The “Bong” Goodbye: On Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice
Will Thomas Pynchon’s lightest, brightest novel put him in the Hollywood spotlight?
Category: Artists
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.”
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 · 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,[…]
Celebrating 40 Years of Anne Heche
All stars are subject to fits of madness, and if you date a daytime TV talkshow host for long enough, who knows what kind of depths of self-confessional martyrdom you[…]
Actors & Personalities · Exploitation & Erotica · Pre-Code
Desperation and Divinity: “Help us, Mae!”
Hazy thoughts on the transition from real sex to digital hallucinations
Actors & Personalities · Interviews
“Strong, Righteous, and Rustic”: An Interview with Joel McCrea
“I told Hitchcock, ‘I do miss my horse.'”
The Complete A of Altruism: In Which the Selfish Gene Explains Everything
Except whether to laugh or cry
Actors & Personalities · Asian · Silents
The Goddess in Her Element: Ruan Lingyu in Shanghai
“This is an actress who shows excitement down to the curl of her fingers, and whose face reveals every kind of mercurial change.”
Impressions of an Auteur, Tehran Today: Talking with Iranian Director Khosrow Sinai
“This situation requires the filmmakers to be more creative in handling their mostly simple stories, which sometimes are so simple as to seem very modern and minimalistic.”
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