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May
28
    

Conventional wisdom used to have it that an Oscar was worth an extra million dollars in box office receipts. But that was a decade or two ago, and probably applied only to mainstream feature films.

I saw veteran documentary filmmaker Errol Morris’s latest work, “The Fog of War,” two days after it won the 2004 Academy Award for the Best Documentary. There were only three of us in the audience. Granted, it was a mid-afternoon screening on a Tuesday, but still I have to wonder whether that golden statuette will translate into bigger bucks for this film.

Click here to read the full review by David Loftus.


 
May
28
    

“Fahrenheit 9/11″ opened with great fanfare across the U.S. on June 26, 2004. It grossed $8 million on opening night, and as I write this, three nights later, news reports peg it as the number one film in the country its first weekend. It broke the record for biggest gross for a film opening on less than 1,000 screens (the record holder was “Rocky”), and had a higher per-screen take than “The Passion of the Christ” on its opening weekend. It remains to be seen whether the initial hue and cry of critics and commentators will inspire or sway the average moviegoer, let alone the electorate. But to have the country buzzing about truth or satire, accuracy or lies, war or regime change (overseas or at home) instead of the latest special effects extravaganza, leather-clad fantasy figure, wizard-in-training, or J. Lo and Marc Anthony, is a welcome change from summers past.

Click here to read the full review by David Loftus.


 
May
22
    

Try to picture an art piece that cannot be put in a museum, purchased by wealthy collectors, or displayed in a corporate foyer or boardroom – because it disintegrates in less than a day, perhaps even within 20 seconds. Try to imagine executing artwork through the medium of iron oxide chalk, raw sheep’s wool, flower blossoms, leaves and grass, feathers, random sticks and stones, broken rocks, pieces of icicle, green iris blades and red berries, thorns, bracken, or handfuls of snow. Try to fathom the notion that an artist could a take stroll in the woods, along a riverbank, down a beach, and with no tools at all – no paint brushes, no sculptor’s chisels or knives, no canvases or pedestals or quarried granite or polished wood – manage to create unutterably beautiful art from the objects and materials he finds by chance.

Click here to read the full review by David Loftus.