Review: “The Odyssey” is Signature Christopher Nolan (Both Good and Bad)

By Ben Miller

13 feature films into his career, director Christopher Nolan has developed a string of touchstones for his films. You can expect an all-star cast, massive practical set pieces, underdeveloped women, stunning visuals, and clunky dialogue. With his new film The Odyssey, Nolan again delivers on everything you come to expect from a Nolan movie.

This time, Nolan (a well-documented child of cinema history), decides to take his chances with a sword and sandals epic in the vein of Ben-Hur or Quo Vadis. While the filmmaker might not have the reverence for the genre, he dives headfirst into the craft and scope necessary to make a film of this magnitude. When this film is big, bold, and a little silly, that’s where everything excels. It’s when things get more intimate that the film loses its way...

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Doc Corner: 'The Andy Warhol Diaries' on Netflix

By Glenn Dunks

There have been a lot of films, series and books about Andy Warhol and the company he kept. Documentaries alone, I could definitely list off a dozen titles by heart from prestige to the trash. And there's no reason for that to stop now. After all, Warhol’s factory of superstars and the art they produced will no doubt continue to inspire other creatives for as long as there is art. The Andy Warhol Diaries on Netflix will certainly not be the last. Although it may just go down as at least one of the more definitive of the bunch—as well as the slickest...

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Months of Meryl: Dark Matter (2007)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep.  

#35 —Joanna Silver, a university patroness with a penchant for Chinese culture.

MATTHEW: On paper, the prospect of Meryl Streep offering her time and talents to an innovative Chinese director’s micro-budgeted filmmaking debut is immediately intriguing. Dark Matter sounds like a welcome divergence for an actress who has seldom strayed from inside Hollywood’s gates over the course of her 30 years in the industry. Noted opera helmer Chen Shi-Zheng’s first foray behind the camera is loosely based on the 1991 University of Iowa shooting, in which Gang Lu, a gifted Ph.D. graduate in the school’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, murdered five people on campus after being passed over for a prestigious dissertation prize, Shi-Zheng’s drama is a work of no small audacity, one in a scattering of American films that have dramatized the unrelenting pressure placed on young Chinese immigrants to provide and succeed in a country that has already stacked the deck against them.

But Dark Matter quickly dashes the hopes one might have harbored for Streep’s curious venture into post-Sundance indie cinema...

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A Multitude of Links

Some of these links (which I collect until I have a moment to share) are a few days old and some are brand new. But it's time to clear out the cache!

We Are Movie Geeks recounts highlights of AFI and the fest winners including Ukraine's The Tribe and the Olympic documentary about Russia's Red Army hockey team which has major Oscar dreams and might achieve them since it's quite entertaining!
Pajiba a fun look at Jessica Chastain's career before she broke out in movies: L&O and E.R. and so on
Vulture interviews Bill Irwin, one of our favorites, on his work as "Tars" in Interstellar 
In Contention moderates a SAG Q & A for The Grand Budapest Hotel. I've been meaning to watch that one again 

Dissolve First look at Bryan Cranston as Trumbo in the 2015 feature. (Sad that there's not much in the way of costume here because I had lunch with the designer Daniel Orlandi when I was in LA. Will this HBO blacklist drama be up for Emmys in 2015? What'cha think?)
Interview Magazine Stanley Tucci interviews his pal Patricia Clarkson, looking better than ever 
In Contention Stephen Hawking weighs in on Eddie Redmayne's performance of him in The Theory of Everything
Speakeasy Finn Wittrock on his breakout year via American Horror Story 

Friends & Collaborators of TFE
The Atlantic Joe thinks the Oscar race for Animated Feature is between Big Hero 6 and The LEGO Movie. I disagree. Has everyone noticed how hard Dragon 2 is pushing? 
Antagony & Ecstacy Tim discovers Gloria (remember how wild I was about that one last year?) 
My New Plaid Pants Jason has a great (mixed) take on A Most Violent Year 

Must Reads
LA Times great piece on how social media has affected awards season
Grantland Wesley Morris pays homage to America's Bitter-Sweetheart Reese Witherspoon (Wild).
AV Club An instant classic article on "fake deaths and cheap resurrections" in entertainment. This is a month old piece which maybe I've shared before (?) but if you haven't read it you simply must. I can't get over it. This has long been something I've struggled with in movies and TV and it's beautifully put to words here by William Hughes.
Slate interesting essay about the decline of the serial killer in real life and its 'golden age' (blech!) in film and television  

Today's Watch
Got an hour? Here's Bennett Miller giving a "Master Class" talk on directing to promote Foxcatcher. This is from the NYFF but it's just available now in its full form.

Finally...
You may be wondering why I didn't watch, tweet, or blog about The Hollywood Film Awards. 

It isn't a competition so much as a publicity arrangement.

Let's just say I agree with Sasha Stone's quote about it (<--- and look, I finally met her in L.A. after 10+ years of knowing each other online!). Since that is true, and since it's a fake awards show and we already have enough of real ones, why give it any space? If you need further evidence of how disinterested people are read these bitchy quotes from Tim Gray's article in Variety. 

Thoughts I Had... While Watching the "Interstellar" Teaser

Presented in the order I had them without self-censorship... you do the same in the comments!

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