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cinema

Feel Good Film Festival Starts Tomorrow

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One of my favorite new summer traditions returns to Hollywood Blvd tomorrow night, and this year it looks like it’ll be better than ever. The 3rd Annual Feel Good Film Festival starts this Friday with their trademark yellow carpet opening night hosted by Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Cheryl Hines.  I love specificity in art, and by cutting such a warm and fuzzy niche from the WithoutaBox universe, FGFF has hit a heart-warming motherlode.   Film festivals can be intimidating, they’re often a hodge podge of not only quality but also tone. […]

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cinema

11 Year Old Movie Critic Wins an Emmy

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That’s right.  This little guy made his way from radio to TV and won an Emmy for Best On Camera Talent for Commentary. Parentdish has a little interview with him which is funny, especially since he calls out Clash of the Titans as the worst movie of the year. How does this fit into the critical cosmology of amateur vs. professional, blogger vs. print?  I think it’s fairly obvious that if you’re getting your movie-going advice from a 5th grader you’re unlikely to need the experience of an Harold Bloom […]

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Quickies

At Least She Didn’t Leave it to the Cat

Did the audience go to the Met too?
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It’s a good day to be in the development department at the Met, and an equally bad day for the bean counters at the Washington National Opera.  According to PND, a former board member of the WNO rendered an $18M gift to the opera “with the unusual stipulation that should that company fail to remain independent the gift would be rescinded and transferred to the Met.” Now, as the Kennedy Center continues their slow consumption of the capital’s high-brow art centers, the WNO is faced with losing close to 2/3rds […]

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television

Somehow, Miles loses Work of Art.

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No disrespect to Abdi, who was one of my faves throughout the entire show.  His charcoal drawing in the last regular challenge was magnificent and a couple of his final pieces were really incredible. But how could Miles Mendenhall possibly lose this competition?  Anyone watching this show from the beginning would have put money on his eventual victory, not because he was so much more talented than the others (although he was among the best in every challenge) but because the show seemed made for him.  All actual artistic considerations […]

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Features

Why I Stopped Writing Theater Reviews

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Some of you may know that for much of 2009 and 2010 I was a weekly writer for the upstart online publication LA Theatre Review.  Each week I would accept a complimentary ticket to one of the dozens of live performances that are produced in Los Angeles each weekend, and in return, I would give my honest assessment of the show’s quality, vivacity, and relevance.  And like so many ‘blogger-critics’ in this city, I did my best to distinguish myself from the pack by writing as insightfully and as brutally […]

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