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High and Low / DVD and Digital Video || ||

High And Low: Wenders' 'Pina' Is Less Stodgy & Travis' 'For A Good Time, Call...' Less Stupid Than You Might Think

High And Low: Wenders' 'Pina' Is Less Stodgy & Travis' 'For A Good Time, Call...' Less Stupid Than You Might Think

This week’s High and Low celebrates the sublime and the obscene. But though the two movies I've spotlighted couldn't be more different, they're both a lot of fun. Perhaps the case could be made that both movies celebrate female artists and their unique voices, but that might be stretching things a tad. Still, you might find yourself surprised by these titles — one’s less stodgy, and the other less stupid, than the casual observer might at first realize. more »

Interviews || ||

Oscar Roundtable: Meet This Year's Best Documentary Feature Nominees

Oscar Roundtable: Meet This Year's Best Documentary Feature Nominees

I'm thrilled and honored to welcome you to the first of several virtual roundtables featuring Oscar's nominee class of 2012 -- commencing today with those behind the five films nominated for Best Documentary Feature. They are (in alphabetical order):
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Lists || ||

The Artist, Tinker, Midnight in Paris: Stephanie's Top 10 Movies of 2011

The Artist, Tinker, Midnight in Paris: Stephanie's Top 10 Movies of 2011

And so my most-favorite, least-favorite task of the year rolls around again. I never call it a "10 best" list -- meaning the unequivocal 10 best films of the year -- because I'm fully aware of how subjective it is. Yet as frustrating as it usually is to pull together just the right 10, I found the job surprisingly pleasurable this year. So many movies to love! How could this have happened? Let's not even address the fact that two 3-D movies made it onto my list -- that surprises me as much as anyone. The remarkable thing is that year after year, no matter how much samey-sameness Hollywood (or even so-called indie cinema, for that matter) seems to give us, there are always pictures that resonate, movies that stand apart as if to do so were their God-given right.

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Review || ||

REVIEW: Wim Wenders's 3-D Pina Makes Its Own Joyful Dance

Now that everyone has grown tired of touting the allegedly thrilling promise of 3-D, we may have some chance of figuring out exactly what its future might be. While I still think 3-D is almost less than a gimmick, I've come to think that its real promise lies not in big-budget filmmaking along the lines of The Adventures of Tintin or even a picture as wonderful as Hugo, but in the hands of directors working on a more modest scale who simply have a good idea and a spark of enthusiasm for the medium. Wim Wenders has brought that spark to a rather unlikely subject, the late German modern-dance choreographer Pina Bausch. For years, Wenders and Bausch, longtime friends, had been working on a movie together. Bausch died suddenly in 2009, at age 68, and Pina is Wenders's tribute to her, less a strict documentary than a heartfelt -- and visually gorgeous -- celebration of Bausch's work and her mode of working.

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