After spending four years pitching on the mound for UCLA baseball, alumnus Bobby Roe finally completed a pitch of a different kind – one that landed him his directorial debut for the movie “The Houses October Built.” Roe’s film blurs the line between what’s real and fiction by splicing real footage of the actors’ visiting […]
Category Archives: Film & TV
Movie Review: ‘White Bird in a Blizzard’
Through a mildly bizarre world – both dysfunctional yet perfectly credible – director Gregg Araki creates a family trapped between yearning and truth. Based on the book by Laura Kasischke, “White Bird in a Blizzard” is a coming-of-age story about Kat Conner (Shailene Woodley), a girl growing up in the 1980s. It features all of […]
Q&A: UCLA Film and Television Archive explores voices of Chinese cinema
Running from Oct. 17 to Nov. 3 at the Billy Wilder Theater, the second “China Onscreen Biennial” presents a collection of Chinese films, complemented with visual art slideshows and panels featuring directors and other special guests. The series introduces a plethora of voices representative of Chinese cinema. Inaugurated in 2012, the “China Onscreen Biennial” returns […]
‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ still a classic, innovative film
Figures covered in dust and ash, writhing: arms, legs, backs, torsos exposed, transfixed and transposed in time and space. A back-and-forth banter between a man and a woman begins on the audio track as brief newsreel footage of Hiroshima’s wreckage flashes across the screen. “You saw nothing at Hiroshima – nothing,” the man says. This […]
Throwback Thursday: ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’
It was the 1950s; a newer phenomenon called rock ‘n’ roll was sweeping the country, and television was starting to take its throne. It was inevitable: Video did indeed kill the radio star, and one show drove the dagger. Originally titled “Toast of the Town,” “The Ed Sullivan Show,” hosted by entertainment journalist Ed Sullivan, […]
Movie Review: ‘St. Vincent’
Actor Bill Murray is the jackalope of the motion picture industry – elusive and difficult to find or predict, but oh so wonderful when he appears. He appears cute and huggable on the outside, but can instantly fall into a menacing haze, taking an acting role to its darkest extremities. There are only a handful […]
Up Next: New Amazon Studios pilots suffer from weak storytelling
The rise of online original programming has revolutionized the way we consume television. But are any of these new shows actually worth watching? Up Next highlights noteworthy original content from Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Studios and examines how the flexible online format functions within each show. All you need is a laptop and your friend’s […]