Allison Burnett is a rarity in Hollywood. He is not just a successful Hollywood screenwriter, a respected novelist, and a published critic and poet, but also a film director. His new film, Ask Me Anything, which he wrote and directed based on his own novel Undiscovered Gyrl, was released two weeks ago in selected theaters and on all digital platforms. It stars Martin Sheen, Christian Slater, Justin Long, and, in the lead role, luminous newcomer Britt Robertson. Recently I sat down with Allison in his Los Angeles home to discuss the challenges of indie filmmaking in general, as well as the difficulties with his leading lady that has caught the attention of the national media. Read more »

Animated Christmas specials have become traditional to American holiday celebrations, ever since they first began airing in 1970s. Stop-motion productions like Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Comin' to Town became instant classics, and have since been aired in marathons and special segments on TV for decades, and become an integral part of many families' Christmas festivities. Read more »

Screenwriter, director, and novelist Allison Burnett adapts his critically-lauded book Undiscovered Gyrl, retitled Ask Me Anything for the screen, with excellent results. (By the way, only two writers I can think of have even attempted to migrate their prose from page to screen as both writer and director -- Norman Mailer and Stephen Chboksy.) This dramatic coming-of-age indie boasts an outstanding cast with a wickedly twisted plot twist that is so left field that you may have to watch it again to get it. Part Lolita meets Looking for Mr. Goodbar a la a precocious teenage blogger gone rogue. Read more »

[Spoiler Alert: This review contains a few spoilers, though I have tried to keep them to a minimum while still making this a viable review.]

When the first made-for-TV Librarian movie appeared in 2004 (The Librarian: Quest for the Spear), I watched it simply because it sounded so silly (and I also have a fondness for magic and fantasy). The premise is a normal metropolitan library under which is hidden a magical library containing not only rare (or mythical) books and manuscripts, but historical/magical (and religious) artifacts: the Ark of the Covenant, Excalibur, Pandora’s Box, even Noah’s Ark. This library -- which exists to protects these items, as well as protecting the general public from the wrong use of magic -- is overseen by Judson (Bob Newhart) and his assistant, Charlene (Jane Curtin). They hire a librarian whose job it is to go around the world either finding magical artifacts, or preventing those artifacts from falling into the wrong hands. The librarian is chosen for a combination of the breadth of his knowledge and intelligence, and his ability to think himself out of various predicaments (since he does not carry any weapons). In the first film, Noah Wyle becomes the new librarian, whose task it is to recover part of the Spear of Destiny (the spear used by the centurion to pierce Jesus’ side), which has been stolen. Read more »

Here's a sneak peak at a provocative new film -- A Most Violent Year -- that focuses on the moral codes of "doing business" in NYC in 1981, a time when the city was nearly bankrupt and certainly corrupt. It's by the director J.C. Chandor and stars Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis) and Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty). Opening on December 31, 2014.

While viewing Sion Sono's Why Don’t You Play in Hell?, at times I couldn’t tell if the Japanese director was a deliciously inept fan of Tarantino and Jerry Lewis or a bizarro pro gleefully upending a genre or two or three. Not until I checked out his credits on IMDB (over 31 features), and sat down with two of his earlier features, could I assume here’s a gent at top of his game, whatever that game might be. Read more »

Since the development of the moving picture camera in the late 19th century, the world, especially Americans, has been fascinated by the silver screen. For a time, people shut out the cold reality of the Great Depression with Shirley Temple's iconic curls, and legends such as Errol Flynn, Gregory Peck, and Katherine Hepburn roamed Hollywood lots and ordered Cobb salads at the Brown Derby. For awhile it seemed that our infatuation with Hollywood would never end, but the most recent decade has seen both its revenue and cultural significance decline, and many industry experts are scrambling to understand how movies have slipped from the spotlight. Internal changes show that studios have reinvested quite a bit of their resources into television production, and although Hollywood has been a television oriented town since the late -1950s, it had never stepped on film profits until fairly recently. Read more »

It's that time of year again when crowds descend upon Lincoln Center to experience world cinema worthy of the ultimate accolades, the most hyped Oscar-worthy Hollywood offerings of the year, experimental programs that expose the versatility of the medium, and shorts that announce a whole spate of new, young directors who will no doubt blow our minds in the future -- or at least supply us with a few major catharses. Read more »

"I wake, I write, I eat, I write, I watch TV..." so says rock icon Nick Cave in his opening narration voiceover. And in doing so lays out the template of this exceptional documentary. Of course, if you know the artist Cave, you will know that his life isn't quite that simple. And while the film plays like a day in the life of Nick, from the opening scene of him waking up in bed next to his wife Susie to final crescendo of an evening performance of an absolutely riveting live version of "Higgs Boson Blues" from his last album, it is everything in between that really explores and exposes the artist as a work in progress. Read more »

There’s nothing like a family reunion, especially when it takes place in a British penitentiary. 

And for new inmate Eric Love (Jack O’Connell), who last recalls being with his pop, Neville (Ben Mendelsohn), when he was a five-year-old, it should be especially poignant. After all, there he was bouncing upon dadda’s knee, a knee that’s been doing hard time ever since. Read more »

Few filmmakers can be said to be as prolific and influential as George Romero. An icon of the zombie film genre, Romero’s love of horror traces back to his youth, and watching classic monster films such as Frankenstein and Dracula. Romero’s love of these films set him on a path to not only create horror films himself, but to change and redefine the genre for decades to come. Read more »

Lilting is about loss times two. Mother and partner divided when their love object was alive. Battling still after his unexpected death. But although you will get teary eyed, the film is not depressive by any measure. Read more »

Within the past week, two former gay students of mine texted to relate their agony at not having boyfriends and the inability to see any in their futures. All the potential Romeos they meet are just interested in one-night stands or are on the down-low. No love on balconies.  Read more »

If you still have an affinity for books, there can be few more choice summer reads than Edmund White's 2005 autobiography, My Lives. Divided into nonlinear sections devoted to his relationships with his parents, his hustlers, and his female entanglements, there's also a chapter entitled "My Europe." Herein White notes how while in the Paris of the 1980s, he became aware that petite green beans are tastier than their larger cousins. He also recounts how the social theorist Michel Foucault, a pal of his, noted that while "'gay philosophy' and 'gay paintings' were meaningless notions...writing gay fiction was legitimate since it enabled us to imagine how gay men should live together." Read more »

Jake Kasdan is to directing comedy what Friedrich Nietzsche is to baking apple strudel. Not much.

As with his Bad Teacher (2011), which also stars Cameron Diaz and Jason Segal, Kasdan takes a promising concept and lays waste to it. The highly workable concept is a simple one: a sexually active couple, Jay (Segal) and Annie (Diaz), copulate like bunnies on ecstasy until they wed. Two precocious children later, the O in orgasms has moved on to the O on Cheerios boxes. He now is a music producer, I believe, and she blogs a column entitled "Who’s Yo Mommy?" Yes, copulation is no longer a spontaneous act for this duo. Instead, it has to be planned for ahead of time. Read more »