Orson Welles

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Public Disservice Announcements

Big Fat Whale
You don't want to hear this.
By BRIAN MCFADDEN | October 14, 2011

Welles + Olivier spar, commiserate at Players’ Ring

Aging dreams
How does a star negotiate a changing age?
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | September 28, 2011

Review: Best Worst Movie (2010)

Best Worst Movie is the best
I've been strong-arming acquaintances about this deliriously entertaining documentary ever since I saw it at South by Southwest last year. The response to my fevered pitch for Best Worst Movie has been polite nodding, eyes glazed over.
By GERALD PEARY | August 08, 2010

Mostly noir

And mostly masterpieces, at the Museum of Fine Arts, June 2-13.
The definition of film noir has become elastic through the years. Of the five movies included in the MFA’s series “Rialto’s Best of British Film Noir” only two, strictly speaking, are noirs: Brighton Rock, Graham Greene & Terence Rattigan’s adaptation of Greene’s novel, and The Third Man, Greene’s most famous collaboration with the filmmaker Carol Reed.
By STEVE VINEBERG | May 26, 2010

Interview and photos: Gerard Malanga

A gathering of souls
In Walt Whitman’s notebook for the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass , he writes, “Every soul has its own individual voice.” That notion rang true for photographer/poet/filmmaker Gerard Malanga as he put together “Souls,” an exhibit of 100 portraits spanning five decades.
By KRISTEN GOODFRIEND | March 31, 2010

The faded Follies

The thrill is gone at the ProJo shindig; there’s something about Cumberland; and more
As regular readers of the Cool, Cool World well know, one of the social highlights of the year at Casa Diablo is the Providence Newspaper Guild Follies.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | March 03, 2010

Review: Me and Orson Welles

Richard Linklater casts a spell
With Orson Welles, it's all in the voice — which over the course of four decades could sell anything from a Martian invasion to Paul Masson wine.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 09, 2009

Play by play: October 30, 2009

Plays around town
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 28, 2009

Play by play: October 23, 2009

Boston theater listings, October 23, 2009
Boston's weekly theater listings
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 21, 2009

Hardboiled hub

The city’s gritty, criminal underbelly has redefined the dark, artistic vision known as Boston noir
When I was growing up in Roslindale a few decades back — among tribes of ignorant, second-generation immigrant kids whose favorite words began with “f” and “n” and who liked to torture small animals and beat up small children before they moved on to their future vocations as petty criminals, dead dope users, or real-estate agents.
By PETER KEOUGH | October 21, 2009

Snapping towels

Fenix's Taming of the Shrew gets wet
Through the rest of June, a classic battle of the sexes will be waged at the wading pool of Deering Oaks Park. The Fenix Theatre Co., Portland's premier purveyor of outdoor Shakespeare for the summer, stages a smart, wet, and aggressive Taming of the Shrew as its first summer show.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 17, 2009

Dark passage

Film noir and the Production Code at the MFA
The Production Code, Hollywood's notorious self-censorship program, was instituted by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America in 1930, but it didn't go into effect till 1934, when it was administered by Joseph I. Breen.
By STEVE VINEBERG | May 27, 2009

Timeline: Reggae in Boston

1968 - 2009
A timeline of reggae milestones in Boston
By CHRIS FARAONE | May 21, 2009

Reggae revival

Booming in Boston's underground, Caribbean riddims are about to burst back into the mainstream
The climate is tropical, sweet skunk fills the air, and reggae jams are hitting such lofty decibels that I can't even feel my phone vibrate.
By CHRIS FARAONE | May 21, 2009

A star is porn

Adult-film star Sasha Grey makes her mainstream debut
"As Steven was saying the other night at the screening, at the end of the day we're all selling something, and we all want something, whether it's monetary or not."
By PETER KEOUGH | May 18, 2009

Everything is illuminated

Samantha Hunt weaves historical fiction from Nikola Tesla's biography
A solemn pigeon, a rolling thunderstorm, flecks of dust: nearly everything speaks in The Invention of Everything Else , Samantha Hunt's second novel.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | March 11, 2009

Review: The International

Bank failure
In lieu of action, character development, or plot, The International offers architecture.
By PETER KEOUGH | February 10, 2009

All's well that is Welles

Some of the best of the last at the HFA
Some of the best of the last Orson Welles flicks at the HFA
By A.S. HAMRAH | November 24, 2008

Making us stronger

Boston’s What Doesn’t Kill You scores at Toronto
I’m back from the 33rd Toronto International Film Festival, where the unexpected hit among discerning critics was a Boston-made crime melodrama.
By GERALD PEARY | September 17, 2008

Smoke screens

Does a surge of stoner movies mean America is going to pot?
What does it say about America that marijuana movies are a hot genre right now, perhaps hotter even than in the heyday of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong’s 1978 Up in Smoke ?
By PETER KEOUGH | August 18, 2008

Islander

Julie Hecht’s self-help
There’s still time to spend some of your summer with Julie Hecht.
By JON GARELICK | July 22, 2008

Local culler

Paul Sherman’s Big Screen Boston
For peddling some not-for-sale DVDs to a dubious Internet customer, local critic Paul Sherman found himself in the middle of an FBI sting, removed from his reviewing posts at the Boston Herald and the Improper Bostonian , and under voluntary house arrest.
By GERALD PEARY | April 22, 2008

An Italian feast

‘Signore + Signore’ isn’t just about the ladies
A group of performers — especially one unified by gender and culture — is an unconventional focus for a film series.
By STEVE VINEBERG | August 07, 2007

Ingmar Bergman

1918–2007
Ingmar Bergman, who died Sunday, was one of the last of the great world filmmakers who came to fame around the mid century and changed the face of movies.
By STEVE VINEBERG | July 31, 2007

Jaglom dreams on

And psychiatry gets The Treatment
For his shaky, pretentious first film, A Safe Place , Henry Jaglom conned Orson Welles into playing a magician.
By GERALD PEARY | May 22, 2007

Cross-purposes

ART’s Oliver Twist , the New Rep’s Orson’s Shadow
Oliver Twist gets the Brecht treatment in Neil Bartlett’s new adaptation at American Repertory Theatre.
By STEVE VINEBERG | March 01, 2007

The Russians are coming

Cold War cinema at the HFA
With one exception, the eight movies in the nifty “Cold War Cinema” series at the Harvard Film Archive are popular entertainments that treat the politics and sociology of the era in a variety of ways.
By STEVE VINEBERG | January 30, 2007