One of the very best films to come out in the last couple of years hits DVD today and you haven’t seen it. Why Revolutionary Road, Sam Mendes’ tragically beautiful adaptation of Richard Yates’ novel, failed to connect with moviegoers is a question that has many answers: In an era of hope, it was too Read More
Looking for an early Christmas present to rip open with the fervor of an 11-year-old? Dig into Julian Sancton's recent post over at Vanity Fair's Oscar blog "Little Gold Men" highlighting the potential nominees for Best Original Score. It's always been one of our favorite categories on the Academy Awards telecast and the options for this year make Read More
Our biggest pet peeve of the awards season is the platform release. Sure, we understand the theory behind the strategy: studios build buzz by releasing their prestige films into as few theaters as possible, whetting the appetites of every filmgoer with a pulse. Problem is, this year all the films seem destined to be hits, Read More
Revolutionary Road, under the detailed, sharp-eyed guidance of Sam Mendes, is a flawless, moment-to-moment autopsy of a marriage on the rocks and an indictment of the American Dream gone Read More
Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road, from the screenplay by Justin Haythe, based on the novel by Richard Yates, unfolds in a vale of disillusion and disenchantment so dismal that it seems a strange Read More
It’s the end of the year as we know it, which can only mean one thing: top 10 lists! Now, we can’t lie—we haven’t seen absolutely everything. (We’re still waiting on Gran Torino, Seven Pounds, and a few others. Also, we will never watch Wall-E. Never!) But we did see an awful (awful) lot in Read More
Who was left standing after Random House's reorganization? According to Leon Neyfakh, Sonny Mehta, whose Knopf now oversees several new imprints. "Whatever role Mr. Mehta had in getting what he got, the spoils reaped—from the unspeakably lucrative John Grisham franchise to the next blockbuster by Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown—were evident immediately."
Who Read More
The preview for Revolutionary Road, which opens Dec. 26, is one of those rare and wondrous pieces of promotion that tells you everything you need to know about a movie without really telling you anything at all. There’s beautiful Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, gleaming in their mid-’50s-era costumes, smoking, sighing, drinking, dancing, screaming, kissing Read More
After all, Ms. Kazan—with her big hopeful blue Read More
We only needed to see the kick-ass trailer for Milk to slot this Gus Van Sant film straight into Best Picture contention. After all, it has all of those gold statuette elements: a true story—of California’s first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk, who was murdered alongside San Francisco Read More
Here at the Culture Czar, we've had our eye on Revolutionary Road for some time. Academy Award winner Sam Mendes' adaptation of the depressingly awesome Richard Yates novel, which reunites doomed Titanic lovers Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, seems like it should be a guaranteed home run: high-pedigree Oscar bait that will also be Read More
Here's a question....how early is too early to start talking about the Oscars? We're guessing, um, now! But after seeing the trailer for Gus Van Sant's Milk and practically hearing the acceptance speeches being written, we were inspired!
So now, with absolutely no evidence or facts or, you know, actually seeing any of these Read More
