DVD Playhouse—March 2012
By Allen Gardner
J. Edgar (Warner Bros.) Director Clint Eastwood provides a rock-solid, albeit rather flat portrait of polarizing FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, covering his life from late teens to his death. Leonardo DiCaprio does an impressive turn as Hoover, never crossing the line into caricature, and creating a Hoover that is all too human, making for an all the more unsettling look at absolute power run amuck. Where the film stumbles is the love story at its core: Hoover’s relationship with longtime aide Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). In the hands of an openly-gay director like Gus Van Sant, this could have been a heartbreaking, tender story of forbidden (unrequited?) love, but Eastwood seems to tiptoe around their romance, with far too much delicacy and deference. The film works well when recreating the famous crimes and investigations which Hoover made his name on (the Lindbergh kidnapping,...
By Allen Gardner
J. Edgar (Warner Bros.) Director Clint Eastwood provides a rock-solid, albeit rather flat portrait of polarizing FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, covering his life from late teens to his death. Leonardo DiCaprio does an impressive turn as Hoover, never crossing the line into caricature, and creating a Hoover that is all too human, making for an all the more unsettling look at absolute power run amuck. Where the film stumbles is the love story at its core: Hoover’s relationship with longtime aide Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). In the hands of an openly-gay director like Gus Van Sant, this could have been a heartbreaking, tender story of forbidden (unrequited?) love, but Eastwood seems to tiptoe around their romance, with far too much delicacy and deference. The film works well when recreating the famous crimes and investigations which Hoover made his name on (the Lindbergh kidnapping,...
- 3/7/2012
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
Didn't get an invite to this year's Oscars? Neither did Xan Brooks, but he stoically blogged the red carpet and then the ceremony anyway
10.57pm: And so it begins ....
11.25pm: Roll carpet, roll cameras: it's the 84th annual Academy Awards, live and lurid from Hollywood. The Guardian film team will be covering the event throughout the night, weeping with the winners and wailing with the losers as this season's awards circus clatters exhaustedly towards the finish line. This is where it ends, inside the Hollywood and Highland Centre (reputedly the winner of the 2007 "Ugliest Building in La" award). Inside, the victors shall be encased in gold, the vanquished shown the door and all manner of movies laid tenderly to rest.
But wait, kick back, and keep the war horses tethered: the actual ceremony does not officially commence until 5pm (Pacific time). Time enough to cast an eye back over some late-breaking Oscar news.
10.57pm: And so it begins ....
11.25pm: Roll carpet, roll cameras: it's the 84th annual Academy Awards, live and lurid from Hollywood. The Guardian film team will be covering the event throughout the night, weeping with the winners and wailing with the losers as this season's awards circus clatters exhaustedly towards the finish line. This is where it ends, inside the Hollywood and Highland Centre (reputedly the winner of the 2007 "Ugliest Building in La" award). Inside, the victors shall be encased in gold, the vanquished shown the door and all manner of movies laid tenderly to rest.
But wait, kick back, and keep the war horses tethered: the actual ceremony does not officially commence until 5pm (Pacific time). Time enough to cast an eye back over some late-breaking Oscar news.
- 2/27/2012
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
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