• The Criterion Files

    The Criterion Files: Stagecoach

    Stagecoach Directed by: John Ford Written by: Dudley Nichols, Ben Hecht Starring: Claire Trevor, John Wayne, Andy Devine, John Carradine, George Bancroft, Thomas Mitchell Cinematography by: Bert Glennon Music by: Gerard Carbonara Release: February 15, 1939 Tag Gallagher once described John Ford as being “essentially apolitical”. Maybe a more accurate term would be “politically mercurial”; at one time in his life, Ford admired John F. Kennedy and staunchly opposed the practices of McCarthyism, while in another he favored Richard Nixon and supported the Vietnam War. Perhaps that was simply his nature as a self-described Maine Republican. What cannot be disputed is that his politics, wherever they fell in any given…

  • Movies/Entertainment

    Cooper & Abrams Might Give Lance Armstrong the Biopic Treatment – UPDATED

    Does it take a man having a great professional year to portray a man having a terrible professional year? Yes, at least if J.J. Abrams and Bradley Cooper have anything to say about it. If you’ve been paying close, or even cursory, attention to the news for the past week and change, you’re probably well aware that Lance Armstrong has tanked his entire legacy by not only admitting his use of performance-enhancing drugs throughout his cycling career to Oprah*, but also being kind of an unapologetic jerk about it. Now, Abrams wants to capture the man’s rapid transformation into social pariah on film for all time. To that end, Bad…

  • Movies/Entertainment

    'Days of Future Past' Cast to Include Paquin, Page, and Ashmore

    Unlike many, I didn’t find myself falling head over heels for X-Men: First Class; it’s decent, but I can’t praise a movie wholesale for being a few rungs higher on the ladder than X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Taking my sustained indifference toward the series into account, I may be utterly the wrong person to report on any news coming from the set of the latest picture in the X-franchise, X-Men: Days of Future Past. Except that Bryan Singer has piqued my interest in the project courtesy of his Twitter-originating casting announcement this past Saturday. It’s already been revealed that the film will see Ian McKellen and…

  • Movies/Entertainment,  Trailers

    G-S-T Trailer Round-Up: Upside Dunst, Inside Oscar Isaac, Imperiled Capitals and Brit Marling Just Because We Love Her So

    If you’ve had a rough week and you feel like you’re free-floating through life, let me pull you back down to Earth with a brand-new collection of freshly-released trailers– starting with Upside Down, a movie which I’m equally resistant to on intellectual and gastrointestinal grounds. Seriously, watch this clip and tell me it didn’t make you at least a little queasy; then consider that you watched it on your computer or random mobile device instead of a multiplex screen. Maybe the physical space of the theater will acclimate me to the topsy turviness inherent in the film’s conceit, or maybe I’ll throw up all over myself. The cogent point here is…

  • Movies/Entertainment,  Reviews

    G-S-T Review…John Dies At the End

    Soy sauce, TV psychics, magical Jamaicans, sentient organic computers, meat monsters, Paul Giamatti, and the constant threat of apocalypse: that’s John Dies at the End in a nutshell. Or maybe it’s Don Coscarelli in a nutshell. Of course, John Dies at the End isn’t pure Coscarelli– the cult film legend’s latest adapts the novel of the same name by one Jason Pargin, who initially had his book  published back in 2007. But there’s a nagging sense of kismet that permeates the experience of watching the movie, as though Pargin wrote his story knowing that someday Coscarelli would end up translating it into cinema using his own brand of rampant comic-horror…

  • Editorials,  Movies/Entertainment

    Last Stands and Bittersweet Lives: Getting to Know Ji-Woon Kim

    January 18th came and went without much critical or commercial fanfare for Ji-woon Kim, the first of three South Korean directors to break into the American studio system this year*; that’s sort of a king bummer, at least in part because The Last Stand, his half self-aware, half self-serious, respectably actiony Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, deserves to be more of a hit than its paltry $7.7 million box office take will allow. (You may recall that we had a lot of fun with the film ourselves.) But mostly this is sour news because Kim’s a great filmmaker, and nothing would be more disappointing than seeing him shunned out of the States…

  • Movies/Entertainment

    Ohhh, Look…Watch Full 'Victory's Glory' Skit From 'Movie 43'

    Take the headline as more of a suggestion than a command. Truthfully, this clip says a lot more about Movie 43— the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink ensemble sketch comedy film hitting theaters this Friday– as a whole than meets the eye, though it also gives away a significant spoiler: the ‘Victory’s Glory’ segment really isn’t all that funny. In fact, if you’ve seen any of the trailers for the film, then you’ve already seen this bit’s best moments. Meanwhile, rest of the scene just tries to recycle its most effective beats over and over again for five minutes. I grant that this is just one minuscule chunk of an hour and a half…

  • Movies/Entertainment

    Billy Madison and Ace Ventura Could Be Guardians

    One offer decline later, casting rumors continue for James Gunn’s 2014 superhero film, Guardians of the Galaxy. The start of the new year saw rumors cropping up over Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s possible involvement in the picture– he would have played the lead– but it only took about a week for him to turn the role down* and hop on board Sin City 2 instead. But there’s good news! We may have lost a Jo-Go, but we’re potentially gaining an Adam Sandler and/or a Jim Carrey instead! If I’ve earned any privileges in my time writing for Go, See, Talk! and for the web in general, one of them must be a…

  • Movies/Entertainment,  Off the Shelf

    Off the Netflix Queue…’Headhunters’

    It ain’t easy being short. Boiled away of its particulars, that’s the central theme of Morten Tyldum’s Headhunters, although “don’t involve yourself in corporate espionage” could well be the larger takeaway. After all, no good whatsoever can come from invoking the wrath of Jaime Lannister, especially a Jaime Lannister armed with nano-technology designed in service to tracking human beings. But Tyldum instills an abundance of textbook male security in his hero, one Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie), a man who lives his life under constant self-induced stress and paranoia. What does Roger have to fear? He has a high-paying job as one of Norway’s top employment recruiters, a modern domicile of impeccable…

  • Movies/Entertainment

    First Photo of Benedict Cumberbatch in 'The Fifth Estate'

    Permit me to take this opportunity to admit two things: that I’d totally forgotten about the existence of The Fifth Estate, and that I’m ill-acquainted with the work of Benedict Cumberbatch. I like the guy! Don’t get me wrong! But I’ve only made it through half of the first episode of Sherlock and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Four Lions make for a really small sample size. Maybe, given that 2013 looks to be the year of the Cumberbatch, I should go back and watch The Other Boleyn Girl, re-watch Atonement, and catch up on Sherlock so I can join the legions of fans foaming at the mouth for the…