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    • Latest Stories

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    • Vicious Circle: John Whitney and the Military Origins of Early CGI

      March 15, 2023

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      March 5, 2023

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  • John Whitney

    Animation · Animators · Designers · Experimental & Underground

    0

    Vicious Circle: John Whitney and the Military Origins of Early CGI

    • March 15, 2023

    John Whitney himself envisioned nothing more and nothing less for the future of CGI than a union of space and time: “Time has become visual.” But all film deals in[…]

  • Stella Stevens

    Actors & Personalities · Interviews

    0

    The Ballad of Stella Stevens: An Interview

    • March 5, 2023

    In which Stella tells all — or at least most

  • James Bond Lacan

    Philosophy · Theory · Thrillers & Action · Uncategorized

    0

    The Unconscious with Bond and Lacan: Definition by Deviation

    • March 1, 2023

    This article argues that the paradox of James Bond’s character (that he accords with the idea he represents precisely by deviating from it) is central to a Lacanian understanding of[…]

  • Amélie

    Comedy · Drama · French Cinema

    0

    Amélie, or, Only the Beginning

    • February 23, 2023

    Amélie brings life to the unseen. * * * Talk with someone about a piece of art, and they’ll tell you about themselves. Let me share my thoughts on Amélie,[…]

Most Recent

Helen Slater

Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Feminism · Indies · Interviews · SF & Fantasy

0

The Secret of Her Success: An Interview with Helen Slater

  • February 16, 2023

For me, on Supergirl, I was 100% in. It was the biggest opportunity that ever happened to me, and the process of making the film was very nourishing. I think[…]

frontier operas

Colonialism · Historical & Epic · Music & Musicals · Myth and Archetype · Native Americans · Westerns

0

Horse Operas and Real Operas: Melodramatic Reflections and Refutations of the Turner Thesis

  • February 9, 2023

The handful of “frontier operas” we’ll consider therefore propose an unusual dialectic of both aesthetics and ideology. What might occur when male Western heroes – traditionally stoic and pragmatic –[…]

More

Ida Lupino

Actors & Personalities · Directors · Drama · Women in Film

0

Ida Lupino: Demon Mother Night

  • February 4, 2023

“[H]er favorite expression of strained intensity would be less quickly relieved by a merciful death than by Ex-Lax.”

Dennis Nyback,

DIY · Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Film Culture · Impresarios · Outsiders · Programmers

0

Unsinkable Natural-Born Showman Dennis Nyback Dies at 69: A Testimonial by an Irritating Friend

  • January 29, 2023

He told me about when his piano player canceled out of a silent movie performance. “I walked outside during the kiddie matinee and saw some young people loading musical instruments[…]

Lucky McKee May

Body Horror · Horror · Mumblecore · Romance

0

Lucky McKee’s May and the Retelling of Frankenstein for the Indie Rom-Com Era

  • January 22, 2023

Not only does May challenge the tropes of mumblecore and indie-rom com movies, but it also retells elements of Frankenstein, offering a female protagonist who is both monster and monster-maker.[…]

Terence Davies Benediction

Biopic · Directors · Experimental & Underground · War · Writers & Critics

0

Memory, Trauma, and Visualising Poetry in Terence Davies’s Benediction

  • January 15, 2023

I’m not interested in what happened next; I’m interested in what happens emotionally next. It’s like memory. Memory isn’t linear. It’s cyclical. A tiny thing can be the thing that’s[…]

Barbarian

Horror · Women in Film

0

Rate Your Hunch: Women and Intuition in Barbarian

  • January 10, 2023

Hinting at women’s complicity in a film plotted around men’s violent treatment of women is, well, ballsy. That Cregger’s script doesn’t delve into the larger cultural conditioning and structures that[…]

Billy Wilder

Comedy · Communism and Socialism · Directors · Drama · Eastern European · Russia · War · Writers & Critics

0

Hungarian Plays into American Movies: Billy Wilder’s Five Graves to Cairo and One, Two, Three

  • January 5, 2023

Billy Wilder turned to these two plays because they offered the situations, structure, and characters that would allow his imagination to flower and create contemporary stories – a patriotic military[…]

Morvern Callar

Crime · Drama · Women in Film

0

Bitches Brew: On Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar (2002)

  • December 30, 2022

Ramsay uses the distinct qualities of cinema, images and sound, to immerse you in the psychic space of her characters – and what an uncommonly beautiful space it is. It’s[…]

Do the Right Thing

African American · Comedy · Drama · Eco · Race · Urban Conflict

0

Can’t Stand the Heat: Weather and Climate Change in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing

  • December 25, 2022

The fundamental question of who will suffer the most from extreme heat, and on a broader scale climate change, is bound to systemic issues of race and class. Through Lee’s[…]

Drama · Family

0

The Fabelmans: Spielberg and the Cinema of Re-Empowerment

  • December 19, 2022

“Movies are dreams, doll, that you never forget,” says Mrs. Fabelman (Michelle Williams). She’s circling the nature of them, which the critic Andre Bazin described when he called cinema “an[…]

Richard Pryor

Actors & Personalities · Artists

10

Extinguishing Features: The Last Years of Richard Pryor

  • December 10, 2022

Editor’s Note: Richard Pryor died on this date, December 10, 2005, ten days after his sixty-fifth birthday. We salute this comic genius and cultural game-changer by reposting Julian Upton’s powerful[…]

Ya No Estoy Aquí

Dance · Drama · Exile and Displacement · Poverty · Theory

0

Dancing Diagonals: Movement and Far-Away-Ness in Fernando Frías de la Parra’s Ya No Estoy Aquí (2019)

  • December 3, 2022

One of Frías de la Parra’s masterstrokes is to highlight the similar ways in which Monterrey and New York (otherwise such radically distinct cities) are brimming with diagonal lines: in[…]

Jaws

Drama · Eco · Eco-horror · Essays

0

Scars and Their Stories: Exploring a Scene from Jaws

  • November 28, 2022

What does a scar tell us about a person? Where they’ve been, what they’ve been through, the style in which they conduct their lives. A scar is a reminder, an[…]

Brigadoon

Essays · Music & Musicals

0

Human Sacrifice in Brigadoon: The Fate of Harry Beaton

  • November 22, 2022

Brigadoon is a quasi-origin story that is closely associated with the way stories transform the reality of the recent past. Communities, societies, and nations survive by means of having sacrificial[…]

Directors · Drama

0

Fake It So Real: Self-Reflexivity, Theatricality, and Authenticity in Leos Carax’s Annette

  • November 16, 2022

Just as Holy Motors simultaneously mourned the loss of physicality from filmmaking while embracing the creative possibilities offered by digital technology, Annette is built on a seeming paradox: it plunges[…]

Top Gun

Franchises & Series · Military and Paramilitary · Thrillers & Action · War

0

Top Gun: Maverick – A Navy Pilot’s Take on the Great American Advert

  • November 11, 2022

Top Gun might leave viewers with the negative impression that all naval aviators are infantilized, high-functioning, pride-stricken narcissists, and I’m going to let you in on a secret. We are. But most[…]

Ronald Reagan

Actors & Personalities · Hollywood · Politics

0

Desperate Journey: How a B-Movie Bonzo Climbed into Politics

  • November 5, 2022

If only Ronald Reagan had been a better actor, our world might be a brighter place today. * * * Although it’s been thirty-three years and six presidents since Ronald[…]

MIFF

Festivals & Awards

0

It’s Cinema for You: Normcore Explodes at Melbourne International Film Festival 2022 (Aug. 4-21)

  • October 31, 2022

At last, seduction: the festival ended on a crescendo with Ennio, Giuseppe Tornatore’s expansive yet intimate tribute to the great Morricone. This is no superficial primer: Tornatore edits the film[…]

The Thing

Horror · SF & Fantasy

0

Wild Imagination: Forty Years of The Thing

  • October 26, 2022

“You just can’t beat wild imagination.” – Bob Bottin * * * It took decades for John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) to find an audience, on home video and cable.[…]

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