Word: turned
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...surprising that Ritchie, a director who essentially keeps making the same glib, lively movie over and over again (with the exception of 2002's Swept Away, which stands alone in defiant atrocity) would turn Holmes into an action hero. Nor does it feel like a sin against humanity or literature; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was fun but he wasn't exactly Henry James. What is surprising is how bland the results are. The explosions and action sequences have an odd cheapness to them and the central plot is one of those dreary take-over-the-world routines. (Blackwood...
...talks about her life, performs a song, then fades into the crowd. Some of these solo spots are pretty wow-y: Cruz's writhing sensuality in "A Call from the Vatican," the surprising sass and vocal authority that Judi Dench brings to "Folies Bergere" and a nicely gaudy turn by the pop star Fergie as a zaftig whore who urges the perpetually pre-adolescent Guido to "Be Italian." A few numbers are duds, like Hudson's attempt (in a new number, "Cinema Italiano") to channel Madonna in her "Vogue" period. But each one is there to explain a situation...
...Daniel Day-Lewis) are a famous director scheduled to make your next film. Your producer is throwing money at you; a hundred skilled technicians are ready to turn your whims into cinema reality; and everywhere, beautiful women (Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Kate Hudson, Sophia Loren) throw themselves at you, begging you to use them. So of course you/re miserable - because, at the moment, as a creative filmmaker...
...subjects of their own pictures. Egotism could be the highest form of artistry. For a while, every ambitious American director wanted to do his own 8-1/2. That license may have been issued a bit cavalierly - self-referential cinema, as it was called, could easily turn self-reverential - but it spawned some fascinating films, including Paul Mazursky's Alex in Wonderland, Woody Allen's Stardust Memories and above all Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, a collision of song and dance, skyrocketing neurosis and open-heart surgery, energy and entropy. Nine hit Broadway three years later, with Raul Julia...
...Asia. By staying low to the ground (mostly by rail) and true to his raw, first impressions - masterfully bending the dullest of travel encounters into revelations - he has etched indelible snapshots of much of the globe. His 1973 Saint Jack evoked Singapore in the swinging days before its turn toward a more staid Yuppiedom; Kowloon Tong captured the 1997 Hong Kong handover through the petty business deals and shared secrets of Chinese and interlopers. In both Riding the Iron Rooster and Sailing Through China, he made strong claims as a China hand - though he now has as little good...