1) Matthew H. Bernstein discusses Screening a Lynching at Decatur Library.
2) Beauty from the Beast continues at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center Gallery.
3) The Balkans and Abby Go Go play 529.
4) Brian Ray discusses Through the Pale Door at Opal Gallery.
5) The Hurt Locker continues in area theaters.
(Photo by Don Chambers)
FIRE PITS: Jeremy Renner as Staff Sergeant William James
In his landmark poem “The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot wrote, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” In her thrilling film The Hurt Locker, director Kathryn Bigelow shows you fear in a pile of rubble or a beat-up old car. Location is everything in The Hurt Locker: On the streets of Baghdad in 2004, something as innocuous as a pile of trash could conceal an insurgent’s hidden explosive.
Screenwriter and journalist Mark Boal was embedded with members of the U.S. Army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad in 2004, and The Hurt Locker’s fresh perspective and attention to terrifying detail give the film undeniable authority. There’s never been a war movie quite like it. Bigelow crafts set pieces that draw the audience’s attention as taut as a tripwire, while the off-duty scenes suggest the job’s pressures can turn soldiers into ticking time bombs.
Continue reading “The Hurt Locker detonates explosive thrills”
(Image courtesy Summit Entertainment)
In Kathryn Bigelow’s thrilling war film The Hurt Locker, Jeremy Renner creates one of the most iconic characters of 2009. As staff sergeant William James, a bomb disposal expert in 2004 Baghdad, Renner proves macho, heroic and also terrifyingly reckless, even when he wears a protective “bomb suit” that makes him look like a 19th-century deep sea diver. Following starring roles in films such as Dahmer and 28 Weeks Later…, as well as ABC’s short-lived “The Unusuals,” The Hurt Locker is sure to make Renner’s career, well, blow up.
The filming took three months in Amman, Jordan, in summer. How did you prepare for the role, and how did you prepare for the climate?
You can’t really prepare for climate like that. Before we went, Kathryn gave me these brochures that said things like “Jordan! The Dead Sea! Scuba Diving!” We didn’t shoot at those places. The shooting was awful — you can’t escape the sun. I was on the film for about a year before it started, so I had a lot of time for research. I went to Fort Irwin with some other guys and did some military training, mostly with EOD [explosive ordnance disposal]. There were a few experts who allowed me to pick their brain and ask a lot of questions. I was like a sponge. All they did was speak in acronyms, like “HEs.” And I’d be asking “What? Oh, high explosives.”
Continue reading “Speakeasy with actor Jeremy Renner”
(Photo by Greg Gorman/Summit Entertainment)
