Salon.com > Stephanie Zacharek http://www.salon.com Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 A movie critic bids farewell http://www.salon.com/2010/04/09/farewell_6/ http://www.salon.com/2010/04/09/farewell_6/#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/04/08/farewell This is the hardest piece I've ever had to write for Salon: my last.

When Joyce Millman -- at the time just an acquaintance, but more than that a pop-music and television critic I'd long admired -- contacted me sometime in early 1996 about the possibility of writing for a new publication she and a bunch of other San Francisco Examiner exiles were starting, I was intrigued. Until I found out the publication was online only. At the time, I was a full-time magazine copy editor by day and a freelance writer by night: If it wasn't in print, it wasn't real.

At that point, we didn't yet know just how old Old Media really was. But the idea of transferring the skills and principles of Old Media onto the Web intrigued me. And even if Salon, as an online-only magazine, wasn't "real," the money its founder, David Talbot, was willing to pay its writers, was -- the fees weren't princely, but definitely fair, particularly for a start-up. So I made one tiny leap as a freelancer in 1996 that turned into a bigger one three years later, when I was hired at Salon full-time. My friends at the business magazine, in Boston, where I was working at the time -- a job I loved but was ready to leave -- urged me to rethink my decision. Salon was a start-up; it wasn't stable. I might move to New York, where David was assembling an East Coast staff, and it could all fall apart the next day.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/04/09/farewell_6/feed/ 141 “Clash of the Titans” could make the gods weep http://www.salon.com/2010/04/02/clash_of_the_titans/ http://www.salon.com/2010/04/02/clash_of_the_titans/#comments Fri, 02 Apr 2010 11:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/04/02/clash_of_the_titans Many of us who fancied ourselves sophisticated in 1981 freely mocked "Clash of the Titans" at the time of its theatrical release: A hokey-looking fantasy that plays fast and loose with Greek mythology, starring a well-oiled Harry Hamlin as brave warrior Perseus and Laurence Olivier as his top-god father, Zeus? No thanks. We were too busy oohing and ahhing over the prim aesthetics of "Chariots of Fire" to fall for anything so obviously fake as a flying white horse.

Since then, many of us have seen the error of our ways, and we now know what little kids who were dazzled by watching "Clash of the Titans" on TV (it was a staple of HBO in the early days) have always known. Directed by Desmond Davis and with stop-motion special effects by the great Ray Harryhausen, the first "Clash of the Titans" is an unself-conscious treasure of fantasy filmmaking. Harryhausen's creatures -- from his feathery-winged Pegasus to his fearsome yet sympathetic sea beast the Kraken -- are low-tech by today's standards. Yet within their specially created universe, they're wholly alive, not disposable. Their fantastically unreal qualities demand a measure of engagement from the viewer, and it's that engagement -- not the amount of money or time spent on their creation -- that gives them life.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/04/02/clash_of_the_titans/feed/ 23 Miley Cyrus: Finally old enough to hate http://www.salon.com/2010/03/31/the_last_song/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/31/the_last_song/#comments Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/03/31/the_last_song Movies based on Nicholas Sparks' novels have gotten a bad name, and unfairly so: As source material they've at least helped prolong the life of an endangered movie species, the romantic melodrama. Pictures like "Nights in Rodanthe," "Dear John" and "The Notebook" may have their flaws, but in cineplexes crowded with carelessly made action pictures and, increasingly, flashy-but-empty 3-D features, they at least cling to some tatters of a movie tradition forged by Douglas Sirk and Max Ophuls.

But not all Sparks adaptations are created equal, and the latest, "The Last Song," is less equal than most. There are a few decent performances here, most notably that of Greg Kinnear as Steve, a grizzled, beleaguered, divorced dad. But "The Last Song" -- which was directed by Julie Ann Robinson, from a screenplay by Sparks and Jeff van Wie -- doesn't even work as passable, tear-loosening melodrama, and the predictable plot mechanics aren't what make it insufferable. The big problem is Miley Cyrus.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/31/the_last_song/feed/ 103 “How to Train Your Dragon”: Triumph of the beast http://www.salon.com/2010/03/26/how_to_train_your_dragon/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/26/how_to_train_your_dragon/#comments Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/03/26/how_to_train_your_dragon Despite the outlandish success of the "Shrek" movies, there's often a sad, also-ran vibe to DreamWorks' animated movies. "A Shark's Tale," "Bee Movie," Monsters vs. Aliens": These movies aren't terrible, and they're probably reasonably enjoyable for kids. But they're also, as the English would say, just a little too keen. With their pop-culture references stacked sky-high, their too-cute yet not cute enough characters, they're tap-dancing as hard as they can to dazzle us with their wit and sophistication, as if to distract us from noticing that they're so low on charm.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/26/how_to_train_your_dragon/feed/ 1 “The Runaways” is the (cherry) bomb http://www.salon.com/2010/03/19/the_runaways/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/19/the_runaways/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/03/18/the_runaways It was entirely possible to be a teenage girl in 1975 and have no idea who the Runaways were. But even if you'd never heard them, you wouldn't have had any trouble understanding what the Runaways were about: This was a bunch of tough-looking Los Angeles girls who may have been brought together by a sleazy, exploitative impresario named Kim Fowley. Nonetheless, their raggedly sensuous sound was a "no" rather than an acquiescent "yes," the sound of not waiting around for life to happen. They were neither the first nor the last all-girl outfit to refuse to wait around -- the Shangri-Las had gotten there before, and Sleater-Kinney would come later, to name just two. But the Runaways' brash charisma was specific to its era: With their jagged feathered hair and satin jumpsuits, they were girls you wanted to be, less sugar and spice than glamour and sweat.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/19/the_runaways/feed/ 12 “Repo Men” takes more than it gives http://www.salon.com/2010/03/19/repo_men/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/19/repo_men/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/03/18/repo_men It's sad when a bit of grim futuristic silliness like "Repo Men" falls short on all counts, down to the most basic level of entertainment value. A tawdry little tale set in the world of tomorrow, "Repo Men" -- directed by newcomer Miguel Sapochnik -- details the antics, and the anguish, of Remy (Jude Law), a tattooed, muscle-bound toughie who works for a powerful corporation known ominously as the Union, which sells artificial organs to people who desperately need them. The company charges exorbitant fees for these shiny metal thingamabobs, though its magnanimous figurehead, Frank (Liev Schreiber), reassures clients that they can pay on the installment plan. If they miss too many payments, however, the Union's "skilled and licensed technicians" -- those would include Remy and his partner, Jake (Forest Whitaker) -- will show up to reclaim the unit in question.

Very early in the picture we get a sense of just how skilled and licensed these technicians are: First, Remy locates one of these poor deadbeat schmoes, who is then tasered and sliced open with a gleaming stainless-steel blade. After the company's property is retrieved -- which might take a bit of rooting around in the offender's gooey insides -- it's popped into a baggie, nice as pie, and returned to company headquarters.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/19/repo_men/feed/ 7 “The Bounty Hunter” chains its stars to the bed http://www.salon.com/2010/03/19/the_bounty_hunter/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/19/the_bounty_hunter/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/03/18/the_bounty_hunter "The Bounty Hunter" has brought me no closer to knowing whether I find Jennifer Aniston mildly appealing or mostly unbearable. By now I've at least learned that she's an actress who can't be easily written off. She's given surprisingly multi-shaded performances in pictures like David Frankel's unapologetically emotional "Marley & Me," but she's also been deeply underwhelming -- just too cute by half -- in movies like "The Break-up."  I've adopted a "show me" policy when it comes to Aniston's movies: I'm open to the possibility of surprise, but I know I'm more likely to get a passable level of inoffensive mediocrity.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/19/the_bounty_hunter/feed/ 11 “Greenberg”: Ben Stiller is cruel, crazy — and compelling http://www.salon.com/2010/03/18/greenberg/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/18/greenberg/#comments Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:50:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/03/18/greenberg In Noah Baumbach's "Greenberg," Ben Stiller is the Roger Greenberg of the title, a fortyish lost soul who's just done a stint in a New York mental hospital and who has just decamped to his brother's tony digs in L.A., for a few weeks house- and dog-sitting. Greenberg is a gaunt ghost of a figure, with shadowy eye sockets and exhausted, unblinking eyes -- his pupils are constantly on red alert. He spends his days building a doghouse for his brother's family dog, a low-key German Shepherd named Mahler, and trying to reconnect with old friends that he's clearly alienated with years' worth of erratic behavior. He writes cantankerous letters to American Airlines, Starbucks and the New York Times, first etching them out in longhand (like a crazy person) and then typing them neatly before packing them off in their crisp envelopes (like a crazy person who knows how to appear sane). Socially awkward and so self-involved that other people's lives seem like an inconvenience to him, Roger Greenberg is everything most of us don't want to be.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/18/greenberg/feed/ 2 “Our Family Wedding”: Say, “I do!” http://www.salon.com/2010/03/12/our_family_wedding/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/12/our_family_wedding/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:08:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/03/12/our_family_wedding Rick Famuyiwa's "Our Family Wedding" is one of those movies — like those made by Tyler Perry — that are not supposed to need critics, which is barely a problem, since most critics who consider themselves "serious" won't bother to see it anyway: It's the kind of picture that, on a newspaper at least, is generally doled out to a second or third stringer, or a freelancer. Many of those who do write about it will likely use words like "clichéd" and "formulaic" to show they've seen it all before. This is, after all, a culture-clash comedy in which a young couple who have decided to marry, Lucia Ramirez and Marcus Boyd (America Ferrera and Lance Gross), must introduce each other to their respective families. Lucia's parents, played by Carlos Mencia and Diana-Maria Riva, don't yet know that their daughter's boyfriend is black. Coincidentally, Marcus' father (Forest Whitaker) has just had his car towed by Lucia's father, and the two have spent some time exchanging mild racial epithets.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/12/our_family_wedding/feed/ 21 “Green Zone”: Matt Damon’s Iraq war thriller http://www.salon.com/2010/03/12/green_zone_3/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/12/green_zone_3/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/03/11/green_zone Early in "Green Zone," a fictional movie teased from the tangle of facts, almost-facts and squelched facts surrounding the search for weapons of mass destruction in the early days of the Iraq war, Matt Damon, as a soldier in charge of finding those WMD, has one line of dialogue that sums up the heartsickening reality of the whole enterprise. During a briefing in which a couple of higher-ups announce with bravado that someone they completely trust has told them exactly where the WMD are located, Damon's Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller speaks up with the demeanor of a polite schoolboy: "There's a problem with the intelligence, sir." Damon and his team have already checked out many of the sites at which those WMD were supposedly stashed and come up with zilch. (One of the alleged locations has turned out to be a toilet factory.) He's not being disrespectful; he's merely pointing out a fact.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/12/green_zone_3/feed/ 24 Oscar’s biggest stars: Look closer http://www.salon.com/2010/03/06/oscar_performances_the_slideshow/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/06/oscar_performances_the_slideshow/#comments Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/03/06/oscar_performances_the_slideshow In the weeks leading up to this year's Academy Awards, I put the spotlight on each of the 10 performances nominated in the best-actor and best-actress categories in a series called "Oscar 2010: The Performances." My aim was not to predict who would win, or even to make pronouncements about whom I want to win (though reading between the lines is always encouraged). I wanted to spend a little time looking under the hood of each of those performances, to get a sense of what might be going on there. My methods were highly unscientific, my views wholly subjective. My hope was to get closer to the heart of what makes a good performance good or, when applicable, a bad one bad. At the very least, this series offered a few snapshot assessments of what it is about actors that keeps us going to the movies in the first place, a small window into the pleasure that actors, at their best, are capable of bringing us.

The following slide show offers excerpts of each essay, along with a link to the original.

View the slide show.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/06/oscar_performances_the_slideshow/feed/ 10 Jeff Bridges’ redemption song http://www.salon.com/2010/03/05/oscar_performances_bridges/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/05/oscar_performances_bridges/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/03/05/oscar_performances_bridges In "Crazy Heart" Jeff Bridges -- who has never won an Oscar, despite the pleasure he's given audiences in a film career that's spanned more than 40 years -- gives a performance that's so comfortably lived-in, it makes you forget there's even such a thing as technique. All performances consist of two basic components: the things an actor does consciously and -- usually the magic ingredient -- the things that emerge as the result of not trying. With Bridges' performance here, as with perhaps nearly every performance he's ever given, it's impossible to locate the seams between the two. Bridges may be acting, but he always makes it look like living.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/05/oscar_performances_bridges/feed/ 14 Tim Burton’s Alice in Underland http://www.salon.com/2010/03/05/alice_in_wonderland/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/05/alice_in_wonderland/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/03/04/alice_in_wonderland It's disappointing enough that a movie whose title contains the word "wonder" should hold so little of it. It's even more disheartening that that movie should come from Tim Burton, a filmmaker whose imaginativeness -- working in tandem with his dark heart - - has given moviegoers so much pleasure over the years that even at the relatively tender age of 51, he's earned his own Museum of Modern Art retrospective. "Alice in Wonderland" is hardly a total disappointment: Burton has put the expected level of care into its production and character design, and the picture is a far more low-key affair than either of his last two live-action films, "Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Unlike the former, "Alice" doesn't groan under the weight of thunderous pretentiousness, and unlike the latter, its garishness is, at least, of the muted sort.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/05/alice_in_wonderland/feed/ 41 My love-hate relationship with Meryl Streep http://www.salon.com/2010/03/03/oscar_performances_streep/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/03/oscar_performances_streep/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/03/02/oscar_performances_streep I don't think it's possible, or even desirable, for moviegoers -- and that includes critics -- to be objective about actors. One of the deepest and most abiding pleasures of moviegoing is responding to performers, and so it makes sense that we often have intense and conflicted personal responses to them. That's what troubles me about the lockstep view of Meryl Streep as the consummate actor's actor, a performer who deserves our lifelong adulation simply because she works so hard at mastering accents. There is no religious tablet -- as far as I know -- that decrees we all need to be in constant awe of Meryl Streep. She can be as dull or as mannered as any other actor currently working, whether she's playing a frayed-at-the-edges modern do-gooder in "The Hours" or a bitchy, power-mad nun from the Order of the Sunbonnets in "Doubt." The former was a performance shaped around a big breakdown moment, the kind of show that's designed to make people say, "Brava!" but doesn't necessarily cut deeply; the latter was a triumph of primly pursed lips and glowering eyes, the kind of turn that makes admirers throw around words like "discipline" and "restraint" -- though when I look at a performance, the last thing I want to be noticing is the discipline.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/03/oscar_performances_streep/feed/ 76 Oscar 2010: Carey Mulligan’s charm offensive http://www.salon.com/2010/03/01/carey_mulligan/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/01/carey_mulligan/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/03/01/carey_mulligan At one point in Lone Scherfig's "An Education" Carey Mulligan, as a 16-year-old schoolgirl whose yearning for culture and sophistication is being stroked by an older man, sits in a posh supper club flanked by this new beau and his two ultra-sophisticated friends. Mulligan's character, Jenny, is a bright girl bucking the constraints of her suburban upbringing; this is early '60s, pre-swinging London, an era when nice girls supposedly didn't (though in actuality they often did). But it's not really sex Jenny is after; what she's seeking is much harder to define. She speaks schoolgirl French, sneaks cigarettes with her friends, and spends hours stretched out dreamily in her room, listening to Juliette Greco records -- records that, in those pre-Amazon days, actually had to be brought back from France in a suitcase by a human being, or at least special-ordered from your local record shop. Jenny is hungry for the world, and that supper-club scene in "An Education" nails it: Sitting at the table with her new friends, her hair done up -- or, rather, undone -- in the nondescript center-part hairdo of schoolgirls everywhere, she's the teenage equivalent of a plane ready for takeoff. Her simple plaid shift dress is accessorized with a dainty heart locket, a cigarette poised delicately between her fingers and -- the killer detail -- dimples.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/01/carey_mulligan/feed/ 6 Oscar 2010: Jeremy Renner dismantles the war hero http://www.salon.com/2010/02/27/jeremy_renner/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/27/jeremy_renner/#comments Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:27:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/02/26/jeremy_renner At times Jeremy Renner's performance in "The Hurt Locker" is all fingers, though it's never all thumbs. Sometimes it seems that director Kathryn Bigelow shows more of his hands than of his face: Renner's character, Staff Sgt. William James, is a bomb-squad team leader in Iraq circa 2004. He's just been installed as a replacement for the squad's previous leader (Guy Pearce), who's been killed in action. James is a cowboy, at first annoying and angering his team by the way he takes unnecessary risks when he's disarming bombs. But for all his physical swagger -- he's cock of the walk even when he's suited up in the restrictively padded sand-colored snowsuit worn by bomb specialists -- the essence of his job boils down to what he can do with his hands. We see his slightly stubby fingers tracing a length of colored wire from a safe "here" to a lethal "there," or pulling an explosive mechanism apart the way you might pick at the meat of a chicken wing.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/27/jeremy_renner/feed/ 40 “Cop Out”: Tracy Morgan breaks out http://www.salon.com/2010/02/26/cop_out/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/26/cop_out/#comments Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/02/25/cop_out Bruce Willis may be the big star of Kevin Smith's buddy comedy "Cop Out," but just a day or so after seeing the picture, I can barely remember him. What resonates instead is the way his costar, Tracy Morgan -- the two actors play New York City detectives who've been partners for nine years -- responds when an angry higher-up tells the duo that the undercover bust they've recently botched is all over YouTube. "The YouTube?" Morgan responds, his eyes open wide and unblinking, wanting to be sure his sudden fame is the real kind and not some cheap imitation.

That's the kind of gag only Morgan could get away with, and even then only some of the time. Morgan's humor is the boomerang sort. His jokes make no sense if you face them head-on; to work at all, they have to swing around and hit you on the back of the head, and still they sometimes fall short of their wobbly mark. In the characters he's played -- from a vulnerable, loose-cannon prima donna on "30 Rock" to "Saturday Night Live's" Brian Fellows, an animal-show host who ignores his guests in favor of happily following the imaginary conversations running in his head -- Morgan's humor has a powdery innocence, with just a flash of exasperation gleaming at its edge. He's sweet, but you also suspect he could blow at any moment.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/26/cop_out/feed/ 17 Colin Firth: The elegant mourner http://www.salon.com/2010/02/25/colin_firth/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/25/colin_firth/#comments Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/02/25/colin_firth One of the movie posters for Tom Ford's "A Single Man" is a gauzy photo-illustration featuring a debonair-looking Colin Firth in the foreground -- deep in thought and wearing heavy-rimmed Michael Caine glasses -- as Julianne Moore, a '60s glam queen in a black sheath dress and dangly cocktail-party earrings, looks on with undisguised affection and possibly a shiver of lust. A soft-focus white rose blooms just behind Firth's right ear, a symbol of mourning, or rebirth, or something. It's a dreamy, aesthetically pleasing work of advertising, a respectful nod to the glory days of movie-poster artists like Bob Peak.

This is very elegant advertising for a movie about grief that, if Ford had chosen a different star, might also feel like advertising. Ford has worked as an art director and a fashion designer (for the houses of Yves Saint Laurent and Gucci), and in those fields, his aesthetic sense has proved to be extremely well-turned. But as a piece of moviemaking "A Single Man" -- based on the 1964 Christopher Isherwood novel in which a middle-aged literature professor mourns the death of his lover -- is static and sterile. Ford knows something about composition and lighting, perhaps a bit too much. If it weren't for Firth, its star, "A Single Man" wouldn't amount to much more than a series of meticulously art-directed stills, less a movie than a lavish 10-page promotional insert in Vogue.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/25/colin_firth/feed/ 16 Gabourey Sidibe: Playing the victim http://www.salon.com/2010/02/23/gabourey_sidibe/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/23/gabourey_sidibe/#comments Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2010/02/23/gabourey_sidibe Mo'Nique's performance in "Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire," as an abusive mother who, among other acts of cruelty, tries to keep her daughter from getting an education so she can stay on welfare, has earned a great deal of praise since the movie's release last November. The performance has been short-listed, by those who obsess about such things, as the surefire winner of the best supporting actress Academy Award.

But of the two most attention-grabbing performances in "Precious," the one that goes deeper, and ultimately has more resonance, is Gabourey Sidibe's turn as Precious, the Harlem teenager whose life is essentially a catalog of the horrors that can befall a young black woman in the inner city.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/23/gabourey_sidibe/feed/ 13 Berlin Film Festival: Controversy, art, violence http://www.salon.com/2010/02/19/berlinale_2010_02/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/19/berlinale_2010_02/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/stephanie_zacharek/2010/02/19/berlinale_2010_02 I've been brought to Berlin to participate in the Berlinale Talent Campus, a program that brings in young filmmakers, screenwriters, composers, editors and even film critics from around the world for a week of workshops and, of course, moviegoing. During this past week, one subject that's come up repeatedly with my colleagues and with the young professionals who have gathered here is the importance of having a life outside the movies. And still, the other day when I looked at my schedule and realized if I skipped a movie or two I'd actually have time to go to a museum, I hesitated. In two days' time, the whole event would be over, and I'd feel the usual post-festival remorse about all the movies I hadn't seen. Shouldn't I really be checking out that Iceland-Hong Kong-Turkey co-production about the peasant boy who travels to the city and becomes a huge pop star, only to realize how desperately he misses his mother's goat-eyeball stew back home?

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