The business page headline for last year was More Bucks, Less Movies. The profit margin, it seems, comes from extra added attractions like 3-D surcharges. It's less about the content than the delivery system anymore, as all those folks in goofy 3-D glasses watching the big blue stars of "Avatar" can attest. - Jan. 7
It's probably time for Hollywood to give movies about sensitive adolescent dorks a rest. Likeable nerd-virgin heroes are so plentiful on movie screens, there ought to be a word for them: nerdgins. - Jan. 14
"I can sit in my apartment and do online seminars on Skype. I don't have any goals for myself. I don't see myself moving anywhere. I see myself doing yoga and swimming." - Best-selling author, inspirational speaker and Maui resident, Dr. Wayne Dyer - Jan. 28
Article Photos
Honorees Malin Akerman and Josh Radnor at last June’s Maui Film Festival at Wailea.
Courtesy of Maui Film Festival / RANDALL MICHELSON photo
At least when they play the Super Bowl, everyone knows the rules. By the end of Sunday afternoon - an occasion long overdue for official holiday recognition as Guys Day - everyone will know who won. When it comes to the Academy Awards, it's not that simple. - Feb. 4
Checking out the Super Bowl commercials is an annual tradition in this column, dating back before the mainstream media noticed that the ads were usually better than the game or rather, were the game, being played out for the hearts and minds and spending habits of those millions of viewers. This was the rare year that the game was the story. The New Orleans Saints won because they had more than a trophy on the line. Their stadium had been a disaster center. Their city had almost drowned. They played not for glory, but the way a seriously ill patient needs life-saving medicine. - Feb. 11
Whale watches are cetaceans' version of stupid human tricks: Hey guys, watch me make all those silly people run from one side of the boat to the other. - Feb. 18
The tropics are hardly the best place to acquaint yourself with the fine points of watching the Winter Olympics on TV. The last time it snowed on Haleakala, local families piled into their cars and headed up the mountain, bare feet in rubber slippers running into the patches of white. They built snowmen with stick arms on the hoods of their cars, like a parade of white tikis as they headed back down the mountain to the beach. - Feb. 25
"Aloha" isn't in most newspapers' arsenals of front-page headlines; it was exactly the right word in Tuesday's Maui News coverage of the tsunami that didn't happen. Natural disasters used to be known for bringing out the best in people. In the islands, they still do. - March 4
At Oscar time, Hollywood gets this schoolmarm mindset that equates movies with Brussels sprouts, heaping prizes on what it thinks is good for you, even, or especially, if you don't like the taste. All the prizes for "The Hurt Locker" - despite so obviously not being the people's choice -felt less like artistic recognition than a muddled stab at a political statement.- March 11
"The Ghost Writer" raises a worrisome question: in the choice between the American people and the multinational corporations creating the latest weapons systems before creating wars to use them in, just whose side is the CIA on? - March 25
When the job title is "extra, that should tell you something. You're not the star of the show. I didn't have the heart to share this with the thousands of folks who showed up at Kihei Charter School Saturday at the casting call for the new Adam Sandler-Jennifer Aniston comedy "Just Go With It." - April 1
It's luxurious to have spent every Easter weekend for the last 18 years at The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua. But there's more involved at the Celebration of the Arts. There are lessons to be learned. In this season of Easter and Passover and rejuvenation and renewal, I think of it as boot camp for your conscience. - April 8
Ancient mythology or not, gazillion-dollar budget or not, iconic stars like Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes or not, "Clash of the Titans" is the dumbest movie I've seen in a long time. - April 15
There's a big Hollywood comedy starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston that began several weeks of shooting in Wailea this week. This column is about the other movie that also began several weeks of shooting on Maui this week. It's called "Get a Job," it stars Willie K and Eric Gilliom, with a who's who of island music stars and other local notables. - April 22
As I drove the Hana Highway on my annual pilgrimage to the East Maui Taro Festival, I thought about Carl Lindquist. Carl had first shown me the ways of Hana almost 20 years ago. He had been killed with his wife, Rae, after their vehicle was caught in a flash flood as they drove home from Thanksgiving dinner at the Hotel Hana Maui last year. But as I blended into the happy swirl of people at the Taro Festival, I kept thinking I caught glimpses of Carl in the crowd. - April 29
"We've been having a really good time making this film. I shout, 'Action!' then sit back and have some fun. (My job) is keeping it all together, keeping everything in the same tone and just laughing." -Director Dennis Dugan from the Wailea set of the Adam Sandler-Jennifer Aniston comedy "Just Go With It" - May 9
The filmed-on-Maui episode of the hit sitcom "Modern Family" aired last night on ABC. Adam Sandler's "Just Go With It" and the Maui-grown "Get a Job" are still filming here this week. For hundreds of Mauians who have worked as extras on these shoots, it's not hard to spot movie stars among us these days. All they have to do is look in the mirror. - May 13
On essentially the last day shooting the Maui comedy "Get a Job," the pick-up band for the wedding scene included Wild Hawaiian Henry Kapono, Doobie Brother Pat Simmons, iconic rock drummer Mick Fleetwood and a guy who lives down the road named Willie Nelson. This whole project is unique testament to what can be accomplished with a little help from your friends. - May 20
Updates about Jennifer Aniston's on-set activities: followed up on tip of her eating dinner at Spago and what she ate/drank; spa visits at her resort, $300 followed up tips about possible off-resort visits to some bars and restaurants, $150 followed George Clooney and girlfriend on Kauai, focusing on engagement, $300 -Daily items on an invoice from a celebrity-magazine journalist following Jennifer Aniston while filming on Maui, submitted to The Maui News by accident - May 27
As he worked on the screenplay for "happythankyoumoreplease," actor-director Josh Radnor realized, "I didn't know what the movie was about." Eventually he found, "It's about gratitude, about making changes, about saying yes." - Radnor's "happythankyoumoreplease" went on to win the audience award for best drama at the Maui Film Festival at Wailea - June 10
You can get lost in his color patches, his lively brushstrokes and his abstract tendencies bending themselves into ordinary objects. But slyly grinning behind them is a great visual storyteller with "A Far Side" sense of humor. - Reviewing Galen Hansen's art exhibit at Schaefer International Gallery, June 17
"Everyone has a fantasy of becoming a rock star. I definitely did. And I got to live out my dream for a minute. We did the whole L.A. circuit, we put out an album nobody ever heard. So I went back to acting and decided to give it a last shot before going back to Toronto to finish school. But then it worked out, so I never went back." - Maui Film Festival luminary Malin Akerman, June 24
My Mainland trip for the last month was mostly about family - especially new granddaughter, Lili, who's been on the planet for four months; and my dad, Fred, who's been around for 94 years. Their names sound like a pair of vaudeville headliners, but they didn't exactly put on a show. - July 29
Fred made his final exit early Tuesday morning. He didn't have the chance to read the comments that came in from so many of you in response to last week's column. He didn't get to see the kindness, wisdom and feelings you shared. I think he would have appreciated them. - Aug. 5
Eat, pray blow something up. - Headline for review of "Eat Pray Love" and "The Expendables" - Aug. 19
The early scenes of "Piranha 3D" seem to be a public service announcement on the dangers of drinking tequila while wearing a bikini. The lesson here - the humbling motto that regularly brings me back to my senses - is Hey, What Do Critics Know? - Aug. 26
"The Last Exorcism" is one of those Hollywood no-budget wonders that find ingenious new ways of creeping out previously sane audiences. - Sept. 2
"This is a 10-year enterprise that's coming to fruition." - Hawaii Public Radio President Michael Titterton about progress bringing new public radio stream KIPO to Maui - Sept. 9
We weren't entertained by Keali'i Reichel's "Solo Sessions" concert so much as we were moved. We were touched. We were changed. The performance felt like the very reason the MACC had been built more than 15 years ago. For that night, he wasn't a performer so much as our kumu, our teacher. And funny, too. - Sept. 16
Hawaii Five - uh oh - Headline, Sept. 23
This weekend "The Social Network - a reimagining of the creation of Facebook - opens in movie theaters. Facebook is what? There are as many answers to that question as there are tens of thousands of Friends logging onto it every second - Sept. 30
Facebook is the coconut wireless on steroids. It's gossip harnessed to Google. There's no way that conventional media - especially those like newspapers, born in an age when people counted on horses and buggies to get them around - can compete. - Oct. 7
"We made the best film we could and look forward to sharing it with the world." - "Get a Job" star Eric Gilliom on the eve of the film's premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival in Honolulu - Oct. 14
Local talent Cyndi Mayo Davis, Lisa Griffiths, Jessica Griffiths and Derek Sakakura landed speaking roles in the footage shot on Lahaina's Front Street that opens Clint Eastwood's "Hereafter." Inspired by the tsunami that devastated portions of Indonesia in 2004, the terror is intensified for Maui audiences being so familiar with the settings in the wave's path. - Oct. 21
In our consumer economy, when your stuff turns against you, that's the scariest thing ever. - Reviewing "Paranormal Activity 2" - Oct. 28
Readers of books about Buddhism know Thich Nhat Hanh (it's pronounced tick nick than) as a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and poet who was once nominated for a Nobel Prize by Martin Luther King. The spell-check program on The Maui News computers isn't a reader of books about Buddhism. It renamed the humble monk Thick Neat Hank. - Nov. 18
Maui native Destin Daniel Cretton was awarded the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting earlier this month from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. "I was definitely not expecting to get it," said the 1996 Maui High graduate now finishing up his master's degree at San Diego State University. "I never expect anything to happen in my life." - Nov. 25.
Rated PG-13 (go figure), "Burlesque" is a very entertaining product of a mindset where naughty is a more potent concept than explicit, teasing is the point, and melodrama is as subtle as it gets. - Dec. 2
All humanity has been affected. There is no refuge, seemingly no escape as tiny pockets of individuals attempt to resist, but know resistance is futile. No, I'm not talking about "The Walking Dead," the new AMC series about life after a zombie outbreak that's being called the best new show on television. I'm talking about the profile of Mark Zuckerberg and the phenomenon he created - Facebook - that aired the same night on "60 Minutes." - Dec. 9
A stand-up comic before there was any such thing, a literary giant who spoke the language of the illiterate, a herder of shaggy dogs (even though he favored cats), a master of telling lies to speak the truth, he was the eternal riverboat pilot, gold-field prospector, unreliable newspaper reporter locked into eternal struggle with hypocrisy itself. -Reviewing Hal Holbrook's "Mark Twain Tonight!" - Dec. 16
Awards season is when we all get to celebrate cinema's best efforts of the year to portray this glorious mess called life we share with those larger-than-life patterns of light dancing across the screen. -Dec. 23
* Wishing you all the best of new years! Contact Rick Chatenever at scene@mauinews.com.
