in Episode 10: Exhuming the legacy of Heathers We think this one thing will make us happy, but when we acquire it, it's a tornado of terribleness. There is some truth to the idea that you never leave high school. Back in 1988, we couldn't go to the Internet to check things out. Winona Ryder fought tooth and nail to get this part. I do think Heathers is brilliant. What kind of parent lets their kid do the Exorcist? Murder is not cool. Veronica is the only multidimensional character in the movie. I find it doesn't ring as true to me now. I felt it pushed the stereotype women are all bitches and will get you. Do you love Harold and Maude, too? I am excited about Zealander ...
The Revenant is raw tension
Movie review: The Revenant
Leonardo DiCaprio undergoes a horrendous series of trials — including that famous bear attack — in Alejandro G. Inarritu's masterful tale of survival
