http://blog.thelyric.com Keeping you up to date on all the news and events surrounding the "Heart of Blacksburg." Sun, 05 May 2013 16:40:47 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Harmony Korine’s purposefully delirious drama/horror/satire “Spring Breakers” is shocking, but not for any onscreen debauchery, but how bright and shiny, and extremely dull it is, and how much it strives to be “Girls Gone Wild” meets "Natural Born Killers." Circa 1994. (Back when I was in college.) The story: Four college ... http://blog.thelyric.com/?p=598 Michael Haneke’s French-language “Amour” is the painfully grim picture of Parisian octogenarians struck helpless as the wife suffers a series of strokes and tumbles into the purgatory of dementia, lost under a thick sheet of ice. A ghost. Anne (Emmanuelle Riva), the wife, was a piano teacher. In the first scenes, ... http://blog.thelyric.com/?p=595 “The Impossible” follows a family torn apart by one of history’s greatest disasters: The 2004 tsunami that killed nearly 300,000 people in Southeast Asia. Director Juan Bayona and writer Sergio Sánchez (both of “The Orphanage”) make this true story horrifying real as they place us inside the deadly wave with ... http://blog.thelyric.com/?p=592 Is there a better actress right now of the under-30 set than Jennifer Lawrence? She co-leads “Silver Linings Playbook,” a flat-out great comedy/drama about two troubled adults making a connection over -– of all things -– ballroom dancing. David Russell directs and wrote the screenplay (based on a book), and similar ... http://blog.thelyric.com/?p=585 Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal scored several Oscars, but little box office traction with 2009’s Iraq-set "Hurt Locker” Here, they go bigger and bolder by following the CIA and then SEAL Team Six as they hunt and eventually kill Osama bin Laden. This is an openly controversial film. ... http://blog.thelyric.com/?p=580 In his near-three-hour blaxploitation spaghetti western homage/rip-off “Django Unchained,” Quentin Tarantino serves up a blood-soaked raw piece of pulp fiction that makes “Inglorious Basterds” and its Nazi history redux seem Disney fluffy. He tackles slavery in the 1850s America and shows it in all its vile, morally offensive code, and ... http://blog.thelyric.com/?p=575 The big-screen adaptation of the tragedy/musical “Les Miserables” is everything every N.Y. film critic has said: Bombastic, sentimental, and manipulative; it tosses out tragedies like candy at a parade and has a story arc that could rival the Bible, but -- so what? Have these critics read Victor Hugo’s novel? ... http://blog.thelyric.com/?p=572 “Life of Pi” follows the harrowing spiritual journey/survival tale of an Indian teen named Pi (newcomer and sure-to-be-famous Suraj Sharma) who is swept away from a sinking cargo ship and lost at sea in a life boat for months. Also aboard the boat: A Bengal tiger as his sole ... http://blog.thelyric.com/?p=567 “I could write shorter sermons, but when I get started I’m too lazy to stop,” said Abraham Lincoln, 150 years ago and quoting a rhetorical preacher. What better motive to be brief: Working from a screenplay by Tony Kushner (“Angles in America”), Steven Spielberg’s near-miraculous masterpiece “Lincoln” isn’t a ... http://blog.thelyric.com/?p=561 When the Academy Award nominations come in, 2012 Sundance-Festival-favorite “Sessions” will be mentioned. For sure. But when the awards go out, “Sessions” will be shut out. This is a drama destined to become a bit of movie trivia and “Did you ever see?” probing among cinemasts, loved by a few, ... http://blog.thelyric.com/?p=553