In The Theater Of Politics, Staging Is Everything
During the next two weeks, the major political parties will assemble their faithful in Tampa, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C., to officially nominate their presidential tickets. These conventions were once...
View Article'Argo': A Rescue Mission With Real Hollywood Style
Ben Affleck's new thriller, Argo, chronicles a secret CIA rescue mission — a mission that remained classified for years. When details finally came to light, the operation sounded like something only...
View ArticleVice Presidential Debate Mirrors 'American Idol'
The first two debates of the 2012 election cycle have had stratospheric viewership on TV. Critic Bob Mondello isn't surprised. He argues we've spent the last decade training the public to watch...
View ArticleHome Video Review: Universal's 'Classic Monsters' Collection
Time now for a home viewing recommendation from film critic Bob Mondello. This week, Bob's getting ahead of the Halloween curve, with an 8-disk Classic Monsters collection from Universal Pictures.The...
View ArticleLincoln's Screen Legacy, Decidedly Larger Than Life
He's a statue in many a monument, a profile on the penny, a face on the $5 bill, and an animatronic robot at Disneyland. He's even carved into a mountain in South Dakota. So, of course, Abe Lincoln has...
View ArticleBond Is Back And Living Up To His Reputation
Istanbul: Somebody's stolen a hard drive with info sensitive enough that ... oh, who cares? Bond is giving chase, and that's all that matters — cars careening through bazaars, motorcycles flying across...
View Article'Tis The Season For Oscar-Bait Adaptations
It's the sort of juxtaposition that often arises at this time of year: novel adaptations arriving in droves at movie theaters, hunting for Oscar nominations.J.R.R.
View ArticleFor Pi, A Wonderful 'Life' Finds Its Way To Film
When your dad owns a zoo in India, as Pi's dad does, it's perhaps natural to regard animals as your buddies. Cool if you're talking goats and turtles; less cool if the animal you decide you want to pet...
View ArticleHollywood Heights: The Ups, Downs And In-Betweens
Hollywood can make any actor look imposing by shooting from a low angle or building sets with short door frames. But the fact is that we want our heroes big and our villains bigger, and the average...
View ArticleA 'Hobbit,' Off On His Unhurried Journey
The Hobbit's path to the screen may have started out as tortuous as a trek through the deadly Helcaraxe, filled with detours (Guillermo del Toro was initially going to direct), marked by conflict (New...
View ArticleBob Mondello's Best Movies of 2012
A lot of movie box-office records fell in 2012. The comic-book blockbuster The Avengers had the biggest opening weekend in Hollywood history. Skyfall will be the first James Bond film to top $1 billion...
View ArticleHome Video Review: 'Slings And Arrows'
Time now for a home-viewing recommendation from movie critic Bob Mondello. He recently caught an online episode of the Shakespeare-centric comedy Slings and Arrows and says it reminded him how much he...
View ArticleHome Video Review: 'Buster Keaton: The Ultimate Collection'
Time now for a home-viewing recommendation from NPR movie critic Bob Mondello. A quiet recommendation — because Bob is touting the Ultimate Buster Keaton Collection, a 14-disc set of classic silent...
View ArticleDespite Dark Themes, A Big Oscar Bounce
How much is a best-picture Oscar worth? Not the statuette — winners are required to sell that back to the Academy for a buck if they want to get rid of it. No, what's the Oscar worth at the box...
View ArticleFairy Tales For Grown-Ups? More Are On The Way
Adaptations of fairy tales are everywhere you look. The TV show Once Upon a Time and the police procedural Grimm are in their second seasons. Hansel and his sister Gretel are at the cineplex hunting...
View ArticleHollywood's History Of Putting Gay Rights On Trial
With the Supreme Court hearing arguments this week on same-sex marriage, I'd like to point out a parallel evolution in what I see as a Hollywood mini-genre: films in which gay characters are either...
View ArticleA Film So Sumptuous, 'Renoir' Himself Might Have Helped Out
The year is 1915. A beautiful young woman bicycling through sun-dappled woods passes under an effigy of a German soldier and seems entirely unfazed. World War I is raging elsewhere in Europe, but here...
View ArticleOn The Big Screen, The Tax Guy Can Be Your Buddy
It's fair to say that the bakery employees who hooted and jeered "tax maaaaaan" when mild-mannered auditor Will Ferrell showed up in Stranger than Fiction were no fans of the Internal Revenue Service....
View ArticleDigging Into Ricky Jay's 'Deceptive' Card Tricks
When people talk about movie magic, they rarely mean card tricks.
View ArticleIn 'Iron Man 3,' A Metalhead Gets The Blues
Y'know, I think this bummed-out superhero thing is catching. Depressed Bat-guy, brooding Spider-dude, even the Man of Steel seems existentially troubled in previews of his most recent incarnation.And...
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