Youth, Love, and Dogtooth
Dogtooth is an audaciously visceral statement that somehow avoids both flamboyance and gratuity, proving that on-screen shocks need not always be accompanied by a masturbatory aftertaste.
Author: Joseph Jon Lanthier
Jon Lanthier is a writer, multimedia artist, coffee drinker, and cultural autodidact from Berkeley, CA. Cinematic obsessions include Powell and Pressburger, New York filmmakers, the post-digital era, surrealism/absurdism, and international animation. He is convinced that the best film criticism is one-third academic analysis, one-third personal essay, and one-third conspiracy theory. He welcomes ad hominem attacks on the gaping holes in his rhetoric. Outstanding Defense Mechanisms: The Phrenology of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island
Shutter Island might be the only psychological thriller abetted by a lack of interest in the psyche.
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Book review: Farber on Film, Ed. by Robert Polito
Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber, Edited by Robert Polito. USA: The Library of America, 2009. Hardcover, $40.00. 1,000pp. ISBN: 978-1598530506. Farber on Film The dizzying creativity[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Interviews
Film and Film and Film: An Interview with Jonas Mekas
“One who knows how to, as they say, ‘read’ the images, can tell everything about me.”
An Atheist’s Guide to “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
When you believe in things you don’t understand, you suffer. – Stevie Wonder * * * In 1949 Walt Disney Studios produced the last, and arguably the best, of their[…]
Since everyone else seems to be talking about it…
…and I mean *everybody*… Jonathan Rosenbaum posted a rather damning blog entry on his website regarding QT’s “IB” that was subsequently picked up and scoffed at by a smattering of[…]
Apatow and Agnostic Comedy
I recently screened Judd Apatow’s Funny People (the latest in a long list of theatrical releases that the blogosphere has loved to “ehhh” about) with a group of friends, and[…]
Drama · Essays · Uncategorized
An Atheist’s Guide to Wise Blood: The Doctrine of the Auto-Redemptionist
“It’s almost as if The Misfit himself were behind the camera.”
My Dinner with André and the Meaning of Life (well, sort of)
[My Dinner with André comes out on DVD from the Criterion Collection on Tuesday] Watching My Dinner with André for the first time at age 15 was my introduction not[…]
Book review: “Have You Seen . . .?”, by David Thomson
“Have You Seen . . .?”: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Film, by David Thomson. New York: Knopf, 2008. Hardcover, $39.95, 1,024 pages. ISBN: 0-307-26461-0. One entertains the vague possibility that our dismal[…]
What do Terrence Malick and Steely Dan have in common? Part 1
Let’s start with the most obvious correlation, other than perhaps the fact that both artists are likely to appeal to folks like me who strongly identify with the technical experimentation[…]
An Atheist’s Guide to A Charlie Brown Christmas
Continuing an annual orgy of cartoon watching I decided to take a lengthy look at this classic in socio-philosophical, rather than belletristic, terms. Unfortunately, the full Atheist’s Guide runs over[…]
A Muppet Christmas: Letters from Another Era
The by now hideously distended Muppet franchise received another subpar entry on network television last night in the form of “A Muppet Christmas: Letters to Santa”. Is anyone else willing[…]
Film Criticism as a Man’s Job: A Belated Look at the Legacy of Manny Farber
“Farber’s writing is the pure antithesis of academic ornately sophisticated with a vernacular punch, stuffed with contradictory statements and astounding paradoxes.”
Ebert Hit Eject
Unless you’ve been living in a film industry bubble the last few days, you’re probably aware of Roger Ebert’s now (in)famous review of Tru Loved, which he wrote based upon[…]
To Slap a Dame: Sexual Violence in the Age of Reason
“Skip is the only one that enacts incest with one hand and bats away communists like flies from a dung pile with the other.”
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