CANNES, France - Todd Haynes has directed a thorough and entertaining film about The Velvet Underground, the sixties rock band that was managed by Andy Warhol and headlined by Lou Reed. Haynes, whose film was produced by Christine Vachon (theirs being a successful collaboration over the years, ever since she produced "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story" in 1987 that Haynes directed), cuts ... more >
ARCHIVES

CANNES FESTIVAL: Has Todd Haynes directed the definitive Velvet Underground documentary? I think so.

CANNES – Too many notes! (how music, and other things, killed “WONDERSTRUCK”)
Young Ben is in want of a father he’s never known, and Rose (young Millicent Simmonds), a deaf child who lives a hundred years earlier than him, is fascinated by a mysterious New York actress (played by Julianne Moore). After Ben discovers something in his mother’s (Michelle Williams) things he takes off for New York City to try and find his father. Rose comes into a hint, found in a newspaper ... more >

CAROL, polished and polite doth not a good film make
The praise critics have showered on Todd Haynes’s CAROL gives me pause. Have I seen an entirely different film or is there something in this one that escapes me? A. O. Scott of the N.Y. Times sees CAROL as “fetishistically precise in its recreation of the look and sound of the past.” Sorry, but the fingernails with their bright red polish, the lips with their bright red lipstick, the ... more >

PHOTOBOOK: When they were young (I)
(this is the first article in the multiseries) Funny, how people with a knack already look the part of success at a young age. They have the shine, that thing that can't be defined with words but that says, "I can't be for sure where, but I'm going places." The viewer of these images likely projects unto them, a forecasting of extraordinariness, the success that we're familiar with but that the ... more >