More Articles By Ed Grant

• Shiver
  DARK SKY/MPI Street: Oct. 28 Prebook: now > Fright gives way to familiar plotting in this uneven Spanish horror movie. A killer is loose in the woods around a small town in this half-terrific creepfest from the producer of Pan’s Labyrinth. Frankie Muniz-lookalike Junio Valverde plays a boy whose inability to tolerate light causes his mother (Mar Sodupe) to move to a village that is pr... More
  
• Billy the Kid
  ZEITGEIST Street: Oct. 28 Prebook: now > The travails of a high school outsider are given the cinema-verité treatment. Filmmaker Jennifer Venditti offers a slice-of-life look at Billy, a high school outsider, in this touching but conclusion-less documentary. The teen is talkative, mostly avoided by his schoolmates and unnaturally smart. More
  
• Death Defying Acts
  WEINSTEIN/GENIUS Street: Oct. 28 Prebook: now > Catherine Zeta-Jones and Guy Pearce in a classic-style romance involving Houdini. Filmmaker Gillian Armstrong (Charlotte Gray, My Brilliant Career) depicts fictional incidents involving master magician Harry Houdini in this old-style Hollywood romance. More
  
• Run for Your Life
  SCREEN MEDIA/UNIVERSAL Street: Oct. 28 Prebook: now > Sentimental tribute to Big Apple marathon man Fred Lebow. The founder of the New York Marathon, running enthusiast Fred Lebow, is profiled in this well-crafted and moving documentary. A “transplanted Transylvanian,” Lebow started the marathon in 1970 and expanded it in 1976 from a run around Central Park to a grueling journey... More
  
• A Technicolor Dream
  EAGLE ROCK Street: Oct. 28 Prebook: now > Pink Floyd members and others remember (sort of) a legendary ’60s psychedelic event. The old line that “anyone who remembers the ’60s wasn’t really there” holds very true here, as a number of individuals who produced, attended or performed at an event called “the 14-hour Technicolor Dream” offer their hazy r... More
  
• Fraulein
  FILM MOVEMENT Street: Nov. 4 Prebook: Oct. 7 > Female bonding saga involving Slavic women. This bittersweet tale follows three women from the former Yugoslavia who befriend each other in modern-day Switzerland. The youngest (Marija Skaricic) is a drifter, another (Ljubica Jovic) is a waitress and the third (Mirjana Karanovic) owns the cafeteria where they both work. More
  
• Ken Russell at the BBC
  BBC/WARNER Available now > Ken Russell’s wildly imaginative biopics on classical composers, artists and poets. Before he made his breakthrough feature films (Women in Love, Tommy, The Devils), perennial enfant terrible Ken Russell made a series of inventive biopics of composers and artists for the BBC series Monitor and Omnibus. More
  
• The Wu-Tang Clan: Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival 2007
  EAGLE VISION Street: Oct. 7 Prebook: now > The reunited rap supergroup puts on an energetic, nasty rhyme-filled show. In this concert release, the rap posse known as Wu-Tang Clan ignites a Swiss audience with a selection of their group and solo tunes. More
  
• Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
  ARTS ALLIANCE AMERICA Available now > Well-crafted intro to influential but little-seen works of underground icon. The life and times of underground filmmaker Jack Smith are detailed in this colorful, clip-filled documentary. Best known for his controversial, landmark Flaming Creatures (1963), Smith is depicted as an eccentric soul who influenced those around him, including his one-time col... More
  
• Words for the Dying
  MICROCINEMA Street: Sept. 30 Prebook: now > Indie doc shows John Cale and Brian Eno at odds and in harmony. Independent filmmaker Rob Nilsson’s idiosyncratic chronicle of the 1989 recording of John Cale’s album Words for the Dying is a feature made in spite of Cale’s super-producer collaborator Brian Eno, who refused to appear on screen until the end of the project. More
  
• The Mindscape of Alan Moore
  DISINFORMATION Street: Sept. 30 Prebook: now > Shaggy shaman of comics takes viewers on a trippy philosophical journey. The superbly talented comic book writer Alan Moore (The Watchmen, From Hell, V for Vendetta) speaks on various topics in this trippy profile. The film may befuddle those who aren’t familiar with the shaggy scribe’s reputation—why is a “graphic novel... More
  
• Seed
  VIVENDI Street: Sept. 9 Prebook: now > Serial-killer flick that borrows liberally from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A derivative police procedural with outbursts of sadistic violence, Seed is the story of an unkillable serial killer (Will Sanderson), who is clearly modeled after Leatherface, with a hint of the WWE’s “Mankind. More
  
• Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains
  RHINO Street: Sept. 16 Prebook: Sept. 5 > Early ’80s 'punk’ cult favorite finally makes its long-delayed disc debut. Famed record producer Lou Adler’s 1981 attempt to make a “punk movie” might have been fairly bogus on a musical level, but as a piece of entertainment, it became a cult fave, due to repeated showings on cable in the early ’80s. More
  
• The Case of the Grinning Cat
  ICARUS Street: Sept. 2 Prebook: now > French New Wave master tackles the topic of youth in today’s political scene. The superb works of French documentarian Chris Marker (La Jetée) have been notoriously hard to find in the U.S., but independent supplier Icarus is now filling the void with a quartet of late-period Marker gems, including the cinephile’s delight The Last Bolsh... More
  
• Norah Jones: Live From Austin, TX
  NEW WEST Street: Sept. 2 Prebook: now > The songbird moves from jazz to country and back for Austin City Limits. The multi-Grammy winner runs through her repertoire in this mellow, thoroughly enjoyable June 2007 concert. The show was taped for the PBS series Austin City Limits but aired in a truncated half-hour version. More
  
• Before I Forget
  STRAND Street: Sept. 2 Prebook: now > Minimalist study of an over-the-hill gay gigolo. A gigolo’s old age is chronicled in this meditative, sometimes ponderous character study. In Before I Forget, filmmaker-star Jacques Nolot treads on the same turf as R. W. Fassbinder and Francois Ozon (in fact, Nolot was co-star of Ozon’s Under the Sand). More
  
• Peter Cook and Dudley Moore: The Best Of … What’s Left Of … Not Only … But Also…
  BBC/WARNER Street: Sept. 9 Prebook: > Classic sketch comedy featuring 'Pete and Dud’ at their finest. The sharp, influential comedy of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore is showcased in this terrific selection of sketches and filmed segments from their three-season series Not Only … But Also… (1965-70). More
  
• The Unforeseen
  NEW YORKER Street: Sept. 16 Prebook: Aug. 20 > Earnest study of a land-development battle in Texas. A case that pitted developers and land-owners against environmentalists and politicians in Austin, Texas, is the focus of this sober-minded documentary. The situation, in which a beloved area called Barton Springs was prepared for development, is intended to serve as a microcosm of the land-d... More
  
• The Garden of Earthly Delights
  KINO Street: Aug. 12 Prebook: now > Thinking person’s love story, replete with beautiful Venetian scenery. A beautifully constructed tragic romance, Garden of Earthly Delights chronicles the doomed affair between two Brits in Venice, an engineer (Chris Nightingale) who compulsively records everything that happens to him and a terminally ill art historian (Claudine Spiteri). More
  
• Rogue
  WEINSTEIN/GENIUS Street: Aug. 5 Prebook: June 24 > Giant crocodile flick saves its gore until the climax. The plot is standard-issue in this giant crocodile monster flick. A journalist (Michael Vartan), led by an Outback tour guide (Radha Mitchell) goes on a wildlife cruise in Australia that is disrupted by a huge croc. More