GARY SINISE HELPS BROTHERS at WAR and GRAPPLES with IRAQ and ITS EFFECT on a FAMILY by Brad Balfour Presently known for playing Detective Mac Taylor on the hit TV series, CSI: NY, the talented Gary Sinise has done it all – acting, directing, making music and producing everything from plays to films. Now, Sinise plays … Continue reading
Michel Gondry and Leos Carax French Directors Take on Tokyo! by Brad Balfour As if it were a creative corollary to the act of cinematic deconstruction, this strange tri-parted feature, Tokyo!, was released on the same weekend as Watchmen – a film based on a huge graphic novel that’s all about deconstruction. This strange absurdist-cartoon interpretation of the ultimate … Continue reading
Ari Folman An Israeli Director Dances with the Dogs of War In Waltz with Bashir by Brad Balfour Of all the films nominated for a Foreign Language Oscar this year, director Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir reaped substantial press and stirred the most controversy. A documentary fashioned as an animated film, it is as much an imagined … Continue reading
Anne Hathaway Celebrates Rachel Getting Married and Her Oscar Nom by Brad Balfour There is loads of irony that 26-year-old actress Anne Hathaway was featured in two vastly different films about weddings this season. Bride Wars was a noxious bit of inconsequential fluff (directed by once credible Gary Winick) loaded with cringe-inducing clichés about the madness … Continue reading
Melissa Leo Down by the Frozen River by Brad Balfour There was early Oscar® buzz about the work veteran actress Melissa Leo has done in Frozen River ever since the feature won last year’s Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for director Courtney Hunt (her feature film debut). Now, of course, her first nomination for Best Actress … Continue reading
Tea Leoni and Kyle MacLachlan Have Fun Playing in Manure by Brad Balfour Don’t do it. Don’t let publicists put actress Tea Leoni together with any of her co-stars, because it prompts such an assault on serious answers. But there she was, with her co-star Kyle MacLachlan gabbing about their comic turns in the Polish … Continue reading
Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer With Valkyrie, They Illustrate That Slide Down the Slippery Slope to Fascism by Brad Balfour Though he totally missed the Oscar loop, you have to give some credit to media magnet Tom Cruise for releasing his World War II drama, Valkyrie at the end of 2008 despite the surge of … Continue reading
Viggo Mortensen and Jason Isaacs Address Good and Wax Philosophical about the Nazis by Brad Balfour Originally posted on January 12, 2009. During a snappy roundtable with a few journalists, actors Viggo Mortensen and Jason Isaacs double-teamed to express their thoughts about their disturbing new film, Good, based on the acclaimed British play by CP … Continue reading
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet Reuniting on Revolutionary Road by Brad Balfour At a recent press conference in New York preceding its premiere, the essential members of the Revolutionary Road cast (Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon and Kathy Bates) and director Sam Mendes answered questions before a small room of journalists. Of course, the big news – … Continue reading
Director John Walter Talkin’ About a Theater of War and Meryl Streep by Brad Balfour While Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep garners attention for her role as the authoritarian nun in Doubt, another film – the doc Theater of War out now – offers insight into Steep as an actress, and it grapples with the nature of war as … Continue reading
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