Tim Jackson Web
  • Home
  • Actor
  • DIRECTOR
  • FILM
  • Drums
  • Photo
  • Blog
  • Misc
  • Videos
  • CV
  • Eight Days a Week: The Beatles on Tour
  • Sully
  • Christine
  • Loving
  • Blog
  • BLACK FILM 2016
  • BESTS OF 2016
  • 20th Century Women
  • SOME BANDS
  • Photograph
  • THE ASSISTANT
  • EMMA
  • First Cow
  • Video Essays
  • Tommaso
  • Driveways
  • Boston Films
  • Painted Bird
  • HELMUT NEWTON
  • Capital
  • Roy Cohn
  • Roger Stone
  • Lee Atwater
  • Herzog
  • Humankind
  • MISC.
  • BOOKS
  • Theater
  • Hitchcock Acting
  • Best of 2019
  • Best 2018
  • Best 2017
  • Best 2016
  • Best 2015
  • Best 2014
  • BEST 2013

Birdman

10/29/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Riggan Thomson, unlike the drummer of Whiplash, the year's other film about an artist who beats thimself to prove his worth, is his own sadistic taskmaster. Michael Keaton’s character in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) lives on the thin line between hysterical delusion of grandeur and the sobering reality that he just might not matter. Riggan is an actor whose success in a series of “Birdman” movies has made him a global star. He decides to test himself by producing, writing, and starring in the Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” Read more . . . 
0 Comments

Whiplash

10/29/2014

0 Comments

 
 Thrashing jazz drums accompany two of the best films released this year. Both efforts are about artists who are more than willing to torment themselves in order to prove worthy of their demanding crafts. In Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, young Andrew Neyman, played by Miles Teller, goes to extremes to realize his dream of becoming one of the world’s great drummers. 
(In Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, Michael Keaton’s aging movie star Riggan Thomson, already rich and world famous, drives himself mad to prove his stature as an artist. - reviewed separately)
Whiplash, directed by Harvard graduate Damien Chazelle, is based on an 18-minute version of an earlier film with the same title. His charming first feature, Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench, was shot in black & white entirely around Boston, and is filled with as much tap dancing and singing as you would find in a low budget 1930′s musical. It is a delightful short film about music and the travails of young love. Justin Hurwitz, who wrote the music for Guy And Madeline … also wrote much of the score for Whiplash, in which the earlier charm and hoofing gives way to blood, sweat, and tears  Read more . . . 

0 Comments

Gone Girl

10/29/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Who knows? Might the book or movie of Gone Girl plant a seed of uxoricide or perhaps mariticide in your brain? You are probably familiar with the novel’s storyline, which focuses on a man who is all but convicted by the media and public opinion for murdering and then salting away the body of his wife. In David Fincher’s film adaptation (screenplay by Gillian Flynn, who is also the author of the spooky and disturbing novel), the plot is exploited to satirize middle class marriage and woe. Ben Affleck is perfectly cast as Nick Dunne, the much-too cool husband with the lying cleft chin; the icily beautiful Rosamund Pike handles the well role of Amy Elliott-Dunne, Nick’s missing wife.

Fincher does a good job at making our skin crawl while we chuckle at the audacity of the goings-on. Think of the hideously displayed bodies in his earlier film Seven, 

Read more . . . 
0 Comments

The E-Team

10/29/2014

0 Comments

 
Katy Chevigny and Ross Kauffman have created an excellent documentary portrait of the work of four investigative workers in service to Human Rights Watch. The E-Team or emergency team is made up of Ole Solvang (a Norwegian), his wife Anna Neistat (from Russia), Fred Abrahams (from Brooklyn), and Peter Bouckaert (from Belgium). The film centers its stories on (now) well-known human right abuses in Libya, Syria, and Kosovo. The four team members do not take charge in the Jason Statham/Vin Deisal mode. Their work is quiet, painstaking, and deliberate. Their ordinary civilian lives stand in startling contrast to the suffering of mothers and fathers who for no clear reason are subjected to the kind of loss and heartbreak most Americans will never know. A mother cries: “Our tears could fill gallons and form a river.” 
Read More . . . 



0 Comments

    Archives

    November 2020
    October 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    September 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    September 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    March 2012

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.