Brianland

. The Jerry Garcia-directed film “The Grateful Dead Movie” will be back in theaters for one night (Thurs Aug 14th) — and for *the first time* it’s been remastered in 4K for IMAX and remixed for their high-end surround-sound speakers.  (!) Revisiting the film, here’s some deets you may not know … or knew and […]

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  I’ve been on a James Mangold deep-dive recently and this guy needs to be in any conversation about the greatest directors working today. He’s averaged a new film roughly every two years since his first low-budget indie (Heavy) in 1995, which won a Special Jury Recognition for Directing at Sundance and kind-of jump-started his […]

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  I recently stumbled on a Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA) interview about Boogie Nights from 1997 and began revisiting of his work. I’ve now seen all of his nine written-&-directed films, most more than once, and he’s certainly up there with the greatest of the active mid-career contemporary filmmakers. Since Boogie Nights he’s been compared […]

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Highlights of Golden Nights    By the laws of physics, taking a trip while you’re on a trip exponentially amplifies the experience. Here’s some of the peaks in the weeks with the freaks . . . The Black Dot “Sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it […]

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. I’d never given Las Vegas a moment’s thought in my life.  I checked in with some cultural colleagues I’ve been jamming the arts with for 40+ years and none of us can remember the city ever coming up for any reason.  In fact, it was kind of looked down upon as this superficial wasteland […]

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  This is a scene-by-scene breakdown of the Dylan biopic masterpiece A Complete Unknown co-written and directed by James Mangold.  Besides being one of the best living filmmakers, Mangold was undoubtably tapped because of how well he handled the Oscar-winning Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line. After Jeff Rosen and Bob’s management team optioned the […]

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On this weekend 17 years ago — in the heat of the Democratic primary of 2008 between Hillary & Obama — I started BrianHassett.com. Every month since then for 17 years I’ve written at least one new piece for the site. “17” has been a weird number that’s followed me around my whole life from […]

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The Day I Thanked Arthur Miller   One of the nice things about living in Manhattan — you often bump into and sometimes get to talk to really smart people on the sidewalk.  When they’re famous, mostly you just nod acknowledgment and smile — like seeing Robin Williams walking and playing with his son on […]

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