Michael Madsen’s brooding charisma needed Tarantino to unlock it | Peter Bradshaw

The Reservoir Dogs and Donnie Brasco actor had a rare, sometimes scary power, as well as a winning self-awareness and levity Michael Madsen, star of Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill and Donnie Brasco, dies aged 67 Michael Madsen– a life in pictures Until 1992, when people heard Stuck in the Middle With You by Stealers Wheel on the radio, they might smile and nod and sing along to its catchy soft-rock tune and goofy Dylan-esque lyrics. But after 1992, with the release of Quentin Tarantino’s sensationally tense and violent crime movie Reservoir Dogs, the feelgood mood around that song forever darkened. That was down to an unforgettably scary performance by Michael Madsen, who has died at the age of 67. Stuck in the Middle, with its lyrics about being “so scared in case I fall off my chair”, was to be always associated with the image of Madsen, whom Tarantino made an icon of indie American movies, with his boxy black suit, sinister, ruined handsomeness and powerful physique running ...

‘They don’t want you to see the slave labor’: a new film goes inside Alabama’s prisons

New documentary The Alabama Solution exposes rampant state violence and inhumane conditions inside prisons

Floors streaked with blood, rat-infested cells, flooded hallways and routine beatings by officers – these are but some of the degrading conditions within Alabama state prisons revealed by leaked cellphone videos in a shocking, galvanizing new documentary that premiered at the Sundance film festival on Tuesday.

The Alabama Solution, directed by Andrew Jarecki (The Jinx) and Charlotte Kaufman, reports on the inhumane living conditions, forced labor and rampant officer violence against the state’s incarcerated population, as told by inmates who served as confidential, covert sources. The two-hour film, made over the course of six years, also documents prisoners’ longstanding efforts to improve conditions deemed “unconstitutional” by the US justice department in a 2020 report, under constant physical threat from prison management. Despite federal calls for prison reform, Alabama’s prisons currently operate at 200% capacity, the film notes, with only one-third of the required staff. The state’s prisons have the highest rates of murder, drug addiction and death in the country.

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