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Published Thursday, October 30, 2008 by Moulikxbqxwe.
If you're a fan of Ken Burns PBS documentaries such as The Civil War and Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, then you'll want to add New York, produced by Ken's brother Ric, to your collection. This exhaustively thorough documentary chronicles the evolution of the city from its time as a Dutch settlement in the early 17th century to its current status as megalopolis extraordinaire. Famous New Yorkers including Martin Scorsese, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Fran Lebowitz, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and former mayor Ed Koch lend their colorful local perspective. In addition, there's commentary by numerous historians and writers, most notably Pulitzer Prize-winning Mike Wallace (not of 60 Minutes fame, but rather author of Gotham) and the late Brendan Gill, who notes the distinctly capitalist foundation of the city. As he succinctly states, "New York was based upon greed." There's no mistaking that this is a Burns documentary; the story is told through the now-familiar mosaic of images, interviews, music, and narrative chronicling past events. However, there are noticeable differences in the two brothers' style. While Ken Burns tends to linger over his subject matter and personalize it, Ric is more focused on the task of recounting the events in chronological order. New York is also more upbeat, as it thankfully does not employ the tiresome, whining violin dirges of which brother Ken is so fond. You don't have to be a fan of New York City to enjoy this PBS production. You just have to enjoy the experience of discovering history through the popular Burns documentary style. --William Carr
New York was an incredible movie! Both Joan Allen and Janeane Garofalo were amazing! The great cast includes Joan Allen, Janeane Garofalo, Ron Silver, Frank McCourt, Martin Scorsese.
Inferno/Phenomena was an incredible movie! Both Fiore Argento and Fausta Avelli were amazing! The great cast includes Fiore Argento, Fausta Avelli, Patrick Bauchau, Franca Berdini, Marta Biuso.
Italian horror maestro Dario Argento made his name by turning homicide into modern art with a cinematic flourish, but with Phenomena he takes his stylish mayhem in new directions. The film opens with the dreamy grace of a fairy tale: a young girl wandering the green meadows of Switzerland and discovering a gingerbread house, wherein lives a monster more modern than mythic, a psychopathic maniac who plunges the picture into a lush nightmare. Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly in her first starring role), a gifted young girl at a Swiss school, has a psychic link to the insect world and develops a connection with the killer through midnight sleepwalks. With the help of a lonely, wheelchair-bound entomologist (genre stalwart Donald Pleasence, who inflects his sonorous tenor with a gentle Scottish burr) she turns telekinetic detective, which only draws her closer to the killer's lair. The densely plotted story becomes muddled at times (this is the busiest film in Argento's oeuvre) but the lyrical cinematography and gorgeous nocturnal imagery--dreamy sleepwalks, nightmarish murders, hideous horrors that emerge in the dark of night--take on a poetic elegance not seen in his previous work, providing the tale with a kind of dream logic. This is a slasher film reborn as an exquisitely grim fantasy: Jennifer in Argentoland. --Sean Axmaker