Screen
Hardly dying
John McClane (Bruce Willis), the hyper-violent man perpetually wrong in place and time, has always been Rambo by way of “grumpy cat.” The only thing that makes Die Hard actually Die Hard is the surly sense of humor McClane spouts while committing copious homicides. ...
Magnifying injustice
A certain segment of the population has always believed Nixon’s War on Drugs to be a tragic waste of time, money and human life. A damning statistic, familiar to those with even a minor interest in the drug boondoggle, comes early in The House I Live In: “Since 1971...
The original crazy drummer
Rock stars don’t always have the prettiest personal lives. John Lennon (pre-Yoko) intimidated and threatened the women in his life. Sid Vicious may or may not have killed Nancy Spungen. Buddy Rich allegedly verbally abused every member of his band, making scores of...
Restless leg syndrome
Feel free to call director Steven Soderbergh’s latest film (and potentially last, if you believe his retirement threats) a wacky mallard because it is one odd duck. If a Hitchcock movie took a Dateline NBC segment behind the art house theater and got it pregnant, ...
BIFF’s new musical bent
As Boulder International Film Festival enters its ninth year, its founders, sisters Kathy and Robin Beeck, sit in a conference in their Pearl Street office, pondering the beast of an event they attempt to plan each year. They’re describing a new feature of this year’...
BIFF 2013: Finding light in the darkness
Somewhere in a Ukrainian cave, the film crew for No Place on Earth switched off their headlamps...
BW BIFF Picks 2013: ‘The New Public’
In Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, the high school graduation rate is 40 percent. The New Public, a documentary by Jyllian Gunther, tells the story of a small group of high school teachers and administrators who tackle that problem by opening a small ...
BW BIFF Picks 2013: ‘Little World’
At the time Little World was being filmed, Barcelona native Albert Casals was a 20-yearold world traveler. But nothing about the way that Albert views the world or travels through it resembles what most of us think of or do as we go from place to place...
BIFF 2013: The man behind the Man in Black
In 2005, Jonathan Holiff was living in Los Angeles, working hard at his agency, The Hollywood-Madison Group. He hooked up celebrities with Fortune 500 companies for product endorsements; one of his biggest successes was getting Jessica Simpson together with Chicken ...
