Dream Documents of Civil War: Three Films by Miklós Jancsó
“Jancsó’s controlled aesthetic acts as a dissonance that vibrates expressively with scenes of violence, torture, and shame.”
Category: Directors
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Interviews
Birds Do It, Bees Do It: Isabella Rossellini Talks About Bug Sex, Human Sex, and Green Porno
“A laugh and information!”
Rebel, Rebel: Gregg Araki Reflects on The Living End and His Totally F***ed Up Career at Sundance 2008
“My whole thing, all my life, was march to your own drummer.”
Directors · Experimental & Underground
Peter Watkins and the Politics of Expression: On Edvard Munch (1974) and The Freethinker (1994)
“Watkins’ filmmaking bravely seeks an insistence on personal truth his own and the viewer’s.”
Wes’s World: Riding Wes Anderson’s Vision Limited
Paging crackle, energy, and wit. Come in, please.
There Will Be Blood – Missing Links
The five films Paul Thomas Anderson has made to date fall neatly into two categories. On the one hand, there are the Altmanesque ensemble films, Boogie Nights and Magnolia; on[…]
Reflecting the Theoretical Beyond: The Quay Brothers Talk About Art, Life, and The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes
“It’s hard to be intuitive when you’ve got 42 crew behind you and they’re like, ‘Look, they don’t know what to do here. They’re panicking, look at them!’” Introduction Ever[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Reviews
Looking at Charlie — The Gold Rush: An Occasional Series on the Art and Life of Charlie Chaplin
Hats off, dudes! A masterpiece! The Gold Rush is Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece — the one film in which his desire to make the audience laugh and the desire to make[…]
“Ode to a Nectarite Harvest”: On Brand Upon the Brain!
Maddin at his most masochistic — and magical For a film as deliriously fecund and fittingly bizarre as Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain! (2006), declaring the well-deservedness of its[…]
Secret Window: The Erotic Gaze of Tom Lazarus
“Lazarus doesn’t pathologize the locked-in gaze, he lets us feel it.” In a pornographic film, what’s gratuitous is not sex but complexity and involvement. An erotic film can confuse us[…]
Back to Basics: Talking to Paul Verhoeven
On Black Book and his recent Hollywood defection Known for big-budget Hollywood vehicles like RoboCop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven had his greatest success with the white-hot erotic[…]
Silent Light or Absolute Miracle: An Interview with Carlos Reygadas at Cannes 2007
“I hate the idea that film is actually telling a story!” A striking division in the Cannes film festival this year: between films that offer dark, bleak (read: despairing, nihilistic)[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica
Before The Green Door: The Mitchell Brothers, the Counterculture, and Hard-core’s Beginnings
It came from San Francisco This is the first of a two-part article exploring how hard-core porn evolved through the efforts of Jim and Artie Mitchell and other pioneers, with[…]
Constructive Empathy: Speaking About Magnus, Cannes 2007
“People can die without love.” The boy is unloved. Magnus has the dead expression of depression as he walks around his Estonian town, stopping in on his selfish vulgar mother,[…]
Artists · Directors · Producers & Studios · Reviews
Nearer My Corman to Thee: Roger Corman Remembers, and Roger Corman Remembered
Give us another naked nurse and some more explosions! Roger Corman, who turned 81 in April 2007, has assured his place in the history books several times over. As fast[…]
Our Time of Troubles: Ken Loach on War, Irish History, and The Wind That Shakes the Barley
“But I was accused of enjoying walking up and down the red carpet! Their rage knew no bounds.” Now 70, British director Ken Loach has for over 40 years made intimate, compelling,[…]
Twin Piques: Church and Bourgeoisie in Buñuel
That Obscure Agent of Misanthropy? Un Chien Andalou (1929), the “surrealist masterpiece” made in collaboration with Salvador Dali was, in one sense, a new sugar-free version of Rene Clair’s original[…]
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