There are plenty of reasons Coen brothers fans should feel nervous with the release of “Intolerable Cruelty.” For one, it was produced not just by independent-minded Ethan Coen, but also by studio-man Brian Grazer. Secondly, it’s not the Coen brothers’ story, even if they did help rewrite the script. Also, have you seen the posters […]
Author Archives: Jake Tracer
Review: Kushner’s play a stunning reality check
Toward the end of “Homebody/Kabul,” Tony Kushner’s sensational new play at the Mark Taper Forum, Milton Ceiling (Reed Birney) tries to explain binary duals to an Afghan woman he’s considering taking back to London. She doesn’t understand much English, but he speaks with Kushner’s poetic grace nonetheless. When describing binary code, the example he uses […]
Serial movies filmed at once kill two birds with one stone
I forget the first time I saw the “Kill Bill” trailer on the Internet, but I know I’ve been excited ever since. OK, so the airplane is obviously a product of CGI, and the last lines of dialogue Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu trade are cornier than a Kansas barbeque, but the rest is spectacular: […]
Rewriting yourself every year, like fall’s fresh sitcoms, is bound to flop
Call me crazy, but it may not be a coincidence that fall is home to both the beginning of the new school year and the beginning of the new TV season. Life at UCLA (or any college) provides you with an opportunity to make your own life a new sitcom every year. Sure, it’s at […]
Award-winning 9/11 films start off documentary series
Robert David Port couldn’t have known what he was getting into when he and a three-man crew began filming the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit in mid-2001. He wanted to shoot a TV pilot about what he called “the commandos of the NYPD.” However, the story of Port’s series changed when many of the men he […]
Dropout masters horror
The idea now sounds almost too typical. During the summer after his first year of college at UCLA, Don Coscarelli decided to make a movie. Since then, the results have been anything but ordinary. Coscarelli ended up dropping out of school and spent the next year making “Jim, the World’s Greatest” with money he borrowed […]
HBO’s barrage of marketing adds up to brainwashing
This past Sunday, HBO changed the world; or at least its marketing department convinced me it did. With an old episode of “The Sopranos” leading into the summer season finale of “Sex and the City” and series premieres of “Carnivà le” and “K Street,” the premium cable network redefined must-see TV, largely through its aggressive (to […]