This is What Movies Have Become. Sigh

Eric M. Armstrong — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:11:22 +0000

With the recession strangling the creativity and imagination out of the mainstream film world, more and more movies seem to be retreading familiar ground. Major studios desperately want to give their film some street cred so they setup boutique studios that make smaller films, but really, they’re ultimately under the thumb of the big guys. This results in neither super expensive studio films that can be great popcorn fun, nor a witty subversive imaginative independent film that challenges its audience. Instead, we end up with something caught in the middle, that feels like a studio film pandering to savvy audiences. This video captures that aesthetic brilliantly.

Barrry Levinson to Adapt His Own Novel, ‘Sixty-Six’

Eric M. Armstrong — Sat, 02 May 2009 18:39:09 +0000

Barry Levinson, veteran director of “Diner,” “The Natural,” “Wag the Dog,” and “Rain Man,” hasn’t made much of a dent in the consciousness of the critics or the pocketbooks of the public since 2001′s “Bandits.” But the 67-year old filmmaker may have an ace up his sleeve in the coming of age tale set in tumultuous 1960s Baltimore entitled, “Sixty-Six.”

What’s particularly noteworthy about this project is that “Sixty-Six,” will be adapated from Levinson’s own novel of the same name published in 2003. It will also act as the bookend in an informal series of stories studying the social evolution of Baltimore through the 20th century that began with “Diner” in 1982.

FirstShowing.net quoted the director as saying, “It’s really the last of the diner stories. It’s about a world that’s on he cusp of a big change and a group of people who are on the cusp of adulthood.”

The Moving Arts Film Journal » Rain Man

This is What Movies Have Become. Sigh

Barrry Levinson to Adapt His Own Novel, ‘Sixty-Six’