The Great Galactic Chess Hustle: Kubrick, Bricolage, and Collective Memory
Of all the visual art forms, film is the most improvisational, requiring the most thorough collection of spare pieces. In order for a film to work its magic, it must[…]
Category: Artists
Directors · Film Crews · Hollywood · Production · Satire
A “Revolutionary” Narrative Style: Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind
With space limited inside the car of cinephiles interviewing director Jake Hannaford (John Huston), Joseph McBride handled the clapper board on the first day of shooting The Other Side of[…]
More
Book Review: A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of the Movies
A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of the Movies, by David Thomson. Simon & Schuster, 2026, 368 pages, $30.00. * * * For as long as film has[…]
Actors & Personalities · Celebrity Culture · Hollywood
The Masks She Wore: Identity Strain and Corporate Exploitation in the Life of Marilyn Monroe
Today, global figures regularly leverage their personal struggles with anxiety, depression, and burnout as primary text on social media, transforming clinical transparency into a celebrated marker of authenticity. Yet, while[…]
Comedy · Directors · Drama · Franchises & Series · LGBT & Queer · Teen films · Youth
The Jock, the Nerd, the Dork, and the Popular Kid: Shura’s “What’s It Gonna Be,” John Hughes, and Queer Nostalgia
To the extent that Shura has “queered” Hughes’s films in the act of paying homage to them, we might wonder how this process is informed by contemporary readings of Hughes,[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Documentaries · Historical & Epic · Military and Paramilitary · Politics · Producers & Studios · Race · UFOs
Films of Conscience: Raindog and Colin Firth’s Quiet Ambition
Firth’s self-effacement is generally described as a character trait. It is at least as plausible that it is a market condition, however. The films are fundable perhaps because their patron[…]
Desire as a Postcard: Michael Mann’s Cinema and the Postmodern Male Subject
In a world in which the space of the city, once peremptorily defined by its lights and shadows, has been transformed into a reflection of itself devoid of identity, an[…]
The Haptic Screen: A Phenomenology of Modern Auteurism from Christopher Nolan to Charlotte Wells
This essay attempts to map a “haptic geography” of contemporary cinema, exploring how directors like Christopher Nolan, Bong Joon-ho, Denis Villeneuve, Paul Thomas Anderson, Céline Sciamma, Charlotte Wells, and Yorgos[…]
Directors · Satire · Scandinavian Cinema
You’ll All be Crying by the End, Ha! The Question of Sincerity in Breaking the Waves
Our prevailing moviemaking ethos calls for emotion to be tempered through a kind of ebb and flow structure, for an emotion to be slowly built toward and quickly moved away[…]
Counterculture · Profiles · Writers & Critics
Carole Eastman: Rediscovering a Hollywood Maverick
Judging from the total lack of information on screenwriter Adrien Joyce (Carole Eastman), Academy Award nominee for her original story and screenplay of Five Easy Pieces, I could have concluded[…]
Artists · Sex & Relationships · TV & Streaming · TV series
The Radical (Dis)Honesty of Caveh Zahedi’s The Show About the Show
“Even without him, it’s still about him.” * * * Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi calls his series The Show About the Show (2015 – 2025) radically honest. Arguably, he pays the[…]
Cinematographers · Erotica · Photographers
A Forgotten Catalyst of Cinematography: Paul Outerbridge and the Triggers of Detachment
Cinematographers usually frame influence through cinema and painting – Vittorio Storaro citing Caravaggio, Roger Deakins invoking Johannes Vermeer, Conrad Hall recreating Edward Hopper’s lonesome framing – yet many of the compositional systems they use today were first stabilized[…]
Counterculture · Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Fairy Tale · Indies · Sex & Relationships
Sacred Without Symbol: Walerian Borowczyk and the Canon’s Fear of the Erotic
Even in the age of reevaluation, Borowczyk remains a problem critics would rather sidestep than solve. His films don’t fit the revival mold. They can’t be easily slotted into “elevated”[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Screwball Comedy
Jane Palmer’s Gentle Anarchy: Lady in a Jam (1942) and the Lost Liberty of Screwball Comedy
In a contemporary landscape populated by often-faltering comedies – films that try desperately to be clever only to end up feeling heavy – this 1942 picture recalls an elementary truth:[…]
Activist & Political · Class System · Directors · Italian Cinema
Closing with the Past: Marco Bellocchio’s Cinema and the Movement of History
Even after the radical shift in register with his collaboration with Massimo Fagioli, everything still holds up: the essence of historical struggle remains the true core of Bellocchio’s cinema, whether[…]
Counterculture · Crime · Cult Cinema · Directors · Drama · Satire
The Kubrick Production: How Stanley Kubrick Stage-Managed Reality
Every aspect of his professional life was stage-managed with the same precision he brought to a tracking shot. The results were remarkable. Total artistic control achieved at a young age.[…]
Activist & Political · Counterculture · Crime · Drama · Urban Conflict · Writers & Critics
One Battle After Another: On the Movie, the Critics, and the Moment
For a popular entertainment, One Battle is ultimately hopeful but not pandering. Viewers do not leave the theater with the spoon-fed feel-good reassurances offered by a Rocky or a Star[…]
Festivals & Awards · Film Culture · Film History · Programmers · Silents
Silent Screens, Digital Dreams: Experiencing Pordenone Online
The online program emphasizes this living quality of film history. Each restoration carries its own provenance, its own narrative of survival. * * * October finds audience viewing habits leaning[…]
Directors · Film Culture · Film History · Film Studies · Memoir · Writers & Critics
A Cinephile’s Paradise: The Quirky Education of a Film Scholar – Joseph McBride, in conversation with Danny Peary
Joseph McBride, filmed in 1970, is taking notes on his wrist, a habit he picked up while reviewing films, in his role as the critic and historian Mister Pister in[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Italian Cinema · LGBT & Queer
From Gospel to Grotesque: The Cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pasolini is in the canon – but only as a statue, not a voice. His name appears in film textbooks, his films screen at retrospectives, and Salò gets trotted out[…]
Links + BSA
