Word: shainberg
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus Directed by Steven Shainberg Picturehouse 1.5 Stars Move over, Martha Stewart—exotic is the new plain, and weird is the new normal. Unfortunately, each is proving that it can be just as boring as its predecessor. “Taking the center from the margins” seems to be the raison d’être of several of the best films produced in culture-war-America over the past year, from the spectacular “Brokeback Mountain” to the delightful “Little Miss Sunshine...
...What we must not ignore is the gross ineptitude of this film. As he previously demonstrated with Secretary, the director, Steven Shainberg, has a thoroughly nasty desire to degrade and humiliate female characters. This is combined with a truly tasteless eye for settings and d?cor, a staggering ignorance of nuance in performance and an apparent belief that the business of art is to repel rather than to seduce. Or rather to repel and then tack on a little spurious uplift as he finally does here. Another way of putting that is that he is precisely the opposite of Diane Arbus...
...before loud pops turned anxious heads to listen for gunshots. Crashes after the bangs signaled instead the unmistakable sound of storefront windows being smashed along Beale and Main streets. Moans went up that something was wrong. Young marauders ran through overmatched marshals to attack storefronts ahead of the march--Shainberg's department store, York Arms Company, Perel and Lowenstein's--sometimes needing multiple blows to break the heavy plate glass. A helicopter bulletin at 11:24 a.m. reported 15 young people destroying a parked car a few hundred yards to the side, and marshals relayed shouted commands to halt...
...film cast that includes a werewolf woman and a boy with a memorable birthmark, it helps to have a traditional beauty in the lead. NICOLE KIDMAN is playing Diane Arbus in Fur, which director Steven Shainberg calls his "fairy tale for adults," a fictional take on three months in the provocative photographer's life. The Bewitched star's "subtlety and mysteriousness" (not, this time, her nose) channel Arbus, says Shainberg, who directed Secretary. Arbus was most famous for her photos of sideshow freaks. Did we mention that Robert Downey Jr. also stars...
...awaiting punishment. He (James Spader) is a sadist who sometimes lacks the courage of his convictions. But that's all right with his employee. She has enough affection for pain and humiliation for both of them. It may not be quite so all right with viewers, though. Writer-director Shainberg seems to be aiming for a dark comedy, but mostly his movie is coy without being funny, ugly without being truly transgressive, stupid when it needs to be smart...
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