Morgan Freeman | The New York Observer

Single Person's Movie: The Shawshank Redemption

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:42:51 -0400

It's 2 a.m. and you awake with a jerk, alone in your fully lit apartment and still on the couch. On TV, the credits of some movie you've already seen a billion times are scrolling by. It feels like rock bottom. And we know, because we're just like you: single.

Need a movie to keep you company until you literally can't keep your eyes open? Join us tonight...

Morning Memo: ScarJo's Still an Obama Gal; Graydon Carter's New Bar; Morgan Freeman's Wrecked Marriage

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:22:34 -0400

Mary-Kate Olsen won't have to talk to the police about Heath Ledger's death after all. [NYDN]

Graydon Carter bought the lease on the Monkey Bar on East 54th Street. One of his partners told the Post, "It's just going to be a little bar in Midtown." Just like the Waverly Inn is a little bar in the West Village! [P6]

Scarlett Johansson is still talking about being friends with Barack Obama on the...

A Hard Day's Knight: Somber Celebs Tread Black Carpet at Batman Premiere

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:08:50 -0400

Attending the premiere of Warner Brothers’ Batman: The Dark Knight at AMC Loews Lincoln Square on Monday, July 14: the film’s stars Christian Bale, Maggie Gyllenhaal (wearing charcoal Dries Van Noten splashed with flowers and accompanied by husband Peter Sarsgaard), Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman and Aaron Eckhart; actors Ethan Hawke, Edie Falco, Josh Hartnett, Seth Green and Emile Hirsch; plus Gossip Girl’s Blake Lively, Penn Badgley and Ed Westwick.

So...

Bat to the Future

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:41:12 -0400

THE DARK KNIGHT
RUNNING TIME 152 minutes
WRITTEN BY Christopher and Jonathan Nolan
DIRECTED BY Christopher Nolan
STARRING Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Maggie Gyllenhaal

Some folks take metaphysical pleasure from the New Batman Philosophy According to Christopher Nolan: that good and evil lurk side by side in everyone, including Batman. But in my...

Angelina and the Atonement Guy Miss Target in Killer Thriller

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:48:07 -0400

Wanted
Running Time 110 minutes
Written by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan
Directed by Timur Bekmambetov
Starring James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Terence Stamp

Even in the summer garbage dump of bloated bilge aimed at computer hackers and sleepwalkers with I.Q.’s under 40, a bucket of swill called Wanted reaches the bottom of the waste heap. There are so many...

Ruda Awakening

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:59:01 -0400

Morgan Freeman and his wife, Myrna Colley-Lee, were the first to arrive. They stepped out of a town car in front of the French restaurant Tocqueville on East 15th Street and made their way to the empty bar area. Neither knew what to expect; the hostess, Ruda Dauphin, had called it a “salon.” They were offered flutes of Ruinart champagne; the Oscar winner asked for vodka on ice.

Ms....

Nichols, Freeman Can't Make Country Girl Awake and Sing

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:59:28 -0400

And so it’s back to the ’50s (again). “All plays are dated,” Harold Clurman wrote in steadfast support of Clifford Odets in 1970. “They are products of their time.” Yes; but everything depends on how much the dated-ness shows.

In the current Broadway revival of Odets’econd to last play, The Country Girl, it shows too much. Odets himself described the play as superficial, and he is correct. Even Clurman, who first produced...

Manhattan Weekend Box Office: Juno-ary Continues! Bucket List Kicks Bucket

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:46:53 -0500

Cialis, Viagra, Spanish Fly, whatever—nothing could save the Bucket List (No. 7) from a limp performance this weekend. The movie, starring geriatric gents Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, may have managed a robust national opening, but it was blown away here in the city like a couple of old farts on the observatory deck of the Empire State Building during a wind advisory. At 10 theaters, the film averaged a listless $9,000 per screen....

Gutsy Geezers: Nicholson and Freeman Pair for Geriatric Joy Ride

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:37:41 -0500

THE BUCKET LIST
Running Time 97 minutes
Written by Justin Zackham
Directed by Rob Reiner
Starring Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman and Sean Hayes

So many movies, so little time (to see them), and so little space (to write about them all). It’s the time of year when critics with pens and Visine look, absorb, take notes in the dark and make lists. It’s also the time to hope for a...

A Lovable Feast: An Old Friend Offers Cure for the War Weary

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:07:03 -0400

FEAST OF LOVE
RUNNING TIME 102 minutes
DIRECTED BY Robert Benton
STARRING Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear, Selma Blair, Radha Mitchell

Robert Benton’s Feast of Love, from a screenplay by Allison Burnett and based on the novel by Charles Baxter, serves admirably as a playful respite from the Iraq-war-driven flood of media violence that threatens to engulf us with a perpetual hangover of...

Bat-Riddles Solved! Yawn, Not Really

Sun, 19 Jun 2005 20:00:00 -0400

I guess I should try to like-or at least understand-some of the summer schlock that pours up from Hollywood hell every year, when the weather turns unbearable and otherwise sane people think nothing of throwing away large chunks of mad money to seek air-conditioned relief at the movies. But Batman Begins is a bad place to start.

Dragging Batman addicts back to the beginning of the Bob Kane action heroics published by DC Comics, the...

Coffee, Tea or Me? Paltrow Flies Low, Hits Turbulence

Sun, 30 Mar 2003 19:00:00 -0500

After so many different looks and dye jobs, Gwyneth Paltrow is back to basic peroxide in the alleged comedy View from the Top. Apparently, you can also get movies in a bottle. This one is labeled "Discard Immediately-Formula Has Expired!" It's the one about the trailer-trash escapee who wakes up one morning, trips over the empty beer bottles, chucks her job selling luggage at the convenience mart, decides "There's gotta be something better than...

A Diarist In Distress … Morgan Freeman, Killer Cop

Sun, 15 Apr 2001 20:00:00 -0400

A Diarist in Distress

Renée Zellweger is a huggable human pastry everyone wants to take a bite of, and in Bridget Jones's Diary she's more delicious than ever. Having scarfed down a few hundred eclairs herself to gain the weight to play the single, 32-year-old, Chardonnay-swigging, chain-smoking, lovelorn title character in this lively film version of Helen Fielding's bestseller, there is also a great deal more of her to hug. Cut from the same romantic taffeta as Notting Hill and Four...

Unforgiven Co-Stars Remake Interrogation of a Rich Pedophile

Sun, 24 Sep 2000 20:00:00 -0400

Stephen Hopkins' Under Suspicion , starring Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman, from a screenplay by W. Peter Iliff and Tom Provost, was adapted from a French film– Garde à vue (1981) by Claude Miller, Jean Herman and Michel Audiard–that was based in turn on the British novel Brainwash , by John Wainwright. As the story goes, making an English version of Garde à vue has been a "pet project" of Mr. Hackman's since the...