Review: Ira Sach's "Little Men"

This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

Feeling fatigued by summer movie season's emphasis on loud and flashy but ultimately empty spectacles? You're in luck. Little Men, now playing in limited release, is the perfect antidote: quiet but insightful, memorable and substantive. It's not a spectacle by any means but you should still see it inside the movie theater because it's the kind of careful storytelling that benefits from being fully inside of it. Getting lost in a story is much easier to accomplish in the pages of a great novel or the dark of a movie theater than if you wait around to Netflix and chill. The movie comes to us from one of our best LGBT directors, Ira Sachs. The New York based writer/director made his feature debut 20 years ago with The Delta (1996) but recently he's been on quite a roll.

Little Men is not an adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott sequel to Little Women, but it does feel like a rich unexpected sequel to a more contemporary future classic. Ira Sach's last film was the moving gay seniors drama Love is Strange starring John Lithgow and Alfred Molina whose marriage at the beginning of the film sets off a surprising chain of events which leaves them homeless and at the mercy of friends and relatives. That beautiful movie ended, rather intuitively, with a wordless and narratively inconsequential scene in which we followed their young nephew on his skateboard down the streets of the city at magic hour. The image was rapturous and watery... or rather just rapturous; I was watching it through cascading tears was all. [More...]

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Beauty vs Beast: Koo Koo Ka Choose

Howdy and Happy Monday it's Jason from MNPP here on this, the day that the great Dustin Hoffman is turning 79 years old. How do you think he now views the concerns of his most famous character Benjamin Braddock of The Graduate, from the opposite vantage point of age? Of course he's much older now than Anne Bancroft was as Mrs. Robinson (now that I think about it I'm actually right around Mrs. Robinson's age myself! Weird!) so he probably looks back at Ben with tired eyes at this point. Heck I do myself, although I don't know if I entirely sympathize with Mrs. Robinson's self-destructive behavior either. But where do you stand? That's right it's time for this week's "Beauty vs Beast" ...

PREVIOUSLY We are smearing our sad clown make-up off this morning and waving an over-sized glove goodbye to International Clown Week - last week's competition of clown couples in Short Cuts fell on the "Julianne Moore & Matthew Modine" side, probably because of the film's still infamous full-frontal fight scene - said Mark, speaking truth to privates:

"The genius of Moore is you watch her face in this instead of her special lady place."

LifeRide Celebrities Are ♥️

While there are surely terrible things about being famous one of the things that is not terrible at all (unless you're just a negative person who can always find a dark cloud) is that fame gives you such massive platform to do good in the world. With a built in audience charitable appearances, fundraising ability, and fighting for pet causes are all so much easier!

Actor Gilles Marini, riding for charity. Photo Credit: Travis Shinn

Currently there are a bunch of celebrities doing the multi-city Kiehl's LifeRide for AmfAR, The Foundations for AIDS Research (which started August 3rd and runs through August 14th, ending in Philadelphia) including actors Jay Ellis (The Game), JR Bourne and Ian Bohen (Teen Wolf), Kurt Yaeger (new series Quarry), Scott Patterson (Gilmore Girls), and three... uh... longtime personal favorites of mine:  Gilles Marini (Sex & The City), Teddy Sears (Masters of Sex, The Flash, Dollhouse) and Michiel Huisman (Black Book, Wild, Game of Thrones). More photos after the jump...

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The Furniture: The Paper Opulence of Amadeus

1984 is our "Year of the Month" for August. So we'll be celebrating its films randomly throughout the month. Here's Daniel Walber...

Simon Callow as PapagenoAmadeus is not a biopic, it’s a myth. Milos Forman’s adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s play is an utterly absurd portrayal of a long ago, unknown relationship. Antonio Salieri may not have had any negative feelings toward Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but that hardly matters. The legend, a story of deep faith that twists into jealousy, is a whole lot more interesting than the truth.

The film’s production design mimics the delicious falseness of its narrative. The Vienna of Emperor Joseph II is opulent, to be sure, but it is a strange opulence. Rather than focus on the grandeur of the palaces, Forman keeps much of the drama in drawing rooms. Production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein and art director Karel Cerny keep away from too much gold and silver, instead creating bizarre tableaux of a miniature society.

Even more striking are the recreations of the opera theater. For these, Forman called on Joseph Svoboda, the founder of Prague’s Laterna Magika and an internationally renowned opera director. He produced scenes from four of Mozart’s operas for the film, as well as one by Salieri.

They are all both extravagant and shabby, in line with both the presumed wealth of Emperor Joseph II’s court and the theatrical limitations of the 18th century...

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Boyega, Mackie & More Join Bigelow's Next Project

Manuel here with some casting news. Kathryn Bigelow is readying her follow-up to Zero Dark Thirty. As we learned back in January, her next project will be centered on the Detroit riots of 1967. For the timely drama, the Oscar winner will be reteaming with Mark Boal (who also penned The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty). Well, now that the film is set to start shooting, we’re finally getting more details on the film’s cast (if little info on the actual narrative of the feature).

In addition to Star Wars standout John Boyega, the Bigelow-Boal “Untitled Detroit Project” as it’s being described has recruited a bevy of young up and coming stars...

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