All things considered, the circumstances could have been worse for Meghan Miles. The fictional newscaster goes through a lot in “Walk of Shame” as she engages with gang members and police officers alike, but at least she’s not watching herself from the comfort of the local cinema. If she were, she’d discover how unreasonably executed […]
Category Archives: Film & TV
Out of Focus: Woody Allen’s ‘Manhattan’ pushes past boundaries of comedy genre
The pulsating sounds of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” sound out over the New York City skyline. In a flurry of images, we see the iconography traditionally associated with the city – its brimstone buildings, its towering skyscrapers, its citizens marching on through the bustling, damp and snow-covered streets – as a neurotic, disembodied voice […]
Alumnus aims to bring attention to architecture through film
The original version of this article contained multiple errors and has been changed. See the bottom of the article for additional information. The universal subject of Rick Meghiddo’s documentaries often goes overlooked. In fact, the subject commonly serves as a background for the real action of a story. However, Meghiddo, a UCLA alumnus, firmly believes in […]
Late-night comedy evolves with new generation of viewers
The big wigs behind the late-night empire have finally done it. They’ve pried Jay Leno from his cemented “The Tonight Show” throne with a crow bar, thrust Jimmy Fallon onto the stage in all his youthful glory and promoted Seth Meyers to the 12:35 a.m. “Late Night” spot to finish off the night. To top […]
Movie Review: ‘Blue Ruin’
Few genres evoke sympathy for protagonists with insatiable bloodlust the way revenge movies do. Utterly unrealistic and dementedly satisfying, revenge films capture a simplistic desire for a world in which the weak successfully punish the powerful, preserving justice in the face of evil. “Blue Ruin” takes the opposite approach, in which plans of vengeance do […]
Movie Review: ‘Last Passenger’
Audiences don’t seem to be flocking to the cineplex for realism anymore. Whereas the believable epic “Gone with the Wind” was once the highest-grossing film of all time, so was the more fictionalized “Jaws” after it and, more recently, “Avatar.” Had “Last Passenger,” the debut feature from British director Omid Nooshin, come out at the […]
Out of Focus: ‘Touch of Evil’ to return to site of famed opening sequence
Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil” opens with an explosion of sight and sound: the loud jazz of jukeboxes, honking cars and near the scene’s conclusion, a literal explosion – a car goes up in flames after a bomb detonates. Welles sets the location in a long three-minute tracking shot that has since become legendary. We, […]