Fatal Instincts: The Dangerous Pout of Gloria Grahame
“I’m a girl who loves to be manhandled! After all, what are a few contusions or abrasions if you get the man you love?”
Category: Artists
On Sacred Deers and Ghost Stories: Talking with Production Designer Jade Healy
When it comes to design, I always try to get into the heads of the characters and then I try to map out the history of the location itself. Who[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · DVD & Blu-ray · Silents
Boxcars, Beery, and a Dutch Bob: William Wellman’s Beggars of Life (1928) on Blu-ray
What we see in Brooks and Beery on the screen is a mixup of the actors’ hardwired personalities and those contrived for their roles, but this is the sort of[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground
Memories and Confessions: On the Filmography of Terence Davies
Davies – who can be described as a cultural conservative but never a simple nostalgist – wears his affection for his forgotten eras on his sleeve, generally eschewing close-ups in[…]
Book Review: Fucking Innocent: The Early Films of Wes Anderson, by John Andrew Fredrick
Fucking Innocent: The Early Films of Wes Anderson, by John Andrew Fredrick. $15.95, 288 pp. Rare Bird Books, 2017. The first thing to note about John Andrew Fredrick’s book is[…]
Actors & Personalities · Film Technology & History · Silents
Florence Lawrence and the Truth Behind “We Nail a Lie” (Famous Ads, 1910)
Ever since the ad appeared, there have been unanswered questions: who or what was behind the rumors of Florence Lawrence’s death? Did these rumors start because the fans of her[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors
Jerry Lewis: b. Joseph Levitch, Newark, New Jersey, 1926-2017, res. Hollywood
“The major point of convergence between Cassavetes and the Dogme movement is an oppositional realist form that blurs the boundaries between being and performing.”
Exploitation & Erotica · Franchises & Series · Producers & Studios
Surf’s Up! Beyond the Beach: AIP’s Beach Party Movies
With summer starting to fade, what better way to while away the hours than by revisiting the beach, as imagined by exploitation studio American International Pictures in the early 1960s?[…]
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries
Ingrid Bergman In Her Own Words Gets Up Close and Personal
Ingrid Bergman In Her Own Words makes clear that her life was messy and episodic, but she earned great love from her directors, co-stars, and family. Don’t wait for Mommie[…]
Horror · LGBT & Queer · Writers & Critics
Have I Seen the Real World Yet? Thomas Tryon’s The Other (1972)
One of the few indelible images in director Robert Mulligan’s 1972 film of The Other is that of Niles in the freaks’ tent at the 4th of July fair, gazing[…]
Directors · Interviews · Romance
Staging Pleasure: In Conversation with The Love Witch’s Anna Biller
On The Love Witch: “I like to make films with a kind of dream logic. My films are a mix of reality and fantasy, or a mix of what is[…]
Actors & Personalities · Noir · War
Strangers in Purgatory: On the “Jewish Experience,” Film Noir, and Émigré Actors Fritz Kortner and Ernst Deutsch
An examination of two of these émigrés – Fritz Kortner and Ernst Deutsch, major Central European actors, very well known in their home countries before leaving them in duress, both[…]
No Masters or Kings: On Sergei Polunin and Dancer (Steven Cantor, 2016)
The story is that of the driven, disciplined youth turned rebellious and excessive – brought to the fore by Ilan Eshkeri’s viscerally punchy soundtrack – but also of an almost[…]
Happy Birthday, Doris Day! (b. April 3, 1922) All Her Films, Ranked and Annotated
When I wrote my piece in praise of Doris Day for Bright Lights back in December 2015, I had seen about half of her thirty-nine movies. Now that I’ve seen[…]
Superman v Objectivism: Forget Lex Luthor and Brainiac; Could Ayn Rand Be Superman’s Biggest Enemy?
Much of the reason for the continued popularity of Christopher Reeve’s portrayal was the commitment he gave to the character irrespective of whether he was saving Lois from falling to[…]
Biopic · Directors · Writers & Critics
“Narrative is dead. We’re mourning it.” Intertextuality and Authorship in Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini (2014)
Rather than trying to frame the narrative as a means of truly understanding the mind of its subject, the film emphasizes that the central figure himself controls access to his[…]
Activist & Political · Actors & Personalities · LGBT & Queer
Get Real: How Much Reality Do We Want in Acting?
Isn’t it the job of an actor to play what he or she is not? * * * It was Jeffrey Tambor who got me thinking about authenticity in acting.[…]
Jerry Lewis and the Gender of Work
The gender of work in the work films is a spectrum that includes both the neutered worker of The Bellboy and The Errand Boy and the feminized worker of Cinderfella,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Essays
The Elephant in the Graveyard: The Testament of John Derek
Everywhere she was, there was Eden. – Mark Twain * * * So this is what it’s like on the other side. Not exactly how I pictured it. Nothing like[…]
What Makes Them So Successful? A Look into the Philosophy Behind the Coens’ Filmography
The truth is that they tend toward philosophical absurdism, rather than nihilism, and this perspective is what either makes or breaks their film in terms of commercial appeal. The draw,[…]
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