Mama Jessica Chastain goes the inevitable route for all up-and-coming, Oscar-nominated actresses: a starring role in a horror film. "Executive-produced" by Guillermo del Toro, this creepy-looking thing has Chastain and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as an unmarried couple who take in his nieces, who have been missing in the wilderness for five years after their mother's murder. If you've seen the previews, you know that something is off with these girls. It may have something to do with the imaginary friend they see and call 'mama.' Probably trash, but I'm interested.
(Yes)
The Last Stand Across-the-board positive reviews for Arnold Schwarzenegger's return to action movies. Critics are citing the film's modestly scaled B-movie pleasures, inventive direction, well-staged chase scenes. It's a sort of updating on Rio Bravo, with Ah-nuld as a sheriff in a sleepy border town about to be visited by a notorious drugpin and his minions. Forest Whitaker, Johnny Knoxville, Zach Gilford, Luis Guzman, and Peter Stormare (think he's bad?) co-star. The American debut of Korean director Kim Jee-Woon. Looks like a lot of fun!
(Yes)
Broken City An awfully good cast - Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mark Wahlberg, Barry Pepper, Jeffrey Wright, Kyle Chandler - for a movie released in the dog days of January. Looks blah to me - which is along the same lines as the critics' sentiments. Crowe is the mayor of NYC who hires PI Wahlberg to snoop around Crowe's wife (Zeta-Jones), believed to be having an affair. It turns into a complicated political potboiler. Lots of twists.
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I finally got around to watching the HBO movie The Girl about Alfred Hitchcock's torturing - both emotional and physical - and obsessing over Tippi Hedren on the sets of the two movies Hedren starred in for him, The Birds and Marnie. I really saw no point to this movie. Really, what is the point? That Hitch was an old, lonely creep, that Tippi was a perfect innocent? Taken from Donald Spoto's book Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies, the film has no real shape to it and has a too narrow and vindictive a purpose. Toby Jones gives a good performance as Hitch, and Sienna Miller captures Hedren's vulnerability, but these two fine actors need a better vehicle, for sure.
There aren't too many TV shows (outside of Mad Men) that I like to listen to as much as I do FX's Justified, never more so than when the dialogue pops out of Timothy Olyphant's mouth. As the federal marshal who returns to eastern Kentucky to deal with nasty, tight, juicy little plotlines - usually having to do with chilhoodfriend Walton Goggins - Olyphant gives one of the finest, most underrated lead turns on television. Razor-sharp, cool, sexy, bemused, lethal, plummy and wizened, Olyphant's Raylan Givens (created by Elmore Leonard) is one of the best things going. Raymond J.Barry, that intimidating actor, is terrifying when he shows up as Raylan's father.
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On this date in 1833, the artist considered to be the first U.S. sculptor, William Rush, died. He was one of the first artists to produce outdoor sculpture but he also created figureheads for frigates and was one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Today he is best remembered for his terracotta busts, wood carvings, and plaster work.
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| Allegory of the Schuykill River |
Images courtesy of:
http://thefirstreel.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/arnoldschwarzenegger.jpg
http://www.insecula.com/PhotosNew/00/00/10/45/ME0000104575_3.jpg
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