Ray Pride

Or, "Fast and the Furious: Hollywood Heft." There is an image in Chris Paine's very personal polemic, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" that rises above everything else in its detective tale-telling of how a range of forces quashed a promising electric car marketed in California (1996-2003), a helicopter shot that captures a vista which recurs in Don DeLillo's novels, such as "Underworld": a desert strewn with the waste of industrial civilization, the parched sands in this case the dying place of the last of General Motors' recalled and suppressed EV-1 electric car. It's the most devastating, most cinematic instant in a movie made in the face of personal affront: Paine is a former EV-1 lessee, and became a filmmaker in order to trace how a promising, non-gas-electric hybrid technology was abandoned. It's an advocacy doc, to be sure--it's narrated by Martin Sheen--but the entertaining, provocative, angry-making result is fueled by facts and fury. 92m.

"Who Killed the Electric Car?" opens Friday.

(2006-06-30)

Also by Ray Pride

Action-chase-slapstick whatever
Weird and weirdly likable, "Wassup Rockers," the latest teen-centric movie from photographer and filmmaker Larry Clark, is a sweet-hearted comedy (with dark interludes) refashioning "The Warriors" and John Cheever's "The Swimmer" with a pack of punk-rock-playing South Central skate kids whose expedition to skateboard in Beverly Hills turns into a journey home
(2006-06-27)

Tip of the Week
Olivier Assayas is one of my favorite filmmakers: the clean, assured way he edits and shoots his movies (in collaboration with cinematographer Eric Gautier) is dazzling even in the smallest moments, flurries of gesture and observation that can be electric in their instinctual grace, jittery, sudden, successive motions that send chills of emotion down the spine
(2006-06-27)

Tip of the Week
The great, graceful Taiwanese film master Hou Hsiao-hsien's 2005 "Three Times" works wistful magic in three stories played by the same pair of actors
(2006-06-21)

With Withnail
The wry, witty and pungent "Wah-Wah," Richard E. Grant's debut as a writer-director, should surprise no one who's seen his performances in movies like "Withnail & I" or his quippy, gossipy film diaries
(2006-06-13)

Tip of the Week
(2006-06-13)

Tip of the Week
(2006-06-06)

Edifice complexities
(2006-06-06)

Patriotic Gore
(2006-05-30)

Tip of the Week
(2006-05-30)

Summer Guide Movies: June
(2006-05-24)

Summer Guide Movies: July
(2006-05-24)

Summer Guide Movies: August
(2006-05-24)

about Newcitychicago | about Newcity magazine | advertising | privacy policy | FAQ | employment