The News: Push Comes to Shove

Gabourey Sidibe, the star of Lee Daniels' Push (Photo: Lee Daniels via indieWIRE)

By S.T. VanAirsdale

Some of today's movie news of note from around New York:

--Producer Lee Daniels is following up his middling directorial debut Shadowboxer with an adaptation of Push, poet/novelist Sapphire's popular book set in AIDS-ravaged Harlem in the 1980s. And as of this week, someone behind the scenes evidently decided it's time to court the press: indieWIRE today offers a chat with Daniels about bringing the graphic story of abuse to the screen and the difficulties of shooting in New York, while over at The Times, Jake Mooney catches up with first-time actress Gabourey Sidibe, whose breakthrough followed an audition to which she arrived late but "blew everyone away" anyway. More to follow, I'm sure. Please, God, please don't let this be as bad as Hounddog.

--Dave Kehr is blogging less and less these days, generally only about DVD releases that did or didn't make the cut for his weekly NY Times column. But he branches out a little this week, referring you to Bunuel melodramas that work as fine alternatives to Twin Peaks and offering perhaps the weirdest takedown yet of No Country For Old Men: "The Coens' weltanschauung is as small and pinched as ever: this is a film that invites you to laugh at the choice of linoleum floor tile in a sheriff’s station even as the sheriff is being strangled on top of it," he writes. "It's disheartening to see this kind of facile cynicism become the default moral position of so many critics." Oh, um, snap?

--Jamie Stuart is no cynic, though, at least not for the first two minutes of his video holiday card at The Mutiny Company.

--Back before I calculated exactly how bitterly short life is, I liveblogged the depressing WNBC review show Reel Talk. If only I had persisted as diligently as the show has; I would have cherished the opportunity to crap my pants with the sheer joy of seeing Alison Bailes make Jeffrey Lyons cry as it happened. Alas. Let's go to the replay. (H/T: The Film Experience)

Posted at December 13, 2007 9:34 AM