Josh Bell
Story Archive
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Film
A rote book report
Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2008 It’s hard to believe that a movie whose first half is all about passionate, semi-taboo sex featuring a frequently nude Kate Winslet, and whose second half is all about bitter recriminations during and following Nazi war-crimes trials, could be so dull.
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The year in hating
Monday, Dec. 29, 2008 Tony Macklin, film historian and author of the book Voices From the Set, joins Josh to count down their respective lists of the top 10 movies of 2008.
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Film
The Vegas Oscars
Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008 The Las Vegas Film Critics Society (whose members include this writer) has announced the winners of this year’s Sierra Awards, representing its picks for the best in film in 2008. They're like the Oscars, only less people care.
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Reviews
Valkyrie
Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008 The one major obstacle to getting completely wrapped up in Bryan Singer’s World War II thriller Valkyrie is, unfortunately, its star, the much-maligned (lately, at least) Tom Cruise
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Film
2008 in movies: A critical dialogue between Mike D'Angelo and Josh Bell
Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008 Two Weekly critics discuss the year in films.
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Reviews
I've Loved You So Long
Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008 Sometimes a great performance can save a mediocre movie, and sometimes even the most accomplished bit of acting flounders in the face of awkward writing and direction. The latter is mostly the case in I’ve Loved You So Long.
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Reviews
Calculated warmth
Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is full of big Hollywood grandeur, with a movie-star lead performance from Brad Pitt, yet it’s also as controlled and painstakingly crafted as any of Fincher’s past efforts.
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Oscar-bait extravaganza
Friday, Dec. 19, 2008 Jeffrey K. Howard of KVBC Channel 3 and Vegas Film Critic joins Josh to chat about this week’s releases Slumdog Millionaire, Yes Man and Seven Pounds, as well as upcoming Christmas openings The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Doubt and Valkyrie.
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Film
Seven Pounds
Thursday, Dec. 18, 2008 Relentlessly tugging on your heartstrings like a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, Seven Pounds is manipulative treacle of the worst kind.
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Film
Yes Man
Thursday, Dec. 18, 2008 Yes Man is far from a great movie, but it represents the first time that Jim Carrey has been likeable onscreen in years, following his last dismal attempt at comedy with 2005’s Fun With Dick and Jane and last year’s terrible thriller The Number 23.
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Keanu Reeves still can't act, but Van Damme can
Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2008 Roger Erik Tinch, art and online director for the CineVegas Film Festival, joins Josh to chat about new theatrical releases The Day the Earth Stood Still, JCVD and Dark Streets, plus Mamma Mia! and The House Bunny on DVD.
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Planet Hollywood
Reznor melds music and spectacle in Vegas
Monday, Dec. 15, 2008 “This is the last performance of this band,” Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor said ominously toward the end of NIN’s December 13 performance at Planet Hollywood’s Theatre for the Performing Arts. This was indeed the last performance for NIN’s mind-blowing visual set-up, a light show so technically advanced that it recently got a feature write-up in Wired magazine.
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Film
Dark Streets
Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008 Lavishly styled but narratively lax, Dark Streets slides by just enough on its beautiful images and sumptuous soundtrack to be worth seeing.
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Music
Miranda Lambert
Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008 It took a little longer for her to connect, but Miranda Lambert eventually had the older post-NFR crowd nearly as enthusiastic as the teen-girl fans who held up signs in Primm.
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Film
JCVD
Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008 Jean-Claude Van Damme has spent the last 20 years convincing audiences that he can’t act, so the fact that he shows some vulnerability and emotional range in JCVD qualifies as a revelation.
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Attacks of the biopics
Friday, Dec. 5, 2008 Filmmaker and comedian Jason Harris of the Frat Boys of Comedy joins Josh to talk about new releases Milk, Cadillac Records and Punisher: War Zone, plus The Dark Knight on DVD and top picks for movies now in theaters.
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Film
Punisher: War Zone
Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008 The third attempt to kick-start a franchise based on the Marvel Comics Punisher character, Punisher: War Zone is probably the best of the bunch, but that isn’t saying much.
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Music
Scott Weiland
Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008 Scott Weiland is known as the frontman for two successful straight-ahead rock bands, Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver, so it’s no surprise that the best songs on his second solo album, Happy in Galoshes, are the simplest, most straightforward rockers.
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Entertainment
Tropicana Cinemas reborn (again)
Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008 The Tropicana Cinemas, at Tropicana and Pecos, has reopened its doors yet again as of Friday, November 28, this time under the aegis of Regency Theatres, a California-based chain.
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television
Godfather of the Gulf
Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008 Chronicling the rise and fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, House of Saddam is remarkably akin to a cinematic gangster saga, like Goodfellas.
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National Finals Rodeo
Country cavalcade
Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008 Vegas isn’t getting any arena-filling superstars this year, but these acts are just about at the top of the genre, and could easily attract audiences with or without the rodeo.
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Film
Cadillac Records
Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008 Cadillac Records, the heavily streamlined and fictionalized story of influential Chess Records, is like Dreamgirls lite, a flat, bland, lifeless version of that lavish musical about the rise of another important record label (Motown).
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Music
Guns N' Roses
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008 Seventeen years after the last GNR album of original material, and at least 13 years after megalomaniacal frontman Axl Rose (the only remaining original band member) began recording it, Chinese Democracy has arrived, perhaps inevitably, as an anticlimax.
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Reviews
Let the Right One In
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008 Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In arrives on a tide of positive film-festival buzz as the movie that unites horror fans and high-minded cinephiles.
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Film
The Dukes
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008 Veteran character actor Robert Davi co-writes, produces, directs and stars in this meager, low-key dramedy about a pair of washed-up doo-wop singers (Davi, Palminteri) who decide to plan a heist to turn their fortunes around.
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Film
Bolt
Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008 Hollywood canine Bolt (voiced by Travolta) doesn’t realize that he’s not really the superpowered dog he plays on a popular TV show.
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Film
Fangst
Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008 Twilight is all about a perverse kind of wish-fulfillment: Average teenager Bella Swan falls madly in love with perfect, ageless vampire Edward Cullen, who sweeps her off her feet (often quite literally), protects her from harm and loves her unconditionally.
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Music
Hinder
Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008 Thanks to their dreadful, inescapable power ballad “Lips of an Angel,” Hinder have been lumped in with the grim post-grunge likes of Nickelback, Puddle of Mudd and 3 Doors Down.
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Entertainment
R.I.P. TRL
Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008 MTV managed to pack Times Square one more time this past Sunday for the last episode of TRL, dubbed Total Finale Live, although nostalgia was pretty much the only reason for anyone to show up.
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Bond-a-rama
Friday, Nov. 14, 2008 Las Vegas Weekly associate editor and certified James Bond expert T.R. Witcher joins Josh to chat about the new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, as well as the best films in the franchise.
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Film
Spacebabes, aliens, pimps, prostitutes and wounded soldiers
Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008 Not known for its film making scene, Las Vegas has been responsible for at least five films released to DVD in the past year.
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Entertainment
More helpings of "Soup"
Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008 Snarking on pop culture has become a national pastime, and its TV standard-bearer is The Soup (E!, Fridays, 10 p.m.), hosted by comedian Joel McHale.
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Film
Role Models
Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008 Role Modelsis a thoroughly audience-friendly movie, a predictable, formulaic buddy comedy with a feel-good message.
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Music
Queen + Paul Rodgers
Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008 We’d all like for our most beloved rock stars to age gracefully; barring that, they can always die young, leaving a body of work largely uncompromised because it was cut off abruptly.
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television
The future is now
Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008 By the time we get to 2017, we may indeed be forcing convicted criminals to outrun sadistic gladiators with souped-up chain saws on national TV.
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Film
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008 Melman becomes the giraffes’ doctor, Gloria is seduced by a hippo lothario, Marty blends in with the zebra herd, Julien tries to become king of the savannah, and the penguins get busy fixing the plane.
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Not bad, if you like that sort of thing
Friday, Oct. 31, 2008 Fellow Las Vegas Weekly film critic Matthew Scott Hunter joins Josh to discuss new theatrical releases Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Changeling and RocknRolla, plus Get Smart and Transsiberian on DVD.
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Music
Pink
Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008 Funhouse, Pink’s fifth album, opens with “So What,” a catchy, upbeat party tune about heading out for a night on the town. It’s also about giving the middle finger to haters, gossips and her ex-husband, motocross dude Carey Hart.
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Cops and robber barons
Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008 UNLV Adjunct Professor of Sociology Katy Gilpatric, founder of Movies That Matter and Vegas Arthouse, joins Josh to chat about new theatrical releases Pride and Glory, Flow: For Love of Water and High School Musical 3: Senior Year.
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Film
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008 The good news for fans of the series is that everything about it makes the transition pretty much intact; the bad news for everyone else is that everything about it makes the transition pretty much intact.
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Noise
AC/DC
Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008 It’s a little absurd to think that it took eight years for AC/DC to crank out Black Ice, since it sounds like it was created by a particularly adept AC/DC-simulating computer.
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Film
Police story
Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008 Constructed almost entirely out of cop-drama clichés, Pride and Glory is a meat-and-potatoes thriller with very little meat (it does at one point feature a potato used as a silencer, though).
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Film
Flow: For Love of Water
Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008 Like a lot of advocacy documentaries, Flow takes on an important issue in the broadest manner possible, making sweeping, scary statements about dangers facing the world while offering up few answers.
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Forget Tim McGraw and Faith Hill - check out Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert
Saturday, Oct. 18, 2008 Are Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert the new Tim McGraw and Faith Hill? Like that superstar married couple, Shelton and Lambert are a pair of romantically involved (though not married) country singers mounting a co-headlining tour to appeal to their overlapping audiences.
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Vote for Stone
Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008 As election fever kicks into high gear, Las Vegas Weekly Managing Editor Ken Miller joins Josh to chat about Oliver Stone’s W., now in theaters, along with Sex Drive, plus The Incredible Hulk and The Strangers on DVD.
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Music
Lucinda Williams
Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008 Ever since her classic 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Lucinda Williams has been getting more and more experimental with her sound.
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television
Look away
Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008 Successful TV shows based on movies tend to forge their own identities to such a degree that people forget the movies even existed; recent examples include Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Friday Night Lights. Starz's new series based on the movie Crash, however, lives up to its name a little too closely.
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Film
Sex Drive
Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008 A dude in a giant doughnut costume with a big dildo stuck on it. A sarcastic Amish guy who parties with Fall Out Boy and fixes cars.
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television
"Woke me the F up"
Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008 For a long time Las Vegas filmmaker Zak Bagans thought ghosts were "bullshit." But after a paranormal wake up call he is now chasing ghosts for a living, and not just the friendly ones that go "boo."
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Hating for two
Friday, Oct. 10, 2008 Tony Macklin, film historian and author of the book Voices From the Set, joins Josh to hate on theatrical releases Body of Lies, The Express and The Duchess, plus Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on DVD.