Results tagged “Ang Lee”

FOOD: Trestle on Tenth, the “homey joins hearty” Swiss-inflected restaurant that takes its name from its proximity to the High Line and the avenue where it’s found, kicks off a special five-night series called “metzgete.” The Swiss tradition loosely translates to “butchers affair” and arises from the practice of salvaging every scrap of pig after the winter slaughter – “especially those parts that would or could not be dried, smoked or pickled for later consumption.” The $24 Trestle plate will include everything from braised belly to homemade bratwurst to liver and blood sausages. – John Del Signore

, it's always a joy to see Bateman on screen, and he does some hilarious work as the obnoxious, wheelchair bound Ex. You want to punch him in his ascot-wearing face nearly every time he's on screen, and that's quite a feat for a guy who most recently played such a winning TV lead. In addition to Bateman nearly every other supporting part is filled by a solid comedic performer like Rudd, Charles Grodin, Donal Logue, Fred Armisen, Amy Poehler and Amy Adams. Each of them take totally throw away moments and sell them with such comedic sincerity. Also the plot line about career woman Sofia trying to adjust to being a stay-at-home mom is done with welcome deftness. It'd be great to see Peet in even more roles like this where her sensitivity and likability can shine through. Producers Ted Hope, Anne Carey and Anthony Bergman (ie. former nurturers of directors like Ang Lee, Nicole Holofcener and Michel Gondry) obviously understood that even though screenwriters David Guion and Michael Handelman as well as Jesse Peretz are just starting out in the biz, they all have the goods.

JC: ALL RIGHT! I just took extra Vitamin C - I'm waiting for some food delivery.

It's the itch we can't scratch - the Academy Awards. We make sure we see the announcements at 8:30AM and then rush to work, thinking about the nominations while on the train. This morning, Academy President Sid Ganis and Mira Sorvino (who isn't doing anything else, anyway) announced the nominations. As expected, Brokeback Mountain, Good Night and Good Luck, and Capote earned many nominations, and Crash made a surprising showing with Best Picture, Best Director and even a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Matt Dillon. Other surprises/interesting things:

- Nicolette Sheridan does not look over-Botoxed with fish lips!

It's all about Brokeback these days: This morning, Kate Beckinsale, Mark Wahlberg, and Steve Carrell announced the 63rd Annual Golden Globe nominations, and Brokeback Mountain walked away with 7 nominations, including Best Picture (Drama), Director, Actor, Supporting Actress (Michelle Williams). Match Point, the unreleased Woody Allen movie, also got nods in Picture and Director, plus Supporting Actress Scarlett Johnanssen. As for the TV nominations, the ladies of Wisteria Lane took four leading actress nominations, giving Weeds' Mary Louise Parker a good shot of winning, though Felicity Huffman and Marcia Cross were fierce this year. We do want to say this, though: Kristen Bell, you were robbed!

Gothamist on American Splendor.

Ang Lee's Hulk is something of a magnificent disaster, visually mesmerizing, intellectually ambitious, but ultimately unsatisfying. It was too much all around - too layered, too long, too unsure if it was a cartoon or a comedy of manners. And it left Gothamist pondering some unanswered questions:

With all the excitement about The Hulk opening tomorrow, Movie City News brought up this old FlakMag interview with Hulk producer, co-writer, and frequent Ang Lee collaborator, James Schamus. The December 2000 interview was about the screenwriting process for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but at the very end, Schamus mentions he and Lee were talking to Stephen Merritt about turning 69 Love Songs into a musical. How hot would that be? And does anyone know the status of this? Lee has wanted to do a musical for a while, Gothamist thought it perhaps might be a remake of Flower Drum Song.

With all the attention on Kia Spectra "Boyfriend" post, or more specifically, the combination of the blond girl, the Kia Spectra, a succession of tools/boyfriends, the strums of "Genius of Love," and a dog, made me think about how some car companies truly understand how to attack their Generation X or later constituents. Of course, this only works when the advertising is good. The standout example of this is of course Volkswagen. Their site has a special area dedicated to their advertising, complete with names of the musical artists on their commercials. It'll take a year of great sales to get Kia to do the same, I think. My favorite car commercial campaign of late, though, is BMW's wildly ambitious, possibly ineffective but undeniably gorgeous BMW Films' The Hire series, starring Clive Owen. It's unfair to judge these commercials against others, since they are more exercises in art, rather than explicitly trying to sell the car...they aren't really commercials, I guess, but gifts from BMW to film geeks. My two favorites: Ang Lee's Chosen and Joe Carnahan's Ticker. Thank you, BMW.

Let the games begin. The Directors' Guild has announced their nominees, and they are Stephen Daldry for "The Hours," Peter Jackson for "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," Rob Marshall for "Chicago," Martin Scorsese for "Gangs of New York," and Roman Polanski for "The Pianist." The most likely nominees for the Academy Awards' Best Picture of the bunch are "The Hours," "Chicago," and "Lord of the Rings." Photos above and an article(registration required) from Variety. "Gangs" and "The Pianist" are possibilities, but Scorsese and Polanski are polarizing figures. However, as these projects are labors of love for them, especially with Polanski's personal experience with the Holocaust and Hollywood's love of reliving the Holocaust in film (see "Schindler's List" and "Life is Beautiful"), they may be nominated for Best Picture. Good will for Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks may make "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" a Best Picture contender, but I personally am done with the big fat Greek hype. Back to the directors, the DGA awards are usually good indicators of who will win Best Director at the Oscars, but more recently, there's been discrepancy: Ang Lee winning the DGA award for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," while Steven Soderbergh won the Oscar for "Traffic"; Ron Howard winning the DGA for "Apollo 13", Mel Gibson the Oscar for "Braveheart".

For my 59th movie of the year, I saw Zhang Yimou's Hero . Sort of like his attempt to ride the wuxia picture train after Ang Lee's success with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero has a pretty amazing cast, Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, and the Hidden Dragon herself, Zhang Ziyi. Like most wuxia films, the story is pretty lame, but the art direction is really sumptuous and beautiful.