Chad Everett, a television actor best known for his work on Medical Center from 1969-1976, has passed away. He was 75. The star lost a battle with lung cancer at his home in Los Angeles yesterday, according to The Associated Press. Everett’s daughter confirmed the news. A Golden Globe-nominated actor, Everett also appeared on The Love Boat , Melrose Place and more recently on episodes of Supernatural and Castle . He also took on big screen roles that includes The Firechasers and Gus Van Sant’s Psycho . Everett is survived by two daughters and six grandchildren. He is wife of 45 years, and fellow Medical Center co-star, Shelby Grant, passed away last year.
Amidst the sadness and shock over the fatal Aurora, Colorado shooting at a Dark Knight Rises screening early Friday morning, many celebrities have taken to Twitter to express their sympathy for the victims and their families. Many have also used this as an opportunity to push for stricter gun laws, an area in which President Barack Obama has been considered a total failure by The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Here is a sampling of star Tweets on the matter. Read through them and share your take with us now: Cory Monteith : guns don’t kill people, people do etc.. but until we can fix society somehow you probably shouldn’t be able to buy AR-15’s at a fishing shop … such a senseless tragedy. when are we going to reconsider the role of guns in society? how many more times does this have to happen? Susan Sarandon : The right to bear arms was referring to muskets. Maybe it’s time to re-think our gun policy on this day of slaughter in Colorado. Piers Morgan : Lunatics like this will always try and get guns. It should be 100,000 times harder than it is for them to do so. That’s my point. Miley Cyrus (in a retweet): Less guns = less psychopaths who can get guns = less innocent lives lost….seems pretty obvious to me. Chris Daughtry : Stricter gun laws will not stop SICK people from getting access to guns…Laws & rules are not in the forefront of the mind of a criminal. John Leguizamo : My heart goes 2 all the victims families in colorado. No one should have to go thru that. When r we gonna get guns removed in this country?! Bryan Greenberg : People against gun control are you kidding me?! Don’t even try to justify having a AR-15 for personal use. Not necessary!! Josh Hopkins : Dear news media, In reporting about tragedy in Colorado please do less about ‘does Batman promote violence’ & more about gun control. Thanks.
The Batman brand is in the toilet at the outset of The Dark Knight Rises , the third and most self-consciously ornate pillar of Christopher Nolan’s caped crusader resurrection trilogy. The four years since The Dark Knight have passed as eight within the city state of Gotham — one of the neater doublings in a movie inlaid with prismatic tiling — and even the mayor condemns Batman as “a murderous thug.” The late Harvey Dent, by contrast, has been canonized as a civic hero; something called the “Dent Act” has ushered in an era of safe streets and soft despotism. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), meanwhile, is still heartbroken over the murder of Rachel Dawes and said to be peeing in Mason jars and polishing his curly fingernails in some shuttered wing of Wayne Manor. As a memorial for Dent drones and tinkles smugly on, the movie’s animating question flickers across Commissioner Gordon’s (Gary Oldman) face: Batman died for this ? The this at the heart of The Dark Knight Rises is a city whose predicament is conceived broadly enough to accommodate any number of thematic readings, but too hedged to explore any one of them well. In winding up at casual cross-purposes, the film’s perspective on governing power structures and mass psychology (to name only two) feel like Nolan playing ideological peek-a-boo. Despite heavy provocation, it’s a movie that can only supply embarrassment to those who look beyond the gleaming chaos and heroic suffering for meaning. What it amounts to is a frantic set of distractions from an uncommonly thrilling ride on the old Gotham express. Bruce Wayne’s first warning of what’s to come, and what’s happening beyond the manor gates — the Catwoman in the coalmine — arrives in the figure of a burglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway, tart but sexless). Selina draws Bruce out of hiding — something a philanthropist on the clean energy tip played by Marion Cotillard couldn’t manage — and warns him of a coming storm that will level the elite and the commoner. When the faithful Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine) implores him to focus on deploying his dwindling resources and building a better (or any) personal life, Wayne takes it as a challenge to his alter ego’s honor and his failing body. Meanwhile, Commissioner Gordon is paying more attention to his gut than the crime statistics, and it’s telling him something is rotten in Gotham. What that might be is considered from several angles — computer chaos, corporate greed, social inequality, nuclear threat, economic terrorism—and we wait to see which will prevail. Nolan never quite chooses, though, opting for a little bit of each whenever it’s convenient. Bending over all of them, in an arc extended from The Dark Knight (there are even more direct connections to Batman Begins ), is the obsessive pursuit of Batman’s “true” identity. “The idea was to be a symbol,” Wayne sighs to a hotfooted cop played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But there’s no place for symbols in a search-engined society; nothing so delicate can survive in cold, data-based climes. The city clamors for Batman, wanted for the death of their hero, on a plate: This Gotham seems destined for slow-motion self-destruction; our villain’s arrival is framed as more of a helping hand. They may have forsaken Batman, but the city’s need for viable symbols is borne out in the heavily spackled image of Dent, and, from his first appearance in the bravura prologue, the intransigent evil embodied by Tom Hardy’s Bane. “No one cared who I was until I put on the mask,” Bane gurgles (not true Tom Hardy! Not true!) in vocoder tones I’d put somewhere between Yoda post-testosterone patch and Sean Connery on appletinis. Batman’s comeback is hamstrung at every turn — by his vicious new opponent, by the police (led by Matthew Modine’s canine would-be commissioner), and by an app-loading tablet that the superhero considers in the universal stance of tech-befuddlement. Consigned, after a colossal ass-whipping, to a vaguely Arab hellmouth with handy cable news access, Wayne spends the middle chunk of the movie striving for the spiritual strength to escape in time to keep Bane from his plan to “feed the people hope to poison their souls” before blowing the whole city to pieces. A sub-tangle with nuclear power, which is framed as both the savior of the world and its destroyer, provides the movie’s ultimate double. But Bane’s motives are obscured too long and too provocatively to succeed in drawing us into the wildly nettled political revolution he comes to represent. We’re told his power derives from his fanatical belief — something a privileged playboy can’t buy — but in what? His is a psychology of convenience and comic-book dogma, which is only a problem insofar as the film insists he have a psychology at all. Bane’s proselytizing about social equality and death by moral complacency inspires real dread, but again Nolan isn’t prepared to stand behind the incendiary postures he strikes. There’s always an out, in this case the fact that Bane’s politics are just a theatrical prelude to less complicated darkness. Undeniable is Hardy’s menace: Less a man than a masculine experiment gone awry, he seems to be strutting naked even in boots and crust punk combat gear. What Bane is most clearly is a terrorist, from his vaguely plotted assault on Gotham’s stock exchange, to the fondness for human shields and Taliban-tinged sports stadium executions, to the plan not to rule or capture the city with a grand gesture but to wipe it out. Though it was filmed in several locations, including Pittsburgh, in this installment that island city is most obviously New York, from the glimpse of the scaffolded Freedom Tower to the crippled Brooklyn Bridge to the richies dragged out of their Fifth Avenue penthouses. If anything the pretense of Gotham adds a certain gratuitousness to the clear references — symbols pulled out of their context for sheer, emotion-zapping effect. Beyond that a scrappy city all its own emerges, where Batman is just another part of the steeply vertical landscape and it wouldn’t be all that odd to find him slugging it out in the streets, as in his climactic, cleanly drawn confrontation with Bane. Beginning with a thrilling underground, multi-vehicle chase and through a series of old fashioned brawls, Nolan, director of photography Wally Pfister and editor Lee Smith restore a baseline of coherence to the action that in some instances has the feeling of a many-paneled page, with levels and layers of action — a ka-pow over here, a thwack over there. If New York is Gotham’s most obvious touchstone this time out, the Windy City asserts itself in Nolan’s script (co-written with his brother Jonathan, working from a story by Nolan and David S. Goyer). The dialogue is inflated to regulation turgidity and then some. Hathaway does her best, but without Heath Ledger’s Joker there’s no one to let the air out now and then, which makes this week’s cinematic rendering of the apocalypse more terribly earnest but also more genuinely terrifying than most. Along with making the most prominent case for the continued relevance of the auteur theory, with this trilogy the British director reminds us that well-built brands never really die. Certainly one elegiac current running under the The Dark Knight Rises is that they don’t make them like Batman anymore, either in Gotham City or your local cineplex. During its more didactic lapses, episodes of shocking darkness and overwhelming density, you can practically make out the silhouette of Nolan looming behind the screen, appraising us with folded arms: Do they deserve this movie? Are we worthy of it? The Dark Knight aspires to the epic and reaches it on a number of impressive and less impressive levels. That it is a frequently, unnervingly glorious triumph of brawn over brains is not despite but in spite of Nolan’s admirably stubborn — if persistently, risibly serious — insistence that the modern superhero can have it all. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Are Mixed Women Crazy? If you copped that Nas Life Is Good today (as you should!) you may have noticed a bonus cut “Roses” that REALLY goes in on Kelis. While the track is good, one lyric caught everyone’s attention: If she mixed a possible psycho alert goes off.” We found this pretty interesting and it’s led to interesting debate. Are mixed or light-skinned girls inherently more difficult to deal with? Are they cray cray even? Definitely sound off! And take a look at these mixed and light-skinned ladies for inspiration.
Red Lights , the new film from Buried director Rodrigo Cortés, weds an earnest, simplified exploration of the nature of faith with a goofy, gussied-up B-movie plot about a pair of academics who travel around debunking extrasensory phenomenon. As marriages go, it’s a troubled one, but it certainly makes for some interesting fights across the dinner table. Red Lights has formidable resources at its disposal, including an almost preposterously talented cast made up of Sigourney Weaver, Cillian Murphy, Robert De Niro (showing rare flickers of life), Elizabeth Olsen and others, as well as Cortés’s own undeniable filmmaking talent. This is a man who managed to draw suspense out of an hour and a half of Ryan Reynolds trapped in a box without even letting the guy take off his shirt . Set free to wander through a genre-inflected landscape filled with would-be clairvoyants summoning spirits in creaky buildings and alleged mystics calling people out of audiences to heal them, he manages to sustain an unsettling tension that lasts until you realize it’s a misdirect. As the film moves from a wry but jolt-filled journey with a pair of professional skeptics to a clash between one of them and the world’s foremost self-proclaimed psychic, it loses momentum and the sense of the unexpected that gave it fuel. Its most operatic moments are actually its weakest. That battle escalates between academic Tom Buckley (Murphy) and Simon Silver (De Niro), a famous phenom who’s returned to the public eye after years of retirement. Tom is a physicist who, for personal reasons, has ended up as the protégé and sort-of surrogate child of Dr. Margaret Matheson (Weaver), a psychologist and paranormal investigator. Such is the lightly warped reality the film inhabits that the two work in an underfunded branch of a university department called the Scientific Paranormal Research Center, an endeavor more interested in supporting the research led by Paul Shackleton (Toby Jones) to prove the existence of telepathic abilities. The underlying theme of Red Lights is that the frauds and hustlers Margaret and Tom encounter succeed in duping people because we want to believe them, to see in them evidence that there is something beyond the world as we perceive it. The film generally steers clear of religion (though it contains a nod to phony faith healer Peter Popoff), allowing, for better and worse, table-levitating mediums and spoon-bending telekinetics to augur the potential mysteries of the universe. It’s a decision that frees the movie from heavier metaphysical obligations, but it also sets the story wackily off-balance by having as its primary symbols of faith musty ESP stunts like the reading of Zener cards or thoughtography. When Margaret reveals to Tom that the reason she’s kept her long-comatose son alive despite the near-impossibility of his waking is that she doesn’t believe there’s anything beyond death, it feels flimsy that the way she channels this is by proving to the gullible that their houses aren’t really haunted. Weaver and Murphy are good together, their characters’ interactions belying fondness, familiarity and trust under the professional reserve. They share a sincere drive to disprove claims of psychic phenomena, though because of what they do they’re perceived as wet blankets — “I just hope he shows those smart-ass college know-it-alls,” one Silver follower spits when the telepath agrees to let Shackleton and his coworkers test his abilities in a lab. Before Silver swallows the second half of the movie, Margaret and Tom travel around to different sites of reported paranormal activity, scenes Cortés winkingly stages as convincing brushes with the beyond — a seance, a child who can channel spirits, a man with the power to cure illness — before allowing our protagonists to reveal the prosaic reality of what’s underneath. Cortés’s restless, circling camera (the cinematographer is Xavi Giménez) gives the film a sense of tension even when little actually comes of it — a jump scare in a scene of Margaret at home seems to exist mainly to show that even a skeptic can be vulnerable to the willies. And Silver, who’s blind and escorted everywhere by a smirking assistant played by Joely Richardson, understands that weakness and targets it. Whether or not Silver has actual power is an open question throughout the latter part of the film — he left the public eye after one of his foremost detractors died ominously of a sudden heart attack at one of his shows — but what’s certain is that he’s a master manipulator. The “red lights” of the title are the signs Margaret searches for that indicate trickery — hidden motivations, advanced groundwork, glimpses of susceptibility. Silver doesn’t seem to show any red lights, though as Tom becomes the film’s focus and obsesses with unveiling the man as a fraud, he seems himself less a reliable agent and more one with his own biases to prove. De Niro, preening and smug in his sunglasses, makes for an enigmatically despicable antagonist, but Tom’s unbalanced need to take him down feels dictated not by motivation but by the movie itself. Dead birds turn up outside his house, electronics short out in sprays of sparks — coincidence or evidence of Silver’s paranormal aggression? The movie muddles to a rug-pulling ending that doesn’t, despite its efforts, shed new light on what’s come before. Instead, it feels like an unsuccessful attempt to yank the two diverging aspects of the film — its thoughts on faith versus its psychic explorations — together for some finality when they’ve actually drifted even further apart. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Shortest. Pregnancy. Ever. Okay, maybe not for Adele herself, but for the public. Unlike Jessica Simpson’s very public gestation period, which was marked by Twitpics, nude Elle covers and absurd quotes for months on end, we just found out Adele was with child. So when is she due? Like really soon! Simon Konecki got Adele pregnant 6-7 months before anyone knew! UK reports say she’s due in mid-September, or around two months from now. Neither the 24-year-old nor her boyfriend has commented on the report or the pregnancy at all beyond their initial announcement last month. However, UK celebrity gossip sources claimed this morning that Adele will be hearing the pitter-patter of tiny feet by the middle of September. “Adele has barely left the house in recent months, so she could keep this to herself for as long as possible,” a so-called insider said of the star. How the alleged insider knows what’s going on in Adele’s womb, we have no idea, but congratulations on the pregnancy again in any case! [Photo: WENN.com]
The Real Housewives of Orange County are sitting down on Andy Cohen’s couches in Part One of the Season 7 reunion. Will Alexis get an apology for being called phony? (Probably not.) Will Vicki have to defend Brooks? (Probably.) And how many times will she say “love tank”? (One time too many.) Let’s find out in our THG +/- review. Tamra’s hair is as big as Alexis’ boobs. Minus 5. We’re 60 seconds in and Vicki’s already lamenting the fact that Brianna eloped and almost had cancer. Minus 10 . Andy just pointed out that Gretchen and Tamra have swapped hairstyles. Which explains everything. And he’s wasting no time asking about Vicki’s fur coat. Plus 2 . Alexis says the reason she mispronounced Katie Couric’s last name is because she has an accent. You know, like the British. Minus 4. Here it goes, Alexis and the infamous Fox 5 news reporter scandal. She says that Jim’s douche-maneuver in virtually everything regarding Alexis and what she wants, is just because he has a strong personality. Heather calls her out on it and says it’s like he’s her Daddy. Then she slams Tamra saying “she’s still married.” Heather used the word “maligning” like she thinks Alexis knows what that means. Plus 10 for good vocabulary. In this argument between Heather and Alexis? Heather wins. Mostly because she understands words. And mortgages. Tamra’s recap is up next. Seriously, her hair is huge! After Eddie proposed, he re-proposed in front of her kids when they got home. Plus 10 . Tamra said her mouth has gotten her into a lot of trouble. At least she’s aware. Vicki’s disappointed by the distance between she and Tamra after this season. Tamra’s saddened by the distance between them, too. Something that makes Tamra happy is her friendship with Gretchen. Vicki thinks Tamra’s unable to have more than one friend at a time. Vicki, jealousy’s an ugly look. Minus 3 . Vicki blames Tamra for the reason she didn’t like Alexis for so long. Alexis says that she and Vicki have been working on their friendship since last season. Andy Cohen just said “love tank.” Minus 25. And now there’s a montage of Brooks and his positive affirmations. There’s not enough pinot grigio in the world to make him tolerable. Donn and Brooks apparently get along swimmingly. Vicki, apparently, almost ripped Donn’s girlfriend’s eyeballs out. Gretchen says Vicki’s not sincere in what she says. “Correct,” Vicki replies. But she’s not a hypocrite. Minus 10 . Vicki says she’s told Brooks to “get his sh*t together” regarding his child support issues and reveals that she’s known him for five years and wrote a letter to the judge to get him out of jail when he was tossed into the clink for not paying. Juicy! She just can’t seem to grasp how hypocritical she’s been with Slade and Brooks’ similar situations. Minus 15. Phony-gate 2012 is upon us. Alexis feels like the women ganged up on her, which is probably true. And Heather said “maligned” again. Alexis still doesn’t know what it means. Tamra said her blow-up at her coffee date with Alexis was the result of Alexis pushing her into it. And then Alexis called Tamra bitter and old. Gretchen says she warned Alexis that Phony-gate was coming when they were on the plane ride over to Costa Rica and then Alexis tells Andy that Gretchen’s lying about her hair extensions. Because those two things are related. Minus 3. Vicki says she’d never want anyone to “gang bang” Tamra. So that’s good. Heather accuses Alexis of being rude to the crew and department store employees. And then Tamra shouts “You are PSYCHOTIC, JESUS JUGS.” And I died. Plus 40. EPISODE TOTAL: -3 SEASON TOTAL: -364
Fans of E.L. James’ erotic bestseller 50 Shades of Grey have been fantasy-casting their perfect Christian Grey for months, arguing over whether this actor or that actor would best embody the BDSM-addicted rich playboy hero in the forthcoming film adaptation. But one enterprising academic has cobbled together the perfect Christian Grey with the help of police technology — a little Brad Pitt here, a dash of McDreamy there — morphing together the features of various leading men. The result: Kinda creepy! University of Central Lancashire’s (UCLan) Dr Faye Skelton employed image-generating software to “create” the first image of womankind’s perfect Christian Grey, using a radio poll of a tiny sampling of fans of the novel. Among this Christian’s features, taken from their suggested dream actors: Patrick Dempsey’s eyes, Brad Pitt’s jawline, Chris Hemsworth’s nose, and, um, Val Kilmer’s lips. Needless to say, this 12-woman focus group might have been a bit too narrow a selection… “While we don’t want to intrude on anyone’s fantasies, based on a small sample of women, this is the image of Christian Grey they have in their heads when reading the novels,” Skelton said (via the BBC). “Personally, I think he’s quite handsome — although everyone’s interpretation will be different.” Neat trick, but way off-base to begin with — almost all of the celebrity sex symbols whose features went into this bizarre face-mash are too old to play Christian Grey, anyway. It doesn’t just make sense to fantasy-cast just any piece of hunky Hollywood man meat for the role; it makes even less sense to mush together the noses and ears and hairlines of random hot dudes and think that will equal hotness squared. I guess this faux Christian isn’t terrible-looking – he looks like any bro you’d see at the gym, though I keep fixating on his various face parts and thinking about who they belong to. Is this the vision of godlike man-beauty you envision introducing Anastasia Steele to a world of kink and psycho-sexual dramarama? Not so much. Besides: What woman is that into Val Kilmer ‘s lips? [ BBC , Daily Mail ]
In Tuesday morning’s round up of news briefs, Paramount offered kind words for Tom Cruise. Warner Bros is readying an outdoor free Comic-Con experience coinciding with the event; The Amazing Spider-Man is poised to do record box office domestically with its Tuesday release; The Butler adds an additional cast member and Fandango eyes a record quarter. Warner Bros Entertainment to Present Free Extra at Comic-Con All six Batmobiles will be on hand for a free outdoor entertainment festival noted by Warner Bros. Entertainment, dubbed Extra at Comic-Con . The venue will take place in San Diego’s Bayfront Park July 12 – 14 coinciding with Comic-Con International: San Diego. The centerpiece will be The Extra Stage featuring Q&As, live performances, screenings and talent interviews hosted by entertainment magazine Extra . The event will also feature a Lord of the Rings video game showcase. For more information, visit their site . Around the ‘net… Amazing Spider-Man Box Office Preview: $120M-plus Possible Indications put Spider-Man at $120M over the six day debut beginning Tuesday when it opens in the U.S. The 3-D movie has already made over $50M in 13 overseas markets over the weekend, THR reports . Paramount Offers Support to Tom Cruise Following Divorce Announcement The studio spoke up for the star of its upcoming movie Jack Reacher saying in a statement: “His ability to make a great movie… is the thing moviegoers remember above all else…Tom is a huge movie star for the right reason. He’s a very talented actor whose movies have entertained millions of fans,” BBC reports . The Butler Adds Colman Domingo to Cast Domingo will play a White House butler in the film directed by Lee Daniels and starts shooting later this month in New Orleans. The film is based on the life of Eugene Allen, a White House servant who worked over the period of eight administrations, played by Forest Whitaker. Also in the film are Matthew McConaughey, John Cusack, Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda who will play Nancy Reagan, Deadline reports . Fandango Foresees Best Quarter Ever The online ticketer will likely announce Tuesday that its second quarter will be the best in its 12 year history with ticket sales up 28% from the same period last year, while traffic increased 26%, Deadline reports .
The film: Insomnia (2002) Why It’s an Inessential Essential: Last week, Warner Brothers released a Blu Ray box set of British director Christopher Nolan ‘s films. Looking at the box set (other titles include: Memento , Batman Begins , The Dark Knight and Inception ), one is reminded of Nolan’s celebrity status as one of the most instantly recognizable filmmakers working today. Which makes it difficult to imagine a film that might be considered obscure or in need of reconsideration. But the clear outlier in the Christopher Nolan Director’s Collection is Insomnia , Nolan’s remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name. As a remake and an adaptation, Nolan’s film isn’t as strong as it should be. But as a self-sufficient work, Nolan’s version is a modest success. The film’s chase and actions scenes alone are some of the best in his filmography, filmed with a confidence and an eerie atmosphere that stand out in his impressive, if inconsistent, body of work. It’s worth owning this box set, in other words, because it gives you a good picture of how the filmmaker takes his technical skill and polish and applied it to a number of disparate subjects and settings. The narrative and psychological underpinnings of Insomnia are, typical of Nolan, basic to the point of being crude. His characters are not psychologically complex but they are all to some extent thoughtful and sophisticated, and Insomnia protagonist Will Dormer is no exception to that rule. Al Pacino plays Dormer, a burnt-out L.A. police investigator that used to be a big hot-shot but is now just a has-been. Dormer’s the subject of an Internal Affairs investigation, so he heads to Alaska to help look for a killer – and winds up accidentally fatally shooting his partner. Most of Insomnia ‘s surprisingly brisk two-hour runtime is spent watching Will fall apart and forming a precarious bond with Walter Finch (Robin Williams), the murderer Dormer originally set out to catch. How the Blu Ray Makes the Case for the Film: In the director’s commentary track and an interview he recorded with Pacino, Nolan talks a bit about his creative process and inadvertently reveals why Insomnia is as good as it is. Being a left-brain thinker, Nolan deconstructs the way he shot the film in his audio commentary by addressing scenes within the order they were shot. This is pretty striking since this does not gives you an idea of the importance Nolan placed on certain scenes (two days to shoot the high school interrogation scene!) but how filmmakers work out of continuity and have to quickly form a rapport with actors. Insomnia is after all as successful as it is because of the atmosphere Nolan creates, and that’s not just a matter of slick mechanical direction of scenes but also of his actors. Some of what Nolan says is a bit hard to swallow, like when idly ponders, “I think Al was appreciative of getting to start with some physical action.” And while one should not be surprised to hear him talk passionately about “cross-cutting action,” it is interesting to hear him talk about the way that he establishes his relatively advanced technical skills as a filmmaker to accentuate the film’s human element. The weaker, more over-reaching psychological talking points in Hillary Seitz’s screenplay are made stronger by Nolan’s eye for detail, and you can tell why in the way that he talks about Pacino’s body language in close-up and his use of “small camera moves” to capture Dormer’s “virtuosity.” The human element at the heart of Insomnia may not be as strong as it should be, but by the standards established by Nolan’s films, it’s pretty strong. It should be noted however that while none of the special features in the Christopher Nolan Director’s Collection are exclusive to the set, save for a booklet and some glossy photo stills, there are a number of interesting and enlightening features on the other film’s Blu Rays, too. The “Batman: Unmasked: The Psychology of The Dark Knight” featurette on The Dark Knight is especially worthwhile, as is the inclusion of Jonathan Nolan’s script for Memento Mori , the short film that preceded Memento . Other Trivia: Speaking of continuity editing, it’s kind of neat to hear Pacino name-drop and talk about collaborating with everyone including, “Francis [Ford Coppola],” “[Sidney] Lumet,” and “Bobby De Niro.” These experiences really color his working with Nolan, especially when Pacino talks about how heart-broken Coppola was when working on some unnamed picture because the film’s shooting day was over (it was past 6pm, according to Pacino). Pacino found the Godfather director in tears in a cemetery, lamenting, “They won’t give me another set-up!” This is especially funny in light of how Nolan just finished talking a little about how much of a director’s job is a matter of “covering” his actors, thereby ensuring that he gets everything he needs so that he can later assemble it all in the editing room. Simon Abrams is a NY-based freelance film critic whose work has been featured in outlets like The Village Voice , Time Out New York , Vulture and Esquire . Additionally, some people like his writing, which he collects at Extended Cut .
