Following the trail of the coquettish Lillian Leitzel, the "World’s Most Marvelous Gymnast,” and her gravity-defying partner, Alfredo Codona, "Queen of the Air" is an irresistible romantic biography of the Brad and Angelina of the Big Top, writes Laura Miller.

Jensen knows how to tell this story, with just the right degree of old-timey melodrama. Here’s how he describes an argument during the long years when Codona drove himself to perfect the Triple: His father and brother “begged him to abandon his quest for the feat before it killed him or, worse, left him such a pathetic cripple that he would be belted into a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Codona could not be persuaded.” In counterpoint, he pulls back the curtains concealing the brutality of the performer’s lot: celebrated and fawned over one year, forced by an accident to work as an auto mechanic the next. Leitzel was surrounded by admirers and showered with gifts, but before going to bed every night she injected caffeine into her shoulder socket to tame the “pulsating, and some nights, hammering pain.” Unlike even the most battered professional athletes, she performed twice a day, every day during the circus’ season, and on off-season gigs in Europe.

Continue Reading...

From the Hollywood Reporter:

The logline for the action thriller with military elements is being kept under wraps but will mirror some of the Obama administration's use of drone strikes that has sparked controversy of late, putting the president on the defensive about the high-tech program that allows servicemen stationed in the United States to take out suspected terrorists abroad.

Continue Reading...

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Steven Spielberg on Wednesday predicted an "implosion" in the film industry is inevitable, whereby a half dozen or so $250 million movies flop at the box office and alter the industry forever. What comes next -- or even before then -- will be price variances at movie theaters, where "you're gonna have to pay $25 for the next Iron Man, you're probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln." He also said that Lincoln came "this close" to being an HBO movie instead of a theatrical release.

Continue Reading...

Rachel Kushner has simultaneously stunned and scared male critics with her "virtuosic" new novel about a young woman named Reno navigating the 1970s New York art scene. "The Flamethrowers" is a bold contender for the Great American Novel, writes Laura Miller:

But the boldness of this novel has more to do with its voice than its subject matter; you get a heaping serving of Kushner’s virtuosity in the opening chapters, which describe Reno’s journey back west by motorcycle, as part of a nebulous art project. I could present samples of her writing here, but better yet, just see James Wood’s nearly gobstruck review of “The Flamethrowers” in the New Yorker; he is the maestro of the representative quote, after all. He does a good job of what may be an impossible task. It is fiendishly hard to nail down and demonstrate the quality that most distinguishes the work of a remarkable author — that is, her authority. Kushner has authority in spades, seemingly without reaching for it, as if she were just born that way.

Continue Reading...

"Though general query volume can give us an idea of what moviegoers are thinking about," says the study, "we’ve taken this a step further by establishing the relationship between box office receipts and paid clicks."

"In addition, we found that the timing of trailer searches on both Google and YouTube are leading indicators of box office success."

Continue Reading...

Laura Miller explains that like Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” Paul Collins’ “Duel With the Devil” offers deep insight into society through its handling of a grisly crime, offering a window into New York's political and social climate in the 1800s:

That’s how Paul Collins uses the famous real-life murder mystery at the center of “Duel With the Devil.” This sensational crime took place in Manhattan in December, 1799, on the very brink of a new century (or not quite, if you’re the sort of pedant who insists that the millennium didn’t really turn until New Year’s 1801 — and yes, those people were around back then, too!). The body of a young Quaker woman, Elma Sands, was found at the bottom of a well in Lispenard Meadows, a swath of marshy, undeveloped land that separated New York City proper from Greenwich Village, approximately where the neighborhood of Soho stands today. The guy almost everyone liked for the killer was Levi Weeks, a carpenter who lived in the same boarding house as Sands, an establishment run by Sands’ cousin, Catharine Ring, and her husband, Elias.

Continue Reading...

Good luck finding them, however.

Nostalgic audiences jaded with the spectacle of IMAX screens, inflated ticket prices and sticky flooring, luckily, can still sniff out these surviving time capsules, and we’re here to help. See where you can motor on over to catch current and classic films alike, all from the comfort of your own car.

Because the only thing cooler than an air-conditioned auditorium is watching “Back to the Future” from your own time machine on wheels. (Also just having a time machine, generally speaking.)

Continue Reading...

The Telegraph reports that Assange refused to meet the film's star, Benedict Cumberbatch, who maintains that he's a fan:

"He didn't want to condone the film because he thought – hopefully erroneously when he sees the end product – that the project would castigate him and portray a negative side of his enterprise," the busy Cumberbatch told me when we talked at the Corinthia Hotel in London, where he was promoting Star Trek Into Darkness.

"He didn't want to meet me because he feels the source materials we've based the movie on were poisonous to his account of the events. When he sees it I hope he feels that it's more balanced. I think he will. I hope he will."

The film just finished shooting, but Assange obtained a copy of the script months ago, calling it "a lie upon lie" about his life and the organization.

Continue Reading...

Zhang, who designed the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics and directed "The Flowers of War," starring Christian Bale, may have up to seven children from two marriages two other relationships with women.

If found guilty, Zhang may face a steep fine as a "social compensation fee." From the AP:

Zhang, 61, reportedly could face a fine of up to 160 million yuan ($26 million), said the People's Daily newspaper, the Communist Party mouthpiece. People caught breaking China's family planning policy must pay a "social compensation fee" based on their annual income.

Continue Reading...

The full clip, below:

Continue Reading...

From the AP:

"Iron Man 3" had the second-biggest domestic debut ever, behind the $207.4 million start over the same weekend last year for "The Avengers," which teamed Downey's Stark with other Marvel Comics heroes. The new sequel surpassed the $169.2 million opening for 2011's "Harry Potter" finale, the previous second-place debut.

In just nine days, the film shot past the $312 million international total for "Iron Man 2" in its entire theatrical run.

Among the overseas totals so far: $63.5 million in China, $42.6 million in South Korea, $38.3 million in Great Britain and $35.8 million in Mexico.

Disney, Marvel Studio's parent company, attributes part of the film's success to its ongoing "Avengers" franchise, of which "Iron Man" character Tony Stark is a part. "A year ago, we speculated as to the impact of Avengers, and now we're witnessing it first-hand with the success of Iron Man 3," said studio distribution chief Dave Hollis.

Continue Reading...

Told through the self-aware but not entirely reliable voice of Nora Eldridge, Laura Miller calls Claire Messud’s main character in “The Woman Upstairs” the counterpart to Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man:

As Nora Eldridge, the narrator of Claire Messud’s claustrophobically hypnotic new novel would have it, we are all of us surrounded by reservoirs of invisible rage. “The Woman Upstairs” purports to be the story of one of the ragers, although Nora both does and doesn’t wish to be identified with the archetypal figure in the novel’s title. The counterpart to Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man, the Woman Upstairs, in Nora’s formulation, is a recessive, barely noticed neighbor, “whose trash is always tidy, who smiles brightly in the stairwell with a cheerful greeting, and who, from behind closed doors, never makes a sound.” Her “day’s great excitement is the arrival of the Garnet Hill catalog.” She strives not to cause any inconvenience and is resigned to always coming second (or third) in other people’s lives.

Continue Reading...

Cooper bought the rights to the film adaptation of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle's book in May 2012, but fast-tracked the project after Kyle's death in early 2013. Kyle was shot dead by veteran Eddie Routh, thought to have been struggling with PTSD.

Cooper will star as Chris Kyle, and intends to use the role to illuminate high-profile issues, telling NPR's Terry Gross that Kyle's story "needs to be told and it’s also relevant on two fronts. One, gun control, and two, the need to address this — the many soldiers that are coming back with post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Continue Reading...

[embedtweet id="328648080301903872"]

The first chapter begins in "Amsterdam."

[embedtweet id="328648452579930115"]

It's a crime mystery told in the second-person:

There are pictures:

[embedtweet id="328649328967155714"]

Read chapters one through seven here.

Continue Reading...

Laura Miller, who generally does not have “patience for the touchstones of foodie literature,” was pleasantly surprised by Michael Pollan’s “Cooked,” written from the perspective of a journalist and gardener rather than a celebrity chef:

His effort to deepen his understanding of the process of turning food into meals is the subject of his latest book, “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.” I wish I could say “Cooked” is entirely free of moments of flabby philosophizing (“Isn’t it always precisely when we are most at risk of floating away on the sea of our own inventions and conceits that we seem to row our way back to the firm shore that is nature?”), but they are rare. Admittedly, the book’s thematic structure is also a shade precious. It’s divided into four sections according to what the ancients perceived to be the four elements — fire, water, air and earth — each attributed to a different cooking method — grilling, braising and other forms of cooking in liquids, baking and fermentation. As ever, Pollan makes each of these themes the occasion for real thought as well as some energetic reporting.

Continue Reading...

After another round of edits, the film may have another shot in China, however. From the Guardian:

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

What’s surprising is that it has them applauding.

“Upstream Color,” an at-first-blush incomprehensible movie by “Primer” filmmaker Shane Carruth, has earned qualified raves since its first screening at Sundance this year. Said Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy:

“The experience of watching the film, especially this first section, is highly visceral and sensuous; the images possess a crystalline clarity that is exquisite, and they’re dispersed in rapid rhythmic waves[...] All this will seem profound to some and mean nothing to those who never got algebra.”

Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir struck a similar note:

“I was immediately drawn in by the mysterious, meticulous world of vision, sound and sensation Carruth creates, with its blown-out digital color scheme and intimate focus, which simultaneously seems to be contemporary America and also an alien zone of disconnection and isolation.”

Continue Reading...

Salon readers had a few suggestions:

[embedtweet id="322447748286775296"]

[embedtweet id="322453411121463296"]

[embedtweet id="322448643024121858"]

As did some of our Blue Glow TV critics

[embedtweet id="322456539266940928"]

[embedtweet id="322457804642328576"]

[embedtweet id="322458921702936576"]

[embedtweet id="322459155657027586"]

Those casting decisions sound promising, but it's going to take some of us more time to deal with the news:

[embedtweet id="322442946391703552"]

[embedtweet id="322440041882324992"]

[embedtweet id="322429983622582272"]

Filming for the remake will begin late 2013.

Continue Reading...

In 2011, Alcon Entertainment said it would remake Kathryn Bigelow's 1991 film about FBI agents undercover as surfers. On Wednesday, the company announced that the project has a director, Ericson Core, whose credentials include "Fast and the Furious" (albeit as a cinematographer) and the 2006 Mark Wahlberg football film "Invincible."

In 2011, producer Andrew Kosove told IndieWire that the remake will have "elements of the original," adding: "It's not just surfing, it's other kinds of extreme sports, but surfing is very, very prominent in the story."

It remains to be seen if a group as memorable as Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, Gary Busey and Anthony Kiedis can be cast. (Spoiler: It can't).

Continue Reading...