Events

For the past 21 years, the British Television Advertising Award Winners series has appeared at Minnesota’s Walker Art Center, and multiple screenings always sell out. Why? Is it because of something bad about Minnesota nightlife? No: It’s simply because many in the English ad biz do... More >>

Working with his Life Aquatic co-writer (and The Squid and the Whale director), Noah Baumbach, Wes Anderson has added an existential layer to the protagonist of Roald Dahl's 1970 children's novel, Fantastic Mr. Fox. Onscreen, Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) is no longer just a devoted... More >>

Daniel Ellsberg was an ex-Marine, trusted analyst, and Cold Warrior under Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who, “from the entrails of a bureaucratic war machine”—per a latter-day peacenik cohort—converted to antiwar dove. Leaking 7,000 Xeroxed pages of the Pentagon... More >>

No one between the ages of 12 and 50 cares if Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart can pull this off or not -- The Runaways is exciting by its existence. Later, people will take sides, either admitting or not admitting to the actual quality level of this film. But for now, an unsung chapter of... More >>

The Palestinian problem, as it’s called in some circles, is also an Israeli problem, of course. Countless American Jews on the left have proclaimed for decades that the situation in the Occupied Territories is a travesty of freedom, justice, and equality. The touring Human Rights and Film... More >>

In England, Eddie Izzard is a god, a transvestite comic genius, even the "lost Python,” according to John Cleese. In America, he’s Tony P in Mystery Men. He’s also a few other bit characters, but really, Tony P. is about as fluent as cornbelt America seems to want to get in... More >>

Daniel Ellsberg totally spoiled it for all future government whistleblowers. Our guess is that these days, once your security clearance goes past a certain threat level, you’re also implanted, deep in the neck, with something that can be exploded, and will be, but only while you’re... More >>

The title is a double entendre in An Education, the film version of British journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir about the crash course she received in the “university of life” while studying for her A-levels in early-1960s suburban London. So, too, is Danish director Lone... More >>

San Francisco hosts 50-some film festivals every year – do the math – but the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival is in the top three and nobody argues about that. The city buzzes and glitters more than usual during its takeover; its pull is so strong it creates... More >>

One wonders what Walt Disney would've made of his studio's 21st-century, 19-year-old Alice—a tousle-haired 3-D action figure who decapitates a dragon and drinks the creature's blood. Tim Burton's Alice is off-handed in its violence and doggedly on message—a straightforward allegory of... More >>

Yesterday's honky-tonk hero, Bad Blake, arrives at a Clovis, New Mexico, bowling alley. It's another in a string of low-pay, low-turnout gigs with pickup bands half his age, grinding the Greatest Hits out of an old Fender Tremolux, including his breakout—with the chorus, "Funny how falling... More >>

The curse that afflicts brilliant filmmakers — from Keaton to Welles to Altman — is that it’s essentially impossible for future audiences to grasp how bold and fresh their innovations were at the time. Blame the copycats and ripoff artists — other moviemakers, certainly, but... More >>