Caryn James

Seth and Stefon's Big SNL Wedding, and Iran's Reply to Argo (Video)

  • By Caryn James
  • |
  • May 19, 2013 11:35 AM
  • |
  • 0 Comments
Stefon -- the guide to New York's hottest, most twisted clubs - was never my favorite Bill Hader character, but he grew on me. And since last night's SNL was Hader's last, it was inevitable that Stefon would pop up on Weekend Update. But who could have  guessed that, tired of his unrequited love for Seth Meyers, Stefon would leave to marry another man, only to have Meyers run after him like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate? Take a look at Stefon's big wedding, with Amy Poehler and Anderson Cooper.

Watch Ben Affleck and Bill Hader's SNL Promo

  • By Caryn James
  • |
  • May 15, 2013 1:10 PM
  • |
  • 1 Comment
Before Ben Affleck became Mr. Big-Time-Oscar-Winning-Director ... oh, never mind, that is so not his persona even now. Here he is in a promo for the season finale of SNL, proving he still has his comic timing. And here's Bill Hader (who will not be returning to the show next season) asking Affleck if he made up that country Iran in Argo.

Good and Bad Surprises in Baz Luhrmann's 'The Great Gatsby'

  • By Caryn James
  • |
  • May 6, 2013 10:26 PM
  • |
  • 4 Comments
Novel? What novel? I went into Baz Luhrmann's 3-D, Jay Z-soundtracked The Great Gatsby assuming that the kindest, smartest approach would be to forget there was ever a book  behind it. Surprisingly, the film is more attached to F. Scott Fitzgerald than I expected, and that turns out to be its downfall.

Two Other Gatsbys, Two Better Nicks

  • By Caryn James
  • |
  • May 6, 2013 10:24 PM
  • |
  • 3 Comments
The Great Gatsby is both irresistible to filmmakers and notoriously hard to adapt. All that color and glamour comes crashing up against the eloquence of Fitzgerald's prose and the ineffability of Gatsby's dreams.  Baz Luhrmann's new version gives us a wondrous performance by Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby and a dreadful, flat performance by Tobey Maguire as the narrator, Nick Carraway. (You can find my review here.)   But take a look at two better Nicks and one good, maligned Gatsby:

Watch Comedy From Obama, O'Brien, Spielberg at the White House Correspondents Dinner

  • By Caryn James
  • |
  • April 28, 2013 11:59 AM
  • |
  • 0 Comments
This year's White House Correspondents' Dinner gave us a few insights about comedy:

Underrated At the Tribeca Film Festival : 'Almost Christmas'

  • By Caryn James
  • |
  • April 28, 2013 11:02 AM
  • |
  • 0 Comments
The new film from Phil Morrison (the director of Junebug) has not been embraced by most critics at the Tribeca Film Festival (actually, most of them hated it) but I so disagree. Almost Christmas is one of my favorites from this year's festival, a thoroughly fresh dark comedy - more sly and absurd than laugh-out-loud - with Paul Giamatti and Paul Rudd as down-on-their-luck Canadians who come to New York to sell Christmas trees for a month.

Tribeca Review: 'The Patience Stone' Is a Closing-Weekend Standout

  • By Caryn James
  • |
  • April 26, 2013 9:15 AM
  • |
  • 0 Comments
As the Tribeca Film Festival heads into its final weekend, there's still time to catch one of this year's best films: The Patience Stone, Atiq Rahimi's eloquent drama about an Afghan woman in a war-torn village, keeping watch over her once-belligerent, now comatose husband. The plot turns on a question that gets to the heart of the problem facing oppressed women everywhere: left alone to care for herself and her two daughters, how can a woman whose every move had formerly been controlled by her husband possibly fend for herself?

'The Reluctant Fundamentalist': Mira Nair's Mirror of American-Pakistani Relations

  • By Caryn James
  • |
  • April 22, 2013 2:25 PM
  • |
  • 0 Comments
In a Lahore cafe, the Pakistan-born, Princeton-educated hero of Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist tells an American reporter about his reaction to the World Trade Center attacks. Changez  (Riz Ahmed) was as horrified as anyone – but at first there was an instinctive smile, simple "awe," as he puts it, at the audacity of "arrogance brought low." The journalist, Bobby Lincoln, (Liev Schreiber) responds with a glare of pure, restrained  fury.

Francois Ozon's Psychological Cat-and-Mouse, 'In the House'

  • By Caryn James
  • |
  • April 19, 2013 9:00 AM
  • |
  • 0 Comments

Brandon Cronenberg's 'Antiviral' and What We Know About Fame

  • By Caryn James
  • |
  • April 15, 2013 9:01 AM
  • |
  • 0 Comments
Paris Hilton is all but forgotten, the word "Kardashian" long ago became a late-night comedy punchline, and it's hard to remember a high-profile political campaign that did not turn on a candidate's movie-worthy charisma. So why would anyone think that noticing our obsession with celebrity culture counts as something profound? Or even something to say?  For all its surface flash  - and some of it really dazzles  -  that sense of rediscovering the celebrity wheel is what makes Brandon Cronenberg's Antiviral a sleek but vapid thriller. (It's in theaters and on VOD now.)

Follow Caryn James

Email Updates

Most "Liked"

  • 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist': Mira ...
  • Tribeca Review: 'The Patience Stone' ...
  • Watch Comedy From Obama, O'Brien, Spielberg ...