dvd of the week In her Oscar-winning role, Julianne Moore is Alice Howland, a renowned professor of linguistics at Columbia University, married to a handsome and successful scientist named John (Alec Baldwin), and mother to three children, slightly petulant Ann (Kate Bosworth), bright and handsome Tom (Hunter Parrish) and struggling actress Lydia (Kristen Stewart). When…
The writer-director of the Alzheimer’s drama Still Alice Richard Glatzer died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 63. Glatzer co-wrote and directed the movie alongside his husband, Wash Westmoreland, while battling ALS. The Huffington Post reported that the pair took on the project of Still Alice in a very early stage of Glatzer’s disease. Their…
It’s likely that both the Best Actor and Best Actress winners at this year’s Academy Awards will go to portrayals of people suffering from chronic neurodegenerative diseases. The films couldn’t be more different, however. In The Theory of Everything, Eddie Redmayne plays Stephen Hawking, who was struck with Lou Gehrig’s disease (or ALS) more than…
I first discovered Elaine Stritch on the original Broadway soundtrack to Company, the classic 1970 Stephen Sondheim musical about then-modern love in New York. The plot revolves around perennially single Bobby and his married friends; Stritch played Joanne, the oldest of the group. At the end of the second act she sings “The Ladies Who…
dvd of the week In Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen has provided Cate Blanchett, arguably the greatest actress of her generation, her greatest role – a woman destroyed by her own pretensions. The film’s comedy is in the nervous discomfort of class warfare, the clueless vapidity of the rich and capitalistic. It is Allen going to…
In yet another outburst from television and film star Alec Baldwin, a member of the paparazzi who got too close to Baldwin’s family was chased away by the star, but not before being called a “a c–ksucking f-g.” The melee, which was caught on tape by celebrity gossip site, TMZ.com, shows the clearly angered star…
I’m not sure why Woody Allen decided to set Blue Jasmine in San Francisco. He can turn a city into a main character of his films; from Manhattan to Vicki Cristina Barcelona to Midnight in Paris. But in Blue Jasmine, the city is neither lovingly shot nor does it really have a role to play…
