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[…]
Category: Artists
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[…]
Film Buff of the Month – Tilda Swinton
Like Herzog’s opera-loving Fitzcarraldo dragging a 320-ton steamship through the jungles of Peru, Oscar-winning film buff/actress Tilda Swinton and a few followers are now driving – and occasionally dragging –[…]
Atom Egoyan’s Adoration: A Return to Form(s)?
“In classic Egoyan style, the humor is always also terrifying. . .”
The Miracle Worker: An Interview with Arthur Penn
“If the system is inimical to you, then you do whatever you can to alter your relationship to the system.”
Directors · Essays · Writers & Critics
All Tomorrow’s Playground Narratives: Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita
“Kubrick’s 1961 film is really the first 1970s movie.”
Ghidorah Attacks! Modern Narrative’s Three-Headed Monster
“The concept of pure art pure poetry, pure painting, and so on is not entirely without meaning; but it refers to an aesthetic reality as difficult to define as it is to combat. In any case, even if a certain mixing of the arts remains possible, like the mixing of genres, it does not necessarily follow that they are all fortunate mixtures. There are fruitful cross-breedings which add to the qualities derived from the parents; there are attractive but barren hybrids and there are likewise hideous combinations that bring forth nothing but chimeras.”
The “Bong” Goodbye: On Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice
Will Thomas Pynchon’s lightest, brightest novel put him in the Hollywood spotlight?
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Astaire Reborn! Jane Powell Gives Fred a Lift in A Royal Wedding
“I hope he knew how much the world loved him.”
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Ed Wood Blogathon: Screwy Details in THE NIGHT OF THE GHOULS
It’s a shame that Ed Wood’s last non-skin film, NIGHT OF THE GHOULS (1959), had to go unseen all through the prime time of Wade Williams’ TV horror package. It[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
José Mojica Marins Meets the Spirit of Ed Wood in the World of Coffin Joe
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLgx38t7AQ4] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAdAixzYq-k] Thank you, Spirit of Ed Wood Blogathon, for giving me an excuse to write about José Mojica Marins, the Brazilian screenwriter, director, and star of films every bit[…]
Klueless Kael
The upcoming release of Alain Resnais’s classic Last Year at Marienbad on Blu-ray DVD reminds us that Marienbad was one of the many formally ambitious films released in the 1960s[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
The Great Roles of Christopher Lee’s Maturity
How can anyone not marvel that two of Gothic Cinema’s greatest performers, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price, were born on the same day? Christopher Lee was born on May 27,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Reviews
Josef Von Sternberg’s Super-Masochist Sublimation Power!
Reading Joseph Aisenberg’s excellent piece (below) I’m compelled to offer my understanding of the great Von Sternberg’s stylistic obsessiveness, especially since it’s something I understand and share. (This began as[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Uncategorized
Falling in love again
Recently I re-watched Josef Von Sternberg’s The Scarlet Empress (1934) and found myself again surprised by the sickly gushy tasteless humor of the piece; had forgotten most of the film’s[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Come Back To The Five And Dime Sandra Bernhard, Sandra Bernhard
Once upon a time a strange sassy redhead with a big nose and giant lips cropped up as a pathetic obsessed fan in Martin Scorcese’s heavy-handed satire The King of[…]
Window to the (Critic’s) Soul
Film Criticism 101: Why You Should Recycle the Promo Packet To be sure, there are many distinct methods of film criticism that might be employed with equal, and mutually exclusive,[…]
Links + BSA
