Kenneth Turan
Kenneth Turan is the film critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR's Morning Edition, as well as the director of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. He has been a staff writer for the Washington Post and TV Guide, and served as the Times' book review editor.
A graduate of Swarthmore College and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, he is the co-author of Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke. He teaches film reviewing and non-fiction writing at USC and is on the board of directors of the National Yiddish Book Center. His most recent books are the University of California Press' Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made and Never Coming To A Theater Near You, published by Public Affairs Press.
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The list of nominees for the 80th Academy Awards are announced. No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood both earn eight nominations, leading the field.
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There Will Be Blood, a new film starring Daniel Day-Lewis, is a morality play set in the early days of California's oil boom. It involves the unholy trinity of oil, money and religion.
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Children in Afghanistan are at the center of The Kite Runner, the film adapted from the bestselling book by Khalid Hosseni. Like the novel, the film breaks into two parts: childhood friendship and betrayal in pre-war Afghanistan, then how that relationship changes in adulthood.
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The film Atonement, based on the novel by Ian McEwan, is a rich, old-fashioned love story and a potent meditation on the power of fiction to destroy and create.
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Based on Jean-Dominique Bauby's 1997 memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is an unexpectedly funny film. It was written after a stroke left Bauby almost completely paralyzed.
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The film, about an animated princess thrust unprepared into the gritty reality of New York City, is what happens when wised-up meets happily-ever-after. Amy Adams is the indispensable star. -
Set in Texas in the 1980's, the film No Country for Old Men narrates a chase for stolen drug money. It's the latest from brother filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, whose films have always had violence as a theme. But this new movie is darker and more violent than ever before.
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Dan in Real Life is a rare romantic comedy aimed at adults. The Dan of the title is a newspaper advice columnist stumped by his own life. He's mourning the death of his wife and raising three rambunctious daughters who are growing up faster than he'd like.
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A fall full of films with post-Sept. 11 themes kicks off with In the Valley of Elah. Director Paul Haggis takes on a subject rarely embraced by Hollywood: the pernicious effect war has on the young people we send to fight.
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Western movies used to be thick on the land, but they've become scarce at the multiplex. A new one, 3:10 to Yuma, is out now. It is a remake of the 1957 classic, and it stars Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.
