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February 26, 2021
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Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXII – gordsellar.com on:
The Esteemed Black Actresses Who Finally Have the Spotlight – The New York Times – Celebrity News on:
Digital · Movie Theatres · New Media · TV & Streaming
Like it or not, we humans are social creatures. We ride waves of communal feeling all the time. If you like sports, consider sitting in the stands with thousands of[…]
Today, February 24, is Twin Peaks Day, the day Special Agent Dale Cooper came to the titular town to investigate the murder of Laura Palmer. Apropos that, we’re reposting Matthew[…]
Comedy · Literature and Film · Theory · Writers & Critics
The oblique reference to Poe by means of the double POE acronyms, then, can be seen as linking the fundamental prophecy of Dr. Strangelove with the much earlier secular prophecies[…]
Directors · Theory · Writers & Critics
One of Assayas’s most ferocious articles he ever wrote (and also one of the most theoretical) attacks le cinéma publicitaire – a film aesthetic (associated in France with Jean-Jacques Beineix[…]
Biopic · Drama · Gothic · Mystery · Myth and Archetype · Psychology
“The opus begins in dying.” – James Hillman “Just as each Gothic tale is itself a dream and also a mirror showing the reader his mind, everything within these symbolic[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Drama · Women in Film
“[H]er favorite expression of strained intensity would be less quickly relieved by a merciful death than by Ex-Lax.”
Activist & Political · Pandemic · SF & Fantasy
I can’t believe it took me almost four decades and living through a global pandemic to realize it, but in E.T., Elliott and his motley crew of rascals might well[…]
Costume Drama · Drama · Horror · Literature and Film · Women in Film
In transposing Rebecca, notice how Hitchcock’s camera attends to shadows – bisecting faces and bruising frames – to approximate du Maurier’s disorienting syntax and looming dread. Or watch as his[…]
Animation · Counterculture · Cyberpunk · Digital · Essays · New Genres
In refusing to be neither something different nor more of the same, Back to the Future II’s re-filming technique within the original via new VistaGlide technology offered – rather –[…]
Amelia has cultivated a fearful respect of Mr. Babadook. She is in control of him and feeds him worms from her garden. Instead of trying to exorcise the demon, she[…]
” In between the idealized lover and the cantankerous old goat lay a handful of roles in which Howard managed to simultaneously embody and undermine the archetypal Englishman.”
Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Memoir · Outsiders
As much as there remains some graspable appeal to each man’s video work – George’s comic personality and the humorous reckoning with his own legacy, and Carl’s peculiar brand of[…]
“It’s not difficult for me to hide emotion, since I’ve always hidden it in my personal life.”
Actors & Personalities · Asian
The next step for a Hollywood that is coming to see the true potential of Dev Patel’s abilities is to let him shine in his own right, and in his[…]
Activist & Political · Animals · Drama
Although Babe was released a quarter-century ago, its critique of animal agriculture remains timely. Babe celebrates the “unprejudiced heart” of its eponymous piggy hero, who narrowly escapes becoming Christmas dinner[…]
Books · Noir · Uncategorized
Leon Lewis (Ed.), John Alton: Essays on the Cinematographer’s Art and Craft (McFarland, 2020) * * * Widely regarded as epitomizing the visual style of high film noir as it[…]
By all accounts The Drop Edge of Yonder, or Zebulon as the script was titled, was truly one-of-a-kind, going way beyond the acid-western genre Wurlitzer helped create. In part we[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian
“Like Hollywood’s new postwar men, he offered a multifaceted, ambivalent masculinity far from monolithic wartime ideals.”
In fact, until the appearance of this relatively unsung Russian actress, all of the above might easily have remained permanently stuck at the level of “stodgy melodrama.” Instead, we suddenly[…]
Dawn brings the forces of reason and order (ironic, in that the posse clearing away the few remaining dead are little more than trigger-happy, thrill-seeking rednecks, not the wise and[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Societal Trends
Fredric March stands alongside four other mid-century drum majors for civil rights during the 1943 national radio broadcast of “Race-Relations Sunday.” Left to right: concert soprano Dorothy Maynor, actor Canada[…]
Actors & Personalities · Books · Characters · Hollywood
David Lazar, Celeste Holm Syndrome: On Character Actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age (Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, October 2020) * * * I’d have to say that the best definition[…]
Activist & Political · Hollywood · Teaching · War · Women in Film
It is in the American women’s picture that, in my classroom at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, I’m able to lead students in a global reading of women’s[…]
Drama · Theory · Writers & Critics
Bazin would always harbor reservations about The Third Man, but, due to that film, Greene’s presence would continue to loom large in discussions of Orson Welles, who was, of course,[…]
