“I want my favorites to get the high ratings — my judgments are being challenged by anonymous forces whom I cannot confront.”
Category: Artists
Hollywood’s Nightmare, Not Ours: On The Mist, Story (1980) and Film (2007)
Director Frank Barabont hijacks — and sinks — Stephen King’s powerful allegory of political oppression
Jean Renoir’s Toni: Unreal and True
And staying forever young
Some Cameroning, Part 2 – Cameron as Auteur
Can a filmmaker spend most of his or her artistic life recycling other people’s ideas and still be a true auteur? Sure. Why not? Any idea, theme, style, or attitude[…]
Good night, Mr. Tikhonov, wherever you are…
Vyacheslav Tikhonov, who starred as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace (1967), died last Friday (12/4) at the age of 81. Tikhonov is one of a trio[…]
Brothers in Cynicism
Every time a new film by the Coen brothers comes out, I dread having to hear from the same old so-and-so’s who can’t bear to slog through the Coens’ peculiar[…]
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.”
Roman Polanski: What’s on Trial?
What is fascinating about the Polanski case is that it is not particularly about Polanski. Looking at the debate raised in France (where I live) and the United States –[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Interviews
Just Say Oui: An Interview with the Yes Men
“I’m shitting bricks, thinking he’s onto me.”
Blake Edwards vs. Hollywood: Sunset and the Myth of Hollywood’s Golden Age
A tour of Edwards’ curious 1988 film, with side trips to variations by James Ivory, John Schlesinger, and others
Books · Essays · Uncategorized · Writers & Critics
On the Escarpment, Off the Escarpment: It Helps When the Love Is Strong
Especially when the lovers aren’t
Sean Connery: A “Natural Thruster”
“Connery, never a martyr to false modesty, remains as voluble and combative as ever.”
Essays · LGBT & Queer · Writers & Critics
Contagious Homosexuality: Cruising and Sodom and Gomorrah
“In both Sodom and Gomorrah and Cruising, homosexuality – and its alternate currents – is caught with a glance.”
Can’t Repeat the Past? Of Course You Can’t – and Shouldn’t
Filming The Great Gatsby in the 21st Century
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JACK ARNOLD (October 14, 1916 – March 17, 1992)
Photo: Director Jack Arnold (right) shows star Grant Williams how to handle a giant prop used in the making of The Incredible Shrinking Man. If director Jack Arnold were alive[…]
Set my Polack free!
An apt cinematic analogy of the Polanski brouhaha can be found in Charles Laughton’s NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, namely the hyper-reactive old salt of the general store, Mrs. Icey Spoon[…]
The original inglorious bastard
In the midst of this blogospheric firestorm revolving around Inglourious Basterds, one relatively mild concession we can all make is that, for one reason or another, the movie (like all[…]
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[…]
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