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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Los Angeles Times and Morning Edition film critic Ken Turan reviews "Divergent," a sci-fi adventure about a world in which people are divided into groups representing a particular virtue — bravery, for example. It is based on the young adult novels by Veronica Roth.
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Book fans can be picky about how Hollywood treats their favorite reads. How does a new movie of Marc Helprin's Winter's Tale fare? (This story originally aired on Morning Edition on Feb. 17.)
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Wadjda tells the story of a 10-year-old Saudi girl determined to have a bicycle in a culture that frowns on female riding. Writer-director Haifaa al-Mansour says she wanted to put a human face on the situation of women in Saudi Arabia, where driving is not permitted.
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Kenneth Turan reviews the film Total Recall, based on a story by Philip K. Dick and a remake of another film from the 1990, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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A Chilean, a Swede and a Serbian cartel collide in a taut actioner set amid the Swedish drug trade. Kenneth Turan says the impressive skills of director Daniel Espinosa, who has a gift for building audience tension, make for a great summer thriller. (Recommended)
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With a movie title like Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, it's no mystery what the plot is. Young Mr. Lincoln is tutored by an experienced vampire killer and goes into training with his trusty ax. He bears a special grudge against vampires because they killed his mother.
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Roman Polanski's deliciously unsettling new film, The Ghost Writer, is a dark pearl of a movie, made with the flair and precision of a director suddenly returned to the height of his powers. Kenneth Turan says it could spark a creative renaissance for the controversial filmmaker.
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The new movie Coraline is the story of a little girl who follows a secret passage into an alternate universe. It is the first stop-motion animated film to be conceived and shot in 3-D.
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Tell No One is a French thriller that was a hit in Europe, but it had a hard time finding distribution in the United States. Now it's been out for some weeks, and its audience is growing through strong word-of-mouth.
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TV's beloved secret-agent spoof gets a big-screen update — but like its bumbling hero, the film is constantly trying to be something it's not. The result: an unfunny comedy spliced with an unexciting spy caper.