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The Bloodshot Eye
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Just another WordPress weblog
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Spyce Girl: 'Salt' - A Review
In one of the few moments in "Salt" in which Angelia Jolie stops for breath, the seasoned action-movie Fury removes a pair of contact lenses and a row of false teeth, and then dyes her blond hair black. This "disguise"...
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Villa of the Damned: 'I Am Love' - A Review
I'm calling "I Am Love" the best movie of the year to date; a companion viewer called it "repulsive," in condemnation of the behavior of the lead character played by Tilda Swinton. Does one opinion invalidate the other? Or...
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It's a Panic! 'A Town Called Panic' and 'M. Hulot's Holiday' at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art
Variously described as "Art Clokey on acid" (Clokey was the creator of Gumby and Pokey) and "zany, brainy and insane-y" (sounds like a lost verse from "The Addams Family" theme song), "A Town Called Panic" is a bizarro delight...
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Squirrel Skinners and Crank Cookers: 'Winter's Bone' - A Review
Part murder mystery, part coming-of-age drama, "Winter's Bone" transports moviegoers to a real place most of us haven't seen before: the darkling woods of the Missouri Ozarks, where clannish mountainfolk stew squirrels and cook methamphetamine with sometimes-equal gusto....
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A Capering Caper: 'Micmacs' - A Review
Influenced by the loosey-goosey reality of cartoons (a clip from a 1955 Tex Avery short is instructive) and silent comedy, "Micmacs" is a colorful three-ring circus of a movie, as one might expect from a production with a cast of...
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Dream Team: 'Inception' - A Review
A metaphysical heist film in which a handpicked team of crackerjack conspirators attempt to burgle a dreamer's unconscious the way the ensembles of "Ocean's Eleven" or "Mission: Impossible" break into a bank safe or museum gallery, "Inception" is motivated by...
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The Gripes of Wrath: 'Complaints Choir' Offers a Literally Bitchin' Start to the Indie Memphis Freedom Series
"Complaints Choir," a funny and thoughtful Danish-made documentary about the global phenomenon of "complaints choirs," in which groups of people gather to harmonize about things that annoy, anger and distress them, is the kickoff feature for the Indie Memphis...
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From Tav Falco to Tojo Yamamoto: Memphis Docs Need Bucks, Promise Yoks
Two distinctively Memphicentric documentaries this week began generating financing -- and enthusiasm -- on Kickstarter, an online "funding platform" for artists, musicians, filmmakers, inventors and other creative types. A project of filmmakers C. Scott McCoy and Laura Jean Hocking, with musician...
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We're Off To See Some Wizards: 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' - A Review
The walking mops from the classic Mickey Mouse episode of 1940's "Fantasia" make a cameo appearance in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," the latest built-to-please product from the Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer assembly line that previously delivered the "Pirates of the Caribbean" and...
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'Daylight Fades' Rises Again
When Hammer Films released "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave" with Christopher Lee in 1968, the tongue-in-cheek (fang-in-throat?) ad campaign proclaimed: "You just can't keep a good man down." Indeed, it takes more than a stake and sunshine to...
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The Flowers of Evil: 'No Orchids for Miss Blandish' Blooms on DVD
Some scandals don't resonate as long as others -- sometimes as a result of the response to the shocking cause of the scandal itself. When "No Orchids for Miss Blandish" was released in England in 1948, a Life magazine...
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Why Settle for the Fuzzy End of the Lollipop When You Can Attend the Outflix Summer Movie Series?
"Well, nobody's perfect." Maybe not, but when Joe E. Brown utters that famous closing line, he concludes a near perfect comedy, Billy Wilder's 1959 masterpiece "Some Like It Hot," in which Chicago jazz musicians Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon...
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Indie Memphis 'Freedom Series': Movies with a Message
Organized by Indie Memphis, the first "Freedom Series," which begins Thursday (July 15), is an ambitious attempt to celebrate human rights, showcase diversity and build bridges between local communities and cultures through the medium of film....
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Laughter in the Dark: 'Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work' - A Review
The entirely entertaining documentary "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work" -- the title is a punning reference to the disfiguring "work" she has had done to her face -- is as revealing and inevitably incomplete as one might expect from...
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Mama's Boy: 'Cyrus' - A Review
Since at least the heyday of Jerome 'Curly' Howard of the Three Stooges, filmmakers -- like professional wrestlers -- have recognized that there's something unsettling about the sight of big men in institutional, close-cropped haircuts. When Seth Rogen wanted to appear...
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