The Bald and the Sweaty

by Ryan Syrek

Fast 5

In each installment of the long-running 007 series, you anxiously anticipate hearing the deliciously droll namedrop: “Bond, James Bond.” In each installment of the inexplicably long-running Fast and Furious series, you anxiously anticipate the moment in which the two bro-tastic, muscle-milk-enhanced non-characters look like they’re about to finally drop the pretense and make out. If...

Graphic Novel Concept

by Ryan Syrek

Super

As snot bubbles billow and pop while tears trek down his moon-pie face, Frank D’Arbo (Rainn Wilson) wails to God, demanding he be told why the divine creator cursed him to be so oddly shaped and socially inept. Then, about five minutes later, he has a vision in which tentacles come out of the wall, bind him to the bed and cut off the top of his head so that God’s finger can touch his brain,...

Street Art

by Michael J. Krainak

Bill Cunningham New York

What fashion magazines and reality TV shows expose in design studios and on the runway, 82-year-old photographer Bill Cunningham has found on the streets, night and day, of New York City. Vogue, Elle, "Project Runway," "All On the Line" and their ilk may have the cachet and ratings, but Cunningham’s weekly photo essay, On the Streets, in the New York Times has been in fashion for decades with...

Kids Slay the Darndest Things

by Ryan Syrek

Hanna

While many folks can hum the tune that is the ballad of the distant father, until your pops assaults you while you’re disemboweling the reindeer you murdered because he told you to, it’s best not to sing your personal song of woe to Hanna (Saorise Ronan). Because she may stab you in the eye hole.

Dressed in the trappings of spy games and science fiction — spy-ence fiction, if you will —...

Out in the Street

by Justin Senkbile

“I had no plans to make a film like this,” says director Matt Porterfield. He's speaking from Los Angeles, where he's promoting his latest picture, Putty Hill, which has its Omaha premiere on Friday at Film Streams. It's his second feature, after Hamilton in 2006 (which will screen on Sunday), and it has gotten quite a lot of good attention lately, not least from Richard Brody of The New...

Brontë-saurus

by Ben Coffman

Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre gets around a lot.

I’m referring, of course, to the oft-told story of Jane Eyre. The chaste, highly moral character of Jane Eyre, created by Charlotte Brontë and first published in 1847, doesn’t get around at all; in fact, she yearns to be her own woman. But Jane’s story has legs — at least five film versions of Jane Eyre were released prior to 1930. Since then, dozens more...

Rope-a-Dopey

by Ryan Syrek

Sucker Punch

The tagline for Sucker Punch is “You will be unprepared.” Eh, not so much. Every trailer for the film showed copious slow-motion sequences of girls clothed as if nerd fetishists established a global dress code. The near-dialogue-free previews gave little-to-no impression as to how the hell these seemingly disconnected visual sequences, ripped from a hardcore gamer’s wet dreams, possibly fit...