by Fred Topel

“This film is really my way of saying we’ve had enough.”
- Nadine-Labaki

Nadine Labaki is my kind of woman. A Lebanese filmmaker, Labaki has lived life and experienced war and tragedy, so the perspective in her art is perceptive and philosophical. Certainly not superficial. You would think coming from a conflicted region, Labaki’s films would be serious and perhaps difficult to take. She actually makes comedies. Her first film, Caramel, was a romantic comedy. Her second, Where Do We Go Now?, is a comedy about religious conflict between Christians and Muslims.

How can such a subject be funny? Well, Where Do We Go Now? opens with a procession of Muslim women marching and swaying in rhythm, so you know there’s something different here. The men of their unnamed village are always on the brink of fighting. The women do everything they can to distract the men, from drowning out news broadcasts to bussing in a group of bikini models. With a light touch, Labaki gets people thinking and talking about important matters. Speaking with her in person was equally impressive. Though she was from the other side of the world, she spoke my language both literally (English) and spiritually. We had a gentle conversation about the culture and film making of Lebanon.

Read our exclusive interview with Nadine-Labaki on SuicideGirls.com.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

In the movies Tilda Swinton comes off very angel-like and that’’s not a pun for Hellblazer fans. She seems very delicate with a strong touch of pathos, though in person she’’s warm, sweet, very funny and all business. But I suppose when an actor has sheparded a passion project for five years like Swinton did with Thumbsucker you need to be that way sometimes.

Swinton plays Audrey Cobb, a woman with two children. At the age of 17 her son, Justin, still sucks his thumb. She wonders how she could possibly be grownup with a son going to college. In her early 40s, she is, like Justin, struggling to find out who she is and to accept her shortcomings. As a mother she knows that she doesn’t have all the answers to Justin’s troubles, and that she is sometimes too busy dealing with her own doubts to help him. Audrey hides from these realities through an obsession with a TV heartthrob, Matt Schraam [Benjamin Bratt], whose TV character seems to have all the neat answers.

Read our exclusive interview with Tilda Swinton on SuicideGirls.com.

by A.J. Focht

In its second week in theatres, The Avengers broke over a dozen records, including tying with Avatar and Deathly Hallows Part 2 for fastest to a billion dollars. Considering in just two weeks it became the twelfth highest grossing movie ever, it should be no surprise that Disney has confirmed Avengers 2.

After the phenomenal success of The Avengers, Joss Whedon took some time to thank his longtime fans. Posting a letter on his personal site, Whedon thanked those that have stuck with him. After his heartfelt missive, he posted an interview with ‘Rutherford D. Actualperson’ covering some FAQ for his fans.

The Amazing Spider-Man is kicking up its advertising campaign. Now they have released a four minute preview of the film. It includes a scene where Spider-Man saves a child, but reveals his identity. Moments like this show the clear differences between this Spider-Man and the Spider-Man from the previous movies.

The newest news from The Dark Knight Rises is that Marion Cotillard has confirmed she is not playing Talia Al’Ghul. In a recent interview, the actress revealed that her character was a good throughout. This does not mean Talia Al’Ghul is not in the movie, but Marion Cotillard will not be playing the part.

The CW is moving forward with their new superhero television series, Arrow. Now there is an official synopsis of Arrow available. Some of it follows the traditional Green Arrow story, but there have been some changes, including the city, which has been switched from Star City to Starling City.

NBC’s Community has been green lit for another season, but they moved the show time to Friday nights. The series might be coming back, but it’s not clear if the whole study group will return. Both Chevy Chase and Community creator Dan Harmon have not signed on for the new season.

Jumping on the post-apocalyptic bandwagon, NBC is airing a new show next season called Revolution. The series follows the aftermath of a post-apocalyptic event where all electricity is shut off across the world. It clearly builds off the popularity of Hunger Games, and even includes a bow toting heroine.

In the video game world, Blizzard launched Diablo III at midnight on the 15th. Videogame developers at Bethesda are also looking to move in on Blizzards massively multiplayer online game territory. They have announced they are working on an Elder Scrolls MMO.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

Jodie Foster is one of the best actors planet Earth has ever given birth to. Her two Oscars, her performances that haven’’t been nominated for anything and the two brilliant films she’’s directed all attest to that.

Now she’s starring in the new thriller Flightplan, which is about a recently widowed woman who is flying her husband’’s corpse back to America in a giant plane she partially designed. Her daughter disappears on the plane and everyone seems to think the girl was never there in the first place.

Read our exclusive interview with Jodie Foster on SuicideGirls.com.

by Steven Whitney

In Chinatown, private detective Jake Gittes puts those two questions to Noah Cross, perhaps the richest man in 1930s California. Those same queries, and others like them, resonant more than ever in today’s America.

How many cars can you drive? How many McMansions can you live in? How many diamonds and jewels and designer clothes can you wear? How many black Escalades filled with bodyguards does it take to make you feel important? Why do you need more when you already have so much more than enough? And most tellingly: how much do you fucking want?

The movie doesn’t provide answers – after all, who can explain rampant and uncontrolled greed? But it does offer a symbolic confrontation between the 99%, in the persona of Jake Gittes, and the 1%, represented by super-rich Noah Cross.

Jake is Everyman working hard to earn a decent living, perhaps with a dodge or two here and there, but living by a code in keeping with Raymond Chandler’s “hero” – a man who walks the mean streets who is not himself mean, a common man, a man of honor.

During a short stint with the police, Jake came to know Chinatown – a dark and dangerous place controlled by a few and impervious to change.

Why? Because he knew it was a game played with a stacked deck, one he couldn’t win…and he never knew if he was helping or hurting.

As the story begins, Jake is hired to expose a love nest that will ultimately determine control of the Los Angeles water supply. While the scandal is false, it leads to an apparent suicide. But Jake senses that he was unknowingly set-up and that the victim was murdered. So he unexpectedly wades deeper into the murky waters and runs straight-on into Noah Cross.

Cross has gotten rich as Croesus by not making any positive contributions to society. He doesn’t create anything – he just buys things, forces up their value (often by illegal means), and then sells them at an obscene profit. Sound familiar?

To make matters worse, he’s everyone’s Moriarty – an old man of gross and unchecked appetites. Indulging in land fraud, assorted swindles, mayhem, murder, and incest. He is both father and grandfather to the innocent girl he now lusts after. This, of course, makes him the worst kind of fucker – worse than a motherfucker and even worse than South Park’s notorious unclefucker (but probably still not as bad as Dick Cheney). By every measure, Noah Cross is an uber-villain.

Imbued with a sense of fairness, of right and wrong, and of common decency, Jake tries to rescue a woman and the daughter who is also her sister from this psycho-sociopath. Tough, smart, and relentless, if anyone can stop Cross, it’s Jake. And, against all odds, he seems at times almost on the verge of winning.

But he can’t win. He can never win because the game is rigged from the top, with scant trickle-down benefits. You can’t fight City Hall, especially if Noah Cross owns it. Jake gives it his best, but he’s a man alone, fighting phantoms he can feel but cannot see as Cross wages scorched-earth warfare. Too late, Jake realizes the only way he can win is to kill Cross. But Jake’s not a killer…so he winds up back in Chinatown, impotent, losing everything, and bone-tired of the whole damn mess.

Cross manipulates Jake (and everyone else) like Republicans maneuver their base – holding out the carrot of the American Dream only to snatch it away at the last second, keeping all the spoils of victory for themselves. Jake, like the rest of us, has been played for a sucker.

In 2012, it’s not morning in America. It’s fucking Chinatown.

Unlike Noah Cross and his ilk, we don’t want it all, we just want a level playing field…with more education, equal access to quality healthcare, and economic parity. We want the freedom to create and control our own lives.

But freedom comes at a high cost. It can neither be given nor bestowed, and it must be fought for and earned, now and forever. If we don’t get angry, if we don’t fight as hard and as relentlessly as the opposition, if we don’t learn to vote for our own interests, if we don’t deploy every weapon at our disposal, our lives will become mere ceremonies of loss in which our rights, our freedoms, and our opportunities are eroded, little by little, until the final whistle blows…and the American Dream is officially dead, stolen by Noah Cross and his brethren of the 1%.

And then we’ll all suffer Jake’s tragic fate – a purgatory of futility.

DARKNESS DESCENDS. MUSIC UP: A noir melody, light tinkling on a piano, backed by lush woodwinds, and then…a mournful trumpet solo, wailing a plaintive cry of helplessness.

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by Daniel Robert Epstein

Steve Martin is a god, not the G-d, but a god nonetheless. When I try to remember my childhood, I mostly come up with images of The Man with Two Brains and The Jerk. But in recent years, his work has turned to the more complex with such theater plays as Picasso at the Lapin Agile and the novella Shopgirl.

Next month Touchstone Pictures will release the film adaptation of Shopgirl with Martin writing, producing and starring. It tells the story of Mirabelle [played by Claire Danes] who oversees the rarely frequented glove counter at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. She is an artist struggling to keep up with even the minimum payment on her credit card and student loans. She keeps to herself until a rich, handsome fifty something named Ray Porter [Steve Martin] sweeps her off her feet. Simultaneously, Mirabelle is being pursued by Jeremy [Jason Schwartzman], a basic bachelor who’s not quite as cultured and successful as Ray.

Read our exclusive interview with Steve Martin on SuicideGirls.com.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

Johnny Depp always has been one of our favorite and best actors, but even he remembers his bad reputation. While we doing our interview a tray of glasses was dropped in another room with a loud crash. Johnny laughed and said, ““You saw me here. I couldn’’t have done it! I’’m going to get blamed for that.””

Even just using his voice in the stop-motion animated Corpse Bride, the power of Depp comes through. The movie is set in a 19th-century European village and follows the story of Victor [Johnny Depp], a young man who is whisked away to the underworld to wed a mysterious Corpse Bride [Helena Bonham Carter] – while his real bride, Victoria [Emily Watson], waits bereft in the land of the living.

Read our exclusive interview with Johnny Depp on SuicideGirls.com.