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Dotter of Her Father's Eyes is the graphic novel debut of professor/scholar Mary Talbot and a very personal new entry to the already impressive career of Eisner and Eagle Award-winner Bryan Talbot. The latter talks about her transition to the medium and the former discusses bringing the story to life visually. Part personal history, part biography, Dotter of Her Father's Eyes contrasts two coming-of-age narratives: that of Lucia, the daughter of James Joyce, and that of author Mary Talbot, daughter of the eminent Joycean scholar James S. Atherton. Social expectations and gender politics, thwarted ambitions and personal tragedy are played out against two contrasting historical backgrounds, poignantly evoked by the atmospheric visual storytelling of award-winning graphic-novel pioneer...

Photos - Irish-American Oscar winners slideshow Here we pay tribute to the Americans of Irish blood who joined the ranks of the acting elite by winning what many consider the ultimate award in the field – the Oscar. 10. Grace Kelly 1954 – Best Actress in a Leading Role, "The Country Girl" The Irish American screen legend’s Oscar win was controversial; many believed Kelly didn’t deserve it, and thought the Oscar should have gone to Judy Garland for "A Star is Born." The Princess of Monaco may be a bit overdramatic as Georgie Elgin, singer Frank Elgin’s (Bing Crosby) long-suffering wife, but we feel the need to pay homage to the unforgettable film star, whose Irish roots are traced to Louisburgh, County Mayo. Read more - More movie news from IrishCentral 9. Thomas Mitchell 1939 – Best Actor in a Supporting Role, "Stagecoach" This great American character actor and first generation Irish American can...

The new Film Quarterly is out and, of the four pieces online, the standout for me is Caetlin Benson-Allott's: "Since Marey's motion studies at the end of the 19th century, film has been a tool for providing visible evidence, a record of things seen. The development of digital imaging technology over the past twenty years has transformed that original empirical function. Advancements in CGI enable convincing depictions of things impossible to see in everyday life: dinosaurs, hobbits, viruses. It has become necessary to speak of 'hypervisibility' to describe the way movies can realistically render such previously hard-to-envision phenomena. Steven Soderbergh's Contagion tries to contest this prevailing logic by insisting on the limits of visibility."

Also: Editor Rob White talks with Göran Hugo Olsson about The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, Joshua Clover on Contagion, Justin Lin's Fast Five and Rupert Wyatt's Rise of the Planet of the Apes...

Getty People at the entrance of the bookshop Shakespeare & Co. on December 14, 2011 in Paris.

On my way home from Germany last month I stopped in Paris for a day and after checking out the booksellers kiosks along the Seine I found myself inside Shakespeare & Co., the fabled bookshop on the Left Bank.

Up some narrow rickety stairs on the second floor there was a warren of little rooms crammed with even more books than the store below; these were almost all hard bound,...

Martin Scorsese leaves his mean streets behind for this exhilarating family tale inspired by the birth of cinema

The families we most associate with Martin Scorsese are the five criminal ones that make up the mafia in the United States, and both they and Scorsese's films deal in violence involving pain and death. His new film, however, aims to entrance every member of every family, and it centres on the great art form that over the past century became the great family entertainment: the cinema. A dramatic pursuit many see as essentially violent and once described by the art theorist Herbert Read as "a chisel of light cutting into the reality of objects", it is created with a demand for "Action!" and ends with the order "Cut!". Based on The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a beautiful book, half graphic novel, half prose tale, by Brian Selznick, the movie is a delightful fable.

Author and playwright best known for his literary drama Tom and Viv

Michael Hastings, who has died aged 74, shot to prominence in the first wave of new playwrights at the Royal Court in the 1950s. His best known play, Tom and Viv, about the difficult marriage of Ts Eliot and Vivienne Haigh-Wood, was presented there in 1984, by which time he was well established as a novelist, biographer and author of short stories. He was an unclassifiable writer, despite his sporadic allegiance over the years to the Royal Court. Much of his work is imbued with his experience of travelling in Spain, Kenya and Brazil. The fractured domestic relationships which he documented in Tom and Viv, and in his last West End play, Calico (2004), reflect his own difficult childhood and a lifetime interest in psychoanalysis.

Hastings was brought up by his mother, Marie, in a council flat in Brixton, south London.

After seducing me earlier this year at Sundance, John Akomfrah‘s existential The Nine Muses has remained about as enigmatic and elusive as it was at the festival, appropriately reflecting the film itself.

Now we have a longer, more informative (if you can call it that) trailer for the film, which did have a week-long theatrical run in New York City this fall at the Moma.

Check out the trailer below (via Shadow and Act):

Utilizing archival footage, literary passages from the likes of Homer and Joyce and astounding original footage shot in an icy nowhere, Akomfrah asks unanswerable questions about identity and where someone comes from. In an interview with the filmmaker after the Sundance screening, I asked about his inclusion of James Joyce, an Irishmen who lived most of his life outside of Ireland, into the piece.

Here’s what he had to say:

“Joyce, because of...

By Sara Benincasa for Bookish.

Mindy Kaling may love shopping just as much as Kelly Kapoor, her character on “The Office,” does (just check out Kaling’s clothes-obsessed Twitter feed @mindykaling) but she’s a bit more cerebral than her TV counterpart. The actress, a Dartmouth graduate and writer/producer at “The Office,” cites acclaimed playwrights with the same fondness she displays for the Encyclopedia Brown series. Kaling’s high- and lowbrow appeal is on fine display in her book of essays, “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns).” Bookish sat down with her for an interview and quickly understood why fans often tell her she reminds them of a close pal.

Bookish: When you were a little kid, what was your favorite book?

Mindy Kaling: I loved a book called "The Westing Game," which was a murder mystery. It didn’t really condescend to kids, which I liked.

Billy Joel: Piano Man Legacy Edition (Columbia Legacy)

Billy Joel didn't exactly come out of nowhere with 1973's Piano Man -- it just seemed that way because of the deep obscurity into which his previous projects had so quickly fallen. His Rascals wanna-be band The Hassles never took off (the name does seem like kind of a jinx), his organ/drums duo Attila bombed, and then his November 1971 solo debut Cold Spring Harbor was cursed with faulty mastering that left his vocals sounding squeaky. Famously, he escaped these setbacks -- and contract problems (he was waiting for Columbia's lawyers to get him out of his old contract) -- by leaving his native New York and heading to Los Angeles, where under the pseudonym Bill Martin (his first and middle names) he worked at a piano bar, an experience he portrayed in the title track of this album, now reissued with an additional disc.

Adam Gyorgy has successfully made the transition from child prodigy (accepted to the Bela Bartok Conservatory at age 12, winner of Hungary's Pianist 2000 award at 18) to mature artist. After studying with Katalin Halmagyi, and then at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest under Professors Gyorgy Nador and Balazs Reti, he has combined excellent technique with musical understanding, impressing competition judges along the way: Vienna Classics Prize in 2000, Special Prize at the 2003 San Remo International Piano Competition, and all prizes (First Prize, Grand Prize, Special Prize) at the First International Chopin Piano Competition in Budapest in 2004. When he played Carnegie Hall three years ago, CultureCatch's Ken Krimstein praised his recital. So when his Carnegie recital this Sunday, November 13, was announced, offering the opportunity to hear him in the challenging Liszt Sonata, I leapt at the chance to attend, and to discuss that program and his career with him. 

As a Hungarian pianist-composer,...

When Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was 20, and mostly known to audiences as a pianist, Robert Schumann basically proclaimed him the great hope of German music in an article entitled "New Paths." In those days, the general lament was that no symphonist had been able to measure up to the mighty example of Beethoven. He started composing what could have become his first symphony in 1854; he got cold feet and turned it into his Piano Concerto No. 1, which was premiered in 1859. In that same period, Brahms wrote two Serenades for orchestra -- seemingly to practice dealing with the challenges of those forces -- and his String Sextet No. 1, a fairly grand work for a chamber piece. In 1862 he sent to Clara Schumann (Robert's widow, whom he loved) an early version of the first movement of what he announced would be his First Symphony (it did not yet have its glorious introduction). A decade later,...

John Coltrane: The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings (Impulse!)

This set of 50-year-old recordings is a historic milestone no jazz collection should be without. The performances are presented chronologically on this 1997 four-cd compilation that finally brought together in one package material released haphazardly on four separate LPs while adding previously unreleased takes.

Coltrane was already a star when he played this November 1-5 stand with his quintet including Eric Dolphy (alto sax, bass clarinet), McCoy Tyner (piano), Reggie Workman (bass), and Elvin Jones (drums), supplemented by Jimmy Garrison (bass) and including guests Ahmed Abdul-Malik (oud), Garvin Bushell (oboe, contrabassoon), and Roy Haynes (drums). The four days captured here find Coltrane anticipating many other ideas he later expanded on before his untimely death in 1967.

Coltrane took a major leap forward, at least in his recorded work, with "Chasin' the Trane." Based on the familiar blues progression, it has no pre-determined theme...

David Henry Hwang: Chinglish Longacre Theatre, NYC

Chinglish is the word coined for those humorously bad Chinese-to-English mistranslations found on signs, in electronics manuals, etc. That sort of thing is hardly exclusive to China (there are plenty of examples from around the world here), but thanks to the first-world economic implosion, China is where the stakes are highest now. The new play by Chinese-American playwright David Henry Hwang (his first on Broadway in 13 years) is built around both this crucial transition and mistranslation. Bring your opera glasses, because being able to read supertitles has never been more important.

Our hero lead schlub, Daniel Cavanaugh (Gary Wilmes), opens the play alone, explaining to an unseen conference audience the secret of his business success in China. As his business is signs, this talk includes memorably mistranslated examples, most prominently "Fuck the certain price of goods," which makes perfect sense once it's...

Tom Waits: Bad As Me (Anti)

This starts out as Waits getting by on gestures and timbres. That's actually pretty good, since Waits is the master of such sonic legerdemain (he uses a wide variety of voices; "Talking at the Same Time" is especially striking) and the energy exuded is infectious (the weird rockabilly hybrid "Get Lost" is hilarious). One could listen to this album solely to get off on the way the guitars sound (longtime collaborator Marc Ribot and Keith Richards both shine). Halfway through, the title track offers a solid song with amusing lyrics, and it's followed by the brilliant torch song "Kiss Me." Another quiet ballad, "Last Leaf," is even better (because the lyric uses a more original image). With this being the first Waits studio album of new material in seven years, I was hoping for more in the way of songwriting, but this'll do.

Eva Hesse: Eva Hesse Spectres 1960 Brooklyn Museum Through January 8, 2012

In 1969 Eva Hesse participated in When Attitudes Become Form, a benchmark exhibition of Minimalist art. This was a watershed moment for Hesse. What the participants in this show demonstrated with their work was that experience -- that of the artist and that of the viewer -- could be given shape through language, line, color, and pre-existing shape (primary ones such as circles and squares were popular) and that experience could acquire meaning as aesthetic objects. In essence, these artists demonstrated that the recording of their process of thinking about art and making objects was the artwork. Although it is this work that Hesse is known and remembered for, we are fortunate to be able to view her lesser-known paintings from the early 60s at the Brooklyn Museum.

Hesse no doubt saw these earlier works as transitional, coming as they did between...

Where the Wild Things Are director Spike Jonze and collaborator Simon Cahn teamed up with handbag designer Olympia Le-Tan for a new stop-motion video, Mourir aupres de toi (To Die By Your Side). The animation is set in Paris' well-known bookstore, Shakespeare and Company — the location where James Joyce was first published by Sylvia Beach, the store's founder. The duo collaborated after Jonze admired her handiwork and asked Le-Tan to create a Catcher in the Rye embroidery for him. Le-Tan agreed, but requested one of Jonze's famed videos in return. In the video, pieces of book covers come to life and fall in love. You can catch a glimpse of the project in the teaser vid, which shows that Le-Tan and Jonze used a lot of felt for this piece. Is there anyone...

Read More...

The 36-year-old soccer star – who is believed to want to finish his playing career with Paris St. Germain – is said to have hired a Us real estate agency to find a "triplex apartment in a beautiful building" that he, his wife and their four children can use as a base in the city.

According to local reports in France, Victoria wants to buy somewhere in the prestigious sixth arrondissement on the historic Rive Gauche, which is best known for the Sorbonne University and its bookshops and libraries, and has previously seen literary legends Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce reside there.

However, Victoria, 37, is more interested in the areas fashion shops.

Josephine Leclerc, who runs a boutique in the sixth arrondissement, said: "Victoria often comes to Paris for fashion events, and would just love to be here full time. David and Victoria will set the place...

A late-Romantic composer who occasionally worked in a more modern style, Alexander Zemlinsky (October 14, 1871 – March 15, 1942) was something of a prodigy. Anton Bruckner was among his teachers. Brahms, impressed by the Symphony in D and a quartet, recommended Zemlinsky to Simrock, Brahms's publisher and arranged a stipend for the young composer. Zemlinsky was friends with the slightly younger Arnold Schoenberg and taught him counterpoint (in which Brahms had tutored Zemlinsky); Schoenberg later married Zemlinsky's sister.

The connection to Schoenberg (who studied music with no-one else) probably contributed to the revival of Zemlinsky's music, which was largely forgotten in the decades after the Nazis drove the Jewish composer first from Germany back to his native Vienna, and then to America, where he found none of the success Schoenberg achieved in exile.

A few choice volumes Decca's Entartete Musik series ("decadent music," the Nazis' phrase for music they found insufficiently Aryan or overly...

In the first story, an abandoned briefcase is found at the Stock Exchange. A robot is sent to check if it's a possible bomb and the X-ray shows traces of nitrates. There are 60 seconds in which to obtain prints from the case and then to disarm it. The briefcase is blown up in a controlled explosion. Mac (Gary Sinise) finds a message inside the case: "Incase something happens to me." Mac gets Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) to run a DNA sample. He checks on Codis and looks into the financial data. Adding he can work around a spreadsheet. He doesn't get a hit on Afis, but gets a hit from the New York Mercantile Stock Exchange. The print matched Luke Sutton (Steven Flynn) but he's missing. His apartment is trashed inside. Aiden (Vanessa Ferlito) thinks he could have been kidnapped. Mac: "Something happened and it wasn't good." Well that's obvious. Mac...

Despite circumstances that would make most men bitter, Anton Bruckner (Sept. 24, 1824 – Oct. 11, 1896) in his mature symphonies and choral works wrote some of the most spiritual music since Bach's. Insecure, he spent his thirties studying with the dictatorial music professor Simon Sechter, who had briefly taught Franz Schubert. Brucker didn't compose a symphony until 1863, the "Study" Symphony, which he withheld (as he did the later so-called No. 0).

In Vienna, Bruckner was considered by many to be a naïve country bumpkin; he got unfairly entangled in the bitter Brahms-Wagner debates that split the city. Bruckner's symphonies were thus the object of myopic criticism from some in the Brahms camp, including powerful critic Eduard Hanslick (however, Wagner, Liszt, and Emperor Franz Joseph I were among those who praised or supported Bruckner). The unprecedented length of Bruckner's symphonies, which develop in slow-moving monoliths of sound, was an impediment for some listeners. Bruckner, an excellent organist,...

"The Nine Muses is the kind of nonfiction film I actively hope for," writes Chuck Bowen in Slant: "a picture of intuitive, free-associational power that cuts far deeper emotionally than a dry recitation of dates and facts could ever hope to. Filmmaker John Akomfrah's conceit is unusually ambitious and, yes, even a little baffling, as he's structured his subject — the racism, dislocation, and isolation that arose from the primarily African and Irish emigration to Britain in the late 1940s through the 1960s — as a parallel to Homer's The Odyssey, which also, of course, concerns a long journey rife with considerable loss and ambiguity."

"The title Nine Muses derives from its overarching structural conceit, a series of chapter headings dedicated to each of the ancient Greek muses," explains Paul Brunick in the New York Times. "Excerpts lifted from landmarks of Western literature, running from the epic tradition of Homer...

Wilco: The Whole Love (dBpm)

The last two extra tracks on the deluxe version are "Speak into the Rose," a wonderfully propulsive Krautrock rip, and a less-plush alternate take of "Black Moon," a gently jangling ballad that delicately wafts the deluxe album to a beautiful, tender conclusion. Think about the contrast there, then imagine them combined in one song. You've basically imagined the whiplash-inducing opening track on the main album. I've had my problems with Wilco in the past: S/T was kinda boring, Sky formulaically pretty, the Jim O'Rourke-induced artiness of Ghost too stiffly self-conscious. Here, the beauty and the experimentation have been more organically merged, suggesting that Nels Cline has finally gelled as a member.

Later tracks find their '70s rock fixation leading to some mildly psychedelic touches, some gritty garage-rock moves (even Mysterians-esque organ on "I Might"), a light-hearted update of The Band's sound...

The summer movie season tends to be thought of as a big, vast, noisy, expensive parade — a monolith of fun. The movies, before they come out, have an aura of invincibility. Most of them have been designed to be rockets to the other side of the box-office rainbow, and each week, when another rocket or two (or three) gets launched, the grosses cast their own aura: “Look, up in the air! It’s a smash! It’s a winner! It’s Superhit!” The breathless ritual reporting of those weekend tallies reflects something much deeper than the fact that people are obsessed with Hollywood accounting.

Ferociously intelligent actor who reigned supreme in Stoppard and Shakespeare

John Wood, who has died aged 81, was one of the greatest stage actors of the past century, especially associated with his roles in the plays of Tom Stoppard. But a combination of his enigmatic privacy and low profile on film – he cropped up a lot without dominating a movie – meant that he remained largely unknown to the wider public.

As with all great actors, you always knew what he was thinking, all the time. Wood was especially striking in the brain-box department. Tall, forbidding and aquiline-featured, he was as much the perfect Sherlock Holmes on stage as he was the ideal Brutus. He exuded ferocious intelligence, and the twinkle in his eye could be as merciless as it was invariably amused.

As the Royal Shakespeare Company's Brutus in Julius Caesar in 1972, he was undoubtedly the noblest Roman of them all,...

In the first of a new monthly series on the best and worst film posters on release today, Paul Owen looks at the billboard ad for Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life – an unconventional poster that is not quite as unconventional as the film itself

This is the first in what will be a regular series on the most interesting film posters being produced today. I'm planning to mainly concentrate on the most impressive examples, as I did last year with Black Swan, but I'll also share with you some of the worst travesties currently marring the world's buses and bus shelters – such as this grisly and slipshod advert for the largely unsolicited Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts reunion Larry Crowne. Any suggestions for future columns are gratefully welcomed, so please feel free to tell me about any posters you've seen – good or bad – in the comments section below.

One of my favourite festivals is the tiny but perfectly formed Galway theatre festival – and this year's instalment promises to be as brilliant (and boozy) as ever

What makes for a good arts festival? Above all, it has to be distinctive. Edinburgh is obviously defined by its omnivorousness, Manchester by its air of radical experiment. And the Galway arts festival, which kicks off on 11 July, is for me marked by its high-quality selectiveness and liver-testing hospitality. Under the direction of Paul Fahy, himself trained as a visual artist, it clearly believes that nothing but the best is good enough. I've been twice in recent years and have been struck by the way everything on view is excellent, whether it's Blondie in the Festival Big Top or Ed Byrne performing in a room over a pub.

One of the big events in Galway this year is clearly going to be Cillian Murphy...

How was your weekend my loves? Google, which has, of late, stepped up efforts to integrate personal and social messages into their interface, made a bit of a faux pas with a Father's Day reminder to "Call Dad." This struck a sour note with several of my friends who have lost their fathers. Then again, computer engineers aren't famous for their social graces. (Tech Crunch)

I know some folks spent a very paternal time watching the U.S. Open this weekend. I'm super impressed with golf champ Rory McIlroy but keep wanting to call him Roy McAvoy. You know why? Because Tin Cup is a damn fine underrated movie. That's why. Anyway, NPR has a glowing write-up of young Rory. (NPR)

Speaking of RILFs (Rory's I'd Like To Frisk), this story of a man who moved into his wife's tomb to spend the rest of his days with her reminded...

Ahead of Review's book club on The Hours, Michael Cunningham explains how discovering Virginia Woolf as a teenager inspired him to write his novel about her life – and how his mother provided a surprising solution when he got stuck

Virginia Woolf was great fun at parties. I want to tell you that up front, because Woolf, who died 70 years ago this year, is so often portrayed as the Dark Lady of English letters, all glowery and sad, looking balefully on from a crepuscular corner of literary history with a stone lodged in her pocket.

She did, of course, have her darker interludes. More on that in a moment. But first I'd like to announce, to anyone who might not know, that she, when not sunk in her periodic depressions, was the person one most hoped would come to the party; the one who could speak amusingly on just about any...

Two of 20th-century literature's greatest film fans, James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges, both went blind; film-makers have always been intrigued by blindness; and this fascination continues through the latest film produced by the Mexican horror maestro Guillermo Del Toro. It stars the Spanish actor Belén Rueda, who appeared in his production The Orphanage. In Julia's Eyes, directed by Guillem Morales, the beautiful Rueda has the dual role of Spanish twins Sara and Julia, both suffering from a degenerative eye disease. Sara goes blind after an operation fails to restore her sight and apparently commits suicide. Julia, who experiences brief attacks of blindness, believes her sister was murdered. In an eerie succession of edgy sequences she sets about investigating Sara's death in a manner that convinces her but not her husband. Using blindness as a plot device, a metaphor for social awareness and as a numinous experience that romantically links minds,...

Baruchel will play Pattinson's boss in the David Cronenberg film.

By Aly Semigran

Jay Baruchel

Photo: Steve Granitz/ WireImage

Robert Pattinson just got a new (fictional) boss ... and it's Jay Baruchel.

Baruchel ("How to Train Your Dragon," "Knocked Up," "Undeclared") has joined the cast of "Cosmopolis," David Cronenberg's upcoming big-screen adaptation of Don DeLillo's 2003 novel, according to Deadline New York. The novel is a modern reinterpretation of James Joyce's "Ulysses."

In the film, Pattinson will play Eric Packer, a "financial wunderkind" in New York at the beginning of the 2000 dot-com bubble burst, who one day takes a major risk that could put his life in jeopardy. Baruchel, who is known for playing more reserved types, will take on the role of the company's shy founder who also acts as Packer's conscience in the film.

The actor, who turns 29 on April 9, can add "Cosmopolis" to his growing list of projects,...

Baruchel will play Pattinson's boss in the David Cronenberg film.

By Aly Semigran

Jay Baruchel

Photo: Steve Granitz/ WireImage

Robert Pattinson just got a new (fictional) boss ... and it's Jay Baruchel.

Baruchel ("How to Train Your Dragon," "Knocked Up," "Undeclared") has joined the cast of "Cosmopolis," David Cronenberg's upcoming big-screen adaptation of Don DeLillo's 2003 novel, according to Deadline New York. The novel is a modern reinterpretation of James Joyce's "Ulysses."

In the film, Pattinson will play Eric Packer, a "financial wunderkind" in New York at the beginning of the 2000 dot-com bubble burst, who one day takes a major risk that could put his life in jeopardy. Baruchel, who is known for playing more reserved types, will take on the role of the company's shy founder who also acts as Packer's conscience in the film.

The actor, who turns 29 on April 9, can add "Cosmopolis" to his growing list of projects,...

Kate Bush has announced the full tracklisting of her upcoming Director's Cut album. As previously announced, the record features reworkings of songs from 1989's The Sensual World and 1993's The Red Shoes. Director's Cut is released on May 16 through Fish People, with distribution via Emi. The opening track, 'Flower Of The Mountain', is a new version of the title track from The Sensual World. Bush explained: "Originally when I wrote the song 'The Sensual World' I had used text from the end of 'Ulysses' by James Joyce, put to a piece of music I had written. When I asked for permission to use the text I was refused, which was disappointing. "I then wrote my own lyrics for the song although I felt that the original idea had been more interesting. Well, I'm not James Joyce, am I? "When (more)...

Nick Hamm’s comedy could have provided material for a dissection of bitter rivalry and the fates of two equally ambitious friends but takes the road more travelled by offering a knockabout farcical comedy instead.

Killing Bono, with a script from Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais, is simply invested in the tried and tested narrative following the highs and many lows of a guy who thinks he’s ‘it’ when really he isn’t. And we’re not talking about Paul Hewson aka Bono aka St. Bono.

The film is most noticeable for being the last screen appearance of the great Pete Postlethwaite, here playing an extended cameo as a gay landlord. It’s an incredibly broad and flamboyant performance but poignant nonetheless.

Ben Barnes and Robert Sheehan play Neil and Ivan, childhood friends of U2’s Bono and The Edge. Both are in rival bands and Bono even...

Getty

John Leguizamo knows a thing or two about oversharing. “Sharing my unhappiness on stage is my happiness,” he says at the end of his new one-man show, “Ghetto Klown,” which opens on Broadway this Tuesday.

Leguizamo is well aware of the risks of putting his personal life on stage: he said his mother already has called him begging him to take out a frisky bit in the show involving herself, his wife, a few minutes of phone sex and a malfunctioning call-waiting button.

Arrivederci Millwall, a largely forgotten British t.v. drama from 1990, has been repackaged and released alongside lads mag classic The Football Factory by Vertigo Films. It is cut from the same cloth, mostly, as Alan Clark’s The Firm but focuses its attention on a group of football fans leading up to – and during – the World Cup of 1982. There are political and sociological themes and sub-plots at play for added weight.

Is there a dewy-eyed nostalgia present in re-releasing these sorts of films? Awaydays and The Firm are recent films looking back with blood-tinted glasses. Sure, there’s more than a whiff of the 1980s these days, and not just in terms of music and fashion. Are we present in a “commodius vicus of recirculation”, to quote James Joyce.

“Remember when you’d go to a match with the boys, have a few pints, shout out ‘the referee’s a...

The famed(?) daughter of a former vice presidential candidate will be sharing stories of her life. Does anyone care and/or have any desire to hear these stories?

She is a single mom and abstinence advocate, barely graduated from high school and has yet to attend college, but Bristol Palin is still finding work — this time as an author! Galleycat reports, “Bristol Palin has landed a book deal with HarperCollins imprint Not Afraid of Life. Publication is set for this summer.” Why? Why? Why?

“Bristol gives readers an intimate behind-the-scenes look at her life for the first time, from growing up in Alaska to coming of age amid the media and political frenzy surrounding her mother’s political rise,” the descirption states. “From becoming a single mother while still a teenager to coping as her relationship with her baby’s father crumbled publicly—not once, but twice.” And on and on and on and on…...

The Coen brothers' films are so likeable, it seems wrong to criticise them too strenuously. But how good are they, and is True Grit merely another of their ironic takes on Hollywood?

Sometimes it occurs to me that the job of a serious cultural critic mostly consists in telling the generality of people that their opinions – on films, on books, on all manner of widgets, gadgets and even the latest electronic fidgets – simply aren't up to scratch. It's a dirty, thankless task, but someone has to do it; someone has to point out that, no, Inception wasn't the last word in sci-fi meta-sophistication, but rather a stupid person's idea of what an intelligent film is like. And by the same token, as the Coen brothers' True Grit comes galloping into our multiplexes surrounded by dust clouds of Stateside approbation, someone has to take a bead on the whole sweep of their careers,...

In Sundance news, Nine Muses–a film that’s been discussed and reviewed here by MsWoo–just captured UK theatrical distribution rights with New Wave Films.

The John Akomfrah experimental film takes a fable-like documentary approach to post-World War II mass migration to England by using Homer’s The Odyssey as narrative inspiration. The film is divided into nine musical chapters augmented by the writings of Dante, Samuel Beckett, Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, John Milton, Sophocles and Dylan Thomas.

Although Us distributors have show interest, no deal has been secured yet. Check out the film’s trailer below.

h/t The Hollywood Reporter...

Diving head first into identity crisis and refusing to come up for air, John Akomfrah‘s experimental docu-essay The Nine Muses asks us to question our own identity and the genesis of such a question. The director uses Homer’s The Odyssey as a narrative tool, the blind man’s prose fading in to guide the film along on its long journey with no real place to call home. The Nine Muses, much like Homer’s epic, finds meaning in the journey itself rather than the ultimate conclusion.

Homer’s not the only ghost in the room. Akomfrah employs the words of other great artists who struggled with this very same question of identity, from faith-torn John Milton to expatriate Irishman James Joyce to self-imprisoned Emily Dickinson. These deep thinkers drowned in their own internalizations. Akomfrah dares us to do the same.

His platform for such an observation is the...

Among all the hype that surrounds and engulfs the Sundance Film Festival, there’s The Nine Muses, experimental documentarian John Akomfrah‘s Odyssey-influenced essay about the migration to Britain after World War II, among many other things. The film is split into 9 chapters, grabbing pieces of writers such as Dante, Beckett and James Joyce to explore identity and place.

What does all this mean exactly?

Figure it out yourself by clicking here (embed on its way, apologies). And don’t forget the poster below:

This little campaign should further excite festival goers and separate itself from the slew of features premiering over the next two weeks. Akomrah’s been making films for a while now, and this one looks about as personal as one can get.

What do you think of the trailer? Do you know John Akomrah’s work?

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I've always been a sucker for classical mythology; here's an exclusive poster and trailer for The Nine Muses, which played Venice and London (here's a review); it screens Friday morning at Sundance. John Akomfrah’s documentary essay (which is an expansion of the art installation Mnemosyne at the public gallery in West Bromwich) uses Homer's Odyssey--about Odysseus's long voyage home after the Trojan War--as an a allegorical sci-fi fable about the history of mass migration to postwar Britain. The filmmaker divides the movie into nine overlapping musical chapters, using archival material and the writings of such Masters as Dante, Samuel Beckett, Emily Dickinson and James Joyce. It's hard to describe: see the footage below.

William Monahan’s debut film as writer-director is a mixed bag of elements and influences. London Boulevard is a gangster flick and romance burdened with existential pretensions. Colin Farrell really does ‘struggle’ with his character a great deal but his attempt at a south London accent is a more literal concern. It’s bloody awful.

Despite being crippled and laden with troubles (and a dodgy accent) he puts in a decent performance as Mitch the criminal wanting to reform and stay away from the crime. He comes across as a man addicted to violence and if he plunges once more into the murky soup of the underworld he’ll paint the town blood red (which he ends up doing) – so there’s your existentialist-free-will musings.

The major issue with Monahan’s film is focus or lack of it. It feels rushed and other times ponderous. It should have been a...

Though lately they’ve been focused on the motion picture side of the entertainment industry, a trio of talent behind-the-camera is busy prepping a new action adventure series for ABC. Deadline reports Director Rob Cohen (who’s currently working on the unnecessary sequel xXx: The Return of Xander Cage) and writers Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris (who are writing The Karate Kid sequel) are also working on a series that sounds a lot like the recent comic book adaptation Red. Reiff and Voris are writing the script with Cohen attached to direct the currently untitled series which would follow a team of old-school CIA covert operatives (kick-ass soldier-spies) who won the Cold War in the Eighties but were then forced out due to budget-cuts in the early 1990s. Now, they have been recruited to go back to work for their country by the chief of the Special Activities Division, a...

Filed under: TV News

Chelsea Handler's already a successful talk show host and best-selling author. Now the comedian has another title to add to her resume: sitcom creator.

Deadline reports that NBC has ordered a pilot of Handler's half-hour comedy, 'Are You There Vodka? It's Me Chelsea,' based on her book of the same name. The semi-autobiographical show follows a the exploits of a twentysomething Chelsea, who will have a different occupation than the real comedian but whose character traits will be based on Handler. Some storylines will be taken from essays included in Handler's three books.

Handler will executive produce but not star -- she's already signed on to play a scripted version of herself in a comedy series for E!

In other TV news ...

o. 'Sex and the City' veteran Michael Patrick King has created a new series about a straight hairdresser experiencing a mid-life crisis.

“Saturday Night Live” vet Molly Shannon first received critical praise for her performances as nerdy schoolgirl Mary Katherine Gallagher. Shannon continued the comedic theme of awkwardness by agreeing to star as a former nun who leaves the convent to discover the real world in a new HBO comedy from “Simpsons” writer and producer Tim Long. According to “Deadline," Long pledged to develop a project for Shannon after taking a meeting with her some time ago. “It’s James Joyce meets Judd Apatow, a female “40 Year-Old Virgin” with a huge dollop of Catholic weirdness thrown in,” Long said.

Exclusive: It's ladies' season at HBO as the pay cable network is putting in development another high-profile project fronted by a top comedic actress. HBO just picked up a comedy from veteran Simpsons writer-producer Tim Long to star Molly Shannon. The untitled comedy would star the Saturday Night Live alumna as a nun who makes the difficult decision to leave the convent and confront life in the outside world. Shannon's character became a nun after getting her heart broken at 18. Now she is an utterly innocent woman in her early 40s who has never had sex and has to discover the modern world in all of its tawdriness. "It's James Joyce meets Judd Apatow -- a female 40-Year-Old Virgin with a huge dollop of Catholic weirdness thrown in," Long said. Shannon, of course, knows a thing or two about playing offbeat characters of the Catholic faith having played awkward school...

The Life As We Know It soundtrack. The Black Keys seem to pop up on one out of three contemporary American comedy soundtracks (legal disclaimer: this figure was plucked haphazardly from the reviewer’s head and actual comparisons with reality may be tenuous). This could be for several reasons. First of all, The Black Keys are currently one of the best lo-fi rock and roll outfits in the world, and have been for several years. Guitarist/singer Dan Auerbach is Jack White without the column inches, and his solo album is incredible. Second of all, getting their tunes on OSTs is probably a nice little earner for Dan and Patrick, and I don’t begrudge them it one bit. They toil for our sins, making genuinely great music that is never going to make them rich. Third of all, they’re a very easy choice for manicured and moisturised California...

It’s been a long time since a film has moved me in quite the way that John Akomfrah’s The Nine Muses did. It wasn’t that happy, tingly, feel-good feeling you tend to get with some films that has you smiling as you leave the cinema and which you soon forget (the feeling and the actual film) once you’ve brushed the last remnants of popcorn off your clothes, but a deep, cloying, feeling that lingered, and lingers still.

At 53, Akomfrah is one of the pioneers of digital cinema in the UK and The Nine Muses is a film that is more feature length art installation than documentary or narrative fiction, and perhaps something that most might expect from a younger generation of Black British artist or filmmaker, such as Steve McQeeen.

A UK Film Council production in association with Smoking Dog Films, The Nine Muses is described as

“…a stylized,...

Groucho Marx and Alice Cooper out on the town? Joss Stone sharing takeaways with Tom Cruise. We celebrate Hollywood's more unlikely alliances

As the nation recovers from Tony Blair's literary mea innocentia, another era-defining memoir emerges this week when Straight Up, Danny Dyer's shoot-from-the-hip autobiography hits the shelves. The publicity confides that the book "tears it up proper and delivers on every page", and only the very naive would doubt such a claim. Everyone knows Dyer as the salt-of-the-earth rough diamond whose straight-talking DVD commentaries and girlfriend-slashing "production error" in his advice column have made him the toast of coalition Britain.

Less well known is that the Canning Town bruiser and the late Harold Pinter shared a generation-spanning and credulity-stretching friendship. The young Dyer appeared in two of Pinter's plays, the Hackney-born playwright taking the chirpy East End sparrow under his wing in an odd-couple hook-up that called...

Julia Roberts is back on our screens delivering a cloying, annoying and smug globe-trotting drama. It can’t even claim to be a true chick flick – which was how it came to be promoted.

In its place is a dreary, fake tale of a self-obsessed writer with a variety of modern-day life issues.Eat Pray Love searches the globe for enlightenment and finds nothing but the dark.

Ryan Murphy’s debut feature is festooned with self-help bollocks only a lunatic Californian would embrace and devour. It also romanticises other cultures with the less-than-keen eye of an American production.

It could have ventured into all kinds of avenues and adventures but we get to go on holiday with a dinner-party bore named Liz Gilbert – on whose book this misguided film is based. As she appears a tourist in life, she is a true tourist abroad.

Roberts does her best to smile...