Ann Lemons Pollack
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I Am Love
Remember all the stories about the birds and the bees? Here's a switch. The birds, the bees, a variety of other insects and all the flowers of the Italian hills are busy learning from Tilda Swinton and Edoardo Gabbriellini, quite wonderful teachers. Director Luca Guadagnino, his focus ever tighter, and composer John Adams, his music
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Stonewall Uprising
If only cameras then were as ubiquitous as cameras now, "Stonewall Uprising" would have been a much better film, and the Greenwich Village riots would have had more impact. The documentary, co-directed by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner, with a writing credit for him and an editing credit for her, provides some splendid interviews with
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Cyrus
As a pickup line, it's among the best ever. John is at a party. He meets Molly. Shortly thereafter, he's in the back yard when he feels a call of nature and ducks into the bushes. Apparently not deeply enough. Molly walks by. "Nice penis," she says, and keeps on walking. And that's how John
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Winslow’s Home
No question about it, Winslow’s Home is unlike any other restaurant in town. Surely dining alongside uncommon toys and eco-friendly door mats is a singular experience. Deeply casual, the patrons make the Home feel like a diner, or a dining room, albeit a rather upscale one, with both simple and complex flavors from a
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Anthonino’s
We're happy to announce that we've begun doing some work for St. Louis Magazine's online edition. Their blog FEAST features our review of Anthonino's here. We'll continue to let you know when we have reviews there, which will not duplicate what we're doing there.
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The City of Your Final Destination
The movie-making team of Producer Ismael Merchant, Director James Ivory and Writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala made a name for themselves with literary films, slow-paced, intricate, character-driven stories set in glamorous locales, with fine acting, lovely settings and people who had interesting stories to tell. They triumphed with "A Room With a View," "Heat and Dust,"
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Ondine
It's a crying shame that fantasy and folklore cannot carry an entire film. The multi-talented Neil Jordan has written and directed "Ondine," a lovely, romantic movie about an Irish fisherman who catches a selkie in his nets one day. A selkie, by the way, is a creature similar to a mermaid who does not have
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Reel Injun
The word play in the title of the documentary film, "Reel Injun" is rather easy to decipher–it's about the treatment of American Indians in movies made by American filmmakers. Directed by Neil Diamond (a Cree Indian, not a singer), it covers a lot of familiar ground, but seems to show some optimism for better treatment,
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Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
The movie opens with a shocking sequence. A woman, her mouth a mere slit, her face pasty and lined, is about to be made up. The name of the movie could easily be changed from "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work," to "Joan Rivers: An Old Woman Being Re-Created By Being Worked On, a Piece
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Farmhaus
There’s lots of buzz about Farmhaus these days, and it seems ready to become this summer’s Hot Spot, with Kevin Willman, formerly of Edwardsville’s Erato, manning the helm and doing things in his own slightly idiosyncratic way. For instance, he recently took off a few days to go fishing, and just closed rather than delegating