David Edelstein on the latest Tom Cruise vehicle, Oblivion:

[The movie] is the most incoherent piece of storytelling I’ve seen in years and had me crying, “What? What?” over the din of the explosions. It was Wikipedia’s Oblivion entry that spelled out what was going on in the final flashback. And a few but not all of my complaints were answered on an imdb.com board in which posters argued over whether the problem was our lack of attention spans or atrocious screenwriting. I can’t speak for others but I’ve sat through many three-hour Romanian allegories with no complaint.

Image of Olga Kurylenko and Tom Cruise in Oblivion via Radical Studios

Film critic David Edelstein on Kathryn Bigelow’s new film Zero Dark Thirty:

The carnage is quick and conclusive. Bigelow doesn’t serve up a Hollywood shoot-out, and the way the SEALs pump extra bullets into prone bodies — among them bin Laden’s — is disturbing. But for all the supposed neutrality and the sad, ambiguous final shot, the ending is happy. We got him.

Meet Randall Poster. He’s the guy who picks out the music in all of Wes Anderson’s films, including his latest Moonrise Kingdom (pictured above.) This is how Poster’s job works.

(via How Wes Anderson Soundtracks His Movies : NPR)

This is awesome.

The flashy Denzel Washington thriller Safe House will probably gross in a few hours what Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire has made in several weeks, but if you like action films, you should watch these two together, says critic David Edelstein.

Fresh Air on Pinterest

I created different categories for Fresh Air interviews on my Pinterest and am going to start adding new interviews to the categories each day. So if you’d like to follow a particular category (food, books, movies, etc.) now there’s a way!

(This is an experiment.)

Today: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Will Reiser talk about their movie50/50.

Woody Allen: The Fresh Air Interview: “In the problems of movie making, if you don’t solve your problem, all that happens to you is that your movie bombs. So the movie is terrible. So people don’t come to see it … This is hardly a terrible punishment compared to what you’re given out in the real world of human existence.”

jesseboy:

Dustin Lance Black for OUT’s 100.

(source)

Tomorrow: screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, on J. Edgar, Milk, and Big Love. 

David Edelstein says, “You must heed the subliminal advertising in the title. YOU GO.”

Maureen Corrigan reviews a new collection of Pauline Kael essays: “What Kael continues to give readers through her selected essays and reviews is her gutsy and still controversial article of faith that criticism should be rooted in emotion. She told us it was not only OK but a prerequisite that a critic be a fan.”

Roger Ebert won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, the first film critic to receive the award.

nprfunfacts:

two thumbs up.

David Edelstein reviews Drive: The hero of Drive is called “Driver” because that’s what he does, and in a thriller this self-consciously existential, what he does is who he is.

Jonathan Winters was the voice of Papa Smurf in the 1980's TV cartoon series and the new movie.

nprfunfacts:

tmyk. (stars…rainbow…)

Bridges won an Oscar in 2009 for his performance as a broken-down country singer in the film Crazy Heart, for which he performed his own vocals. He also sings as himself on a new self-titled album.