Biography
John Beifuss worked at The Memphis Press-Scimitar from 1981 until it closed on Oct. 31, 1983; the next day he walked down two flights of stairs and began working at The Commercial Appeal. He was born in Chicago and is a graduate of White Station High School and Northwestern University. He sold his first story to “Famous Monsters of Filmland” magazine.-
Playing 'The Grace Card' no stretch for activist Louis Gossett Jr.
Published 10/23/2009 at midnight
Gossett Jr. is working here on a faith-based feature that could establish Memphis as a base for Christian-themed filmmaking.
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Film Review: Cashing in down on the farm
Published 05/24/2013 at 1:10 p.m.
“At Any Price” casts Dennis Quaid as Henry Whipple, a big-business family farmer and salesman of genetically modified corn seeds. Like the stereotype of a used-car dealer, this modern farmer is so slick and insincere that he literally slicks his ...
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Film Review: Faster and Furiouser
Published 05/24/2013 at 12:32 p.m.
Vin Diesel and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson are so pumped up, so anatomically inflated and unlikely that when they have a confrontation in “Fast & Furious 6,” it’s like watching a pair of unmoored Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons bump ...
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Fest celebrates pedal power
Published 05/22/2013 at 9:47 p.m.
You might say it’s bike by popular demand.
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Malco Ridgeway adds grill, fryer to credits
Published 05/21/2013 at 5:53 p.m.
Chew on this, movie lovers: The Malco Ridgeway Four is being “rebranded” as the Malco Ridgeway Cinema Grill.
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Memphis' Bill Kendall: eccentric champion of art cinema
Published 05/17/2013 at 7:16 p.m. 1 Comment
Fearless and flamboyant, the late William Kendall was an outspoken champion of art cinema and gay pride at a time when both concepts were met with suspicion or even hostility by most Memphians.
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Movie Review: 'Black Rock,' red blood
Published 05/16/2013 at 1:45 p.m.
Dishonorably discharged male War on Terror vets menace attractive female campers in “Black Rock,” a photogenic Maine-set shocker that seems to have been motivated by a desire to craft a commercial thriller with an indie aesthetic — and budget.
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Movie Review: Coming of age in post-Nazi Germany
Published 05/16/2013 at 12:55 p.m.
“Lore” is a coming-of-age story in an extreme context. The title character, Hannelore (Saskia Rosendahl), a pretty teenager, is the daughter of Nazis, forced to become a surrogate mother to the three siblings she leads through the Black Forest after ...
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Movie Review: Modern India is born in 'Midnight's Children'
Published 05/16/2013 at 12:49 p.m.
Sprawling, even meandering, the 146-minute movie version of Salman Rushdie’s 1981 Booker Prize-winning novel “Midnight’s Children” is faithful to its source to a fault — probably because Rushdie himself wrote the script, with director Deepa Mehta.
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Film Review: A horror action movie to make you quake
Published 05/10/2013 at 3 a.m.
Poor Ariel. He’s talking to hotties in a late-night dance club in Valparaíso, Chile, when an earthquake hits, crushing a hostess before he even can get her number.
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Comedy provides sitcom-style laughs
Published 05/10/2013 at 3 a.m.
“Peeples” is straight-up sitcom, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
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