Under the Radar DVDs: 2011's oddest of the odd
December 26, 2011
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December 26, 2011
Some wags – or, perhaps, nags – have glibly dubbed Steven Spielberg’s visually majestic “War Horse” as “Black Beauty on the Western Front.”
It’s an often stirring, beautifully mounted and rigorously retro epic that draws on the familiar conventions of classic equine sagas (“Black Beauty,”... Read More
December 26, 2011
BY DENNIS KING
NEW YORK – Steven Spielberg never envisioned “War Horse” as a war movie.
Instead, the celebrated, Oscar-winning director of such classic war pictures as “Saving Private Ryan” and “Schindler’s List” said he saw the World War I-era story based on Michael Morpurgo’s novel and the... Read More
December 23, 2011
Although it’s far superior to last summer’s toothless comedy “Zookeeper,” and it holds the promise of something warm and friendly from long-absent director Cameron Crowe and the always reliable star Matt Damon, the feel-good family film “We Bought a Zoo” is an odd cinematic creature that’s neither... Read More
December 22, 2011
BY DENNIS KING
NEW YORK – Director David Fincher casually admits it was a daunting job – casting his American remake of the internationally popular Stieg Larsson mystery “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”
After all, millions of avid readers had consumed Larsson’s gritty, pulpy detective novel – and... Read More
December 20, 2011
BY DENNIS KING
NEW YORK – Director David Fincher is notorious among actors as a demanding, hard-driving perfectionist.
For actors who’ve worked with him on such films as “Fight Club,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Social Network” and the much-anticipated American remake of “The... Read More
December 20, 2011
The stark, chilly 2009 Swedish screen adaptation of the late Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and its two follow-up films utterly belonged to Noomi Rapace, a spiky, darkly seductive actress who seemed to inhabit the role of punk, pieced computer hacker Lisbeth Salander with eerie ferocity.
Read More
December 19, 2011
This week, the most unusual DVD to appear on release lists is:
“The Donna Reed Show: Season 4 – The Lost Episodes”
For eight seasons during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Donna Reed in her trim apron and breezy flip hairdo was America’s favorite wholesome mom on “The Donna Reed Show” A five-disc... Read More
December 18, 2011
The upcoming release of Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse” calls to mind a long and storied bloodline of great horse movies in Hollywood history.
Generations of filmmakers have been drawn to the allure of horses and man’s long, close history with magnificent equine steeds. In fact some of the first moving... Read More
December 16, 2011
In Hollywood’s Golden Age, Myrna Loy was a lovely paradox – a champagne-tippling sophisticate on-screen in her many roles opposite the dapper William Powell and a budding humanitarian off-screen with values that belied glittery show-business extravagance.
In “Myrna Loy: The Only Good Girl in Hollywood”... Read More
December 12, 2011
This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:
“Sledge Hammer!: The Complete Series”
Leslie Nielsen’s bumbling Det. Frank Drebin of the “Police Squad!” TV series (and later the “Naked Gun!” movies) had a worthy successor in comic crime busting in actor David Rasche, star of “Sledge... Read More
December 09, 2011
If Michael Shannon is making a career out of convincingly portraying mentally unbalanced characters, he may have painted his masterpiece in the powerful “Take Shelter.”
Having earned an Oscar nomination as the psychologically troubled neighbor’s son in “Revolutionary Road,” and stolen scenes as the... Read More
December 09, 2011
In critics’ shorthand, “The Sitter” can be quickly described as “After Hours” meets “Adventures in Babysitting.” This mash-up of elements from Martin Scorsese’s edgy 1985 gambol through Manhattan’s midnight underbelly and Chris Columbus’ larky 1987 kids and teens escapade adds up to an R-rated... Read More
December 09, 2011
No one will ever accuse Lars von Trier of being an easy artist to love. He is, after all, that eccentric trickster-auteur who babbled on stupidly about Hitler and Nazis at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and found himself roundly vilified and expelled.
So, characteristically, in the very film he was... Read More
December 05, 2011
He’s played a gay man, a mental patient and a matador, and now Antonio Banderas adds a 21st-century Frankenstein to the varied gallery of characters he’s portrayed under Pedro Almovodar’s direction.
“The Skin I Live In,” the first Banderas-Almovodar collaboration since 1990′s “Tie Me Up! Tie Me... Read More
December 05, 2011
This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:
“Santa Claus vs. The Zombies”
Whether you view it as a bizarre bridge between Halloween and Christmas, a cheeky antidote to forced holiday cheer, or just the latest twist in the current zombie craze, “Santa Claus vs. The Zombies” lumbers its way... Read More
December 03, 2011
Striking out on a journey-quest not unlike that of the contemporary Indians of 1989’s “Powwow Highway,” Cree documentarian Neil Diamond sets out in his rambling film “Reel Injun” to locate the true heart of America’s indigenous people in the sideshow babble of Hollywood history.
Charting a course in... Read More
November 30, 2011
There are no chipper raindrops falling on the head of Sam Shepard’s rueful, graying outlaw Butch Cassidy in “Blackthorn,” a lovely, melancholy speculation on the aftermath of director George Roy Hill’s Oscar-adorned 1969 classic “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
Unlike the twinkly-eyed,... Read More
November 29, 2011
This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:
“Tucker & Dale vs. Evil”
While there has been no shortage of efforts to spoof slasher movies in recent years (“Scary Movie 5” will totter into theaters in 2012), “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil” – due out on DVD Tuesday – is a cut above... Read More
November 25, 2011
The lowly hedgehog, as described in Muriel Barbery’s whimsical, best-selling novel “The Elegance of the Hedgehog,” is a prickly creature that is “falsely lethargic, staunchly private and terribly elegant.”
The same can be said of freshman writer-director Mona Achache’s delicate and artfully restrained... Read More
About the writers
Dennis King
In 2006, he left Tulsa and along with his wife, Suzan (a retired English professor), moved to a cabin in Dingmans Ferry, PA. There, along the banks for the Delaware River, he chased after two rambunctious Labrador retrievers, fly fished the waters of the Poconos and did his best to become a full-time trout bum. Still scratching a writer’s itch, he freelanced articles for Explorer magazine and Gray’s Sporting Journal and wrote a stage play about classic movies and old movie theaters, titled “Spirits of the Coronado” (after his long-gone boyhood theater at 39th Street and MacArthur Boulevard).
In December, he and Suzan moved into an apartment in upper Manhattan, where they plan to eat bagels for breakfast and street-cart hot dogs for lunch, haunt the Angelika Theater and the Film Forum, go to plays and museums, ride the subways, complain about the subways and generally live like true New Yorkers.
Gene Triplett
Gene Triplett is another Oklahoma newspaper dinosaur who's been cranking out copy for 34 years, first at the upstart, long defunct Oklahoma Journal, covering just about every news beat imaginable, then at The Oklahoman, where's he's bounced back and forth from features to the news side as assistant city editor, city editor and entertainment editor, managing to hold down the latter position for more than 10 years. He holds a B.A. degree in journalism -- also from the University of Central Oklahoma -- and, also like his colleague King, chases after two loony Labrador retrievers. He does not live by a trout-filled river, but he and his wife Carol do own a swimming pool, much to the delight of their dogs.
The Tripletts enjoy gourmet outdoor cooking year-round (rain, sleet or snow), entertaining friends, road trips to scenic wooded parks that rent rustic lakeside cabins, listening to music, watching classic movies and, in the summertime, swimming with their dogs.
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