Child acting’s new golden age

"Never work with children or animals" is an old W.C. Fields chestnut that, for a while in the '90s and '00s, everyone outside of children's entertainment seemed to be holding sacred. Child actors were off on their own in a parallel entertainment universe created by Disney and Nickelodeon, while adults held down the fort in dramas and reality shows. There were some notable exceptions, like Haley ...

Johnny Depp’s delirious “Dark Shadows”

Early in Tim Burton's "Dark Shadows," Victoria Winters, the proper-looking aspiring governess played by lovely young Australian actress Bella Heathcote, arrives at the gates of Collinwood, a decaying family mansion in rural Maine. (She's gotten there by riding Amtrak, while we listen to "Nights in White Satin," which is somehow exactly right.) Vicky, whose real name is something else entirely ...

Pick of the week: Childhood adventure from a Japanese master

"I Wish" is an old-fashioned kind of movie about a subject that might sound, at first, both worn-out and a little retrograde: the dislocating and disorienting effects of a family breakup. It's also a movie whose principal actors and characters are children, that tries to view the world from a child's point of view -- and that's an enterprise so perilous, so prone to easy gags, cheap tears and ...

Pick of the week: An early-’60s hipster time capsule

A time capsule loaded with smack from the bohemian underbelly of JFK-era America, Shirley Clarke's 1961 film "The Connection" is an illustration of how much things change, and how much they stay the same. I'd be stretching to call "The Connection" a great film -- it's mannered and edgy, in a way that's partly deliberate but also distinctive to its period -- but it's an important one in cultural ...

Bobcat Goldthwait on movies, mojo, stand-up comedy and 'God Bless America' - Examiner.com

Bobcat Goldthwait on movies, mojo, stand-up comedy and 'God Bless America' Examiner.com The announcer was beaming: “It's the funniest ringtone ever!” (see the original ad HERE.) I took it personally. I looked at my wife and I said, “All right, we're going to get some rifles.” I redid the ad in the movie, and the animation is spot on. and more »