Evolving movie-watching habits have brought new buyers in recent years, with Netflix and Amazon.com Inc leading the march of digital outlets to Sundance. The streaming services had started to outbid Weinstein Co for standout films. Filmmakers prospered as Amazon paid $12 million for “The Big Sick” and Netflix paid $12.5 million for “Mudbound” in 2017. This year, it was unclear whether those outlets will replace Weinstein as the pacesetters.
Writer-director J.C. Chandor follows his well-received, 2011 drama “Margin Call” with an unusual cinematic feat: a one-actor picture with virtually no dialogue. The movie, “All Is Lost,” centers on an unnamed protagonist who becomes stranded at sea, and Chandor’s only actor is cinema icon Robert Redford. In the film, Redford’s character awakens to find his small sailboat lodged on a metal cargo container that was drifting at sea. The collision tore a hole in the side of his craft, which is rapidly taking water.
In the 1940s, a Chicago heiress turned the notion of a dollhouse on its head. Tapping into the power and intimacy of miniature dwellings, Frances Glessner Lee constructed 18 tiny scenes of violent death set in rooming houses, rustic cabins, garages, attics—even a nursery. Lee’s crime scene dioramas may be a trifle outdated, but time has not robbed them of any of their power.
What I envisioned in my future retirement years was moving south to an efficiency apartment in Miami Beach, where I figured there’d be lots of other old single guys like me enjoying the sunshine and beach. I didn’t consider myself much of a catch because I was cynical about love, and especially since I dressed so poorly in sweatshirts and ragged jeans--but ironically, what I wore did lead to romance. I credit my 20-year-old winter overcoat for that.
