John Cassavetes: The First Dogme Director?
“The major point of convergence between Cassavetes and the Dogme movement is an oppositional realist form that blurs the boundaries between being and performing.”
Category: Artists
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors
Looking at Charlie: City Lights: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin
“If you could only see me as I really am, not as I appear but as I really am, as I am in my heart.”
Griffith’s Great American Pastoral: Location and Meaning in Way Down East
“The air is saturated with their feelings for each other as they listen to ‘the distant music of the falls,’ the same falls, of course, that will threaten to kill her.”
Hotels and Homelands: After Ken and Rosa
Neither will be the same
Robert Ryan: A Moon for the Misbegotten
“I have been in films pretty well everything I am dedicated to fighting against.”
Activist & Political · Directors · Interviews
Maps and Movies: Talking with Deepa Mehta
“I think it’s really important for you, or anybody who wants to be a filmmaker, to really be honest with yourself.”
Jean-Pierre Melville, Director: Notes on the French Auteur’s Career
“The film was shot in what would become a blueprint for the director’s production style — without authorization, studio resources, or sufficient funds.”
Of Bullies and Blood Drinkers: Talking to Tomas Alfredson about Let the Right One In
“I think the most horrifying images are the ones you make yourself. Is there someone standing behind the door, or is it just two shoes standing there?”
Spike Lee’s “Uniquely American [Di]vision”: Race and Class in 25th Hour
“Is it simply that the hero must be white for a mainstream American audience to care for him, or for the mainstream critical establishment to value Lee’s work?”
Out of His Head: Metaphysical Escape Attempts in the Screenplays of Charlie Kaufman
“Kaufman’s homunculi schema is an implicit mockery of our bottomless ignorance of the nature of consciousness.”
On How Things Seem: The Views of Robert Warshow
“Where Warshow distinguishes himself from Kracauer and other sociological critics is his reaction to the ‘absorbing immediacy’ of films.”
The Cooler Younger Sister Thing – Part One: Diana Lyn in MIRACLE AT MORGAN’S CREEK
What is it that makes the hotter, smarter younger sister so much more sophisticated, precocious, intelligent and adorable than the older lead in movies? Maybe it’s because she’s free of[…]
The Actress Meme: Co-Stars
With a tip of the hat and, perhaps, apologies to Nathaniel R, here is my version of his 20 Actress meme – not just 20 favorite actresses, but 20 outstanding[…]
Jane does Tennessee Williams! PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT on TCM – 12/12 at 10:30 AM (EST)
Here’s a catchy little number that’s not on DVD and should have/could have been included in that Tennessee Wiliams boxed set of a few years back. There’s not a lot[…]
Actors & Personalities · Exploitation & Erotica
Everybody’s Dream Girl – Bettie Page (1923-2008)
Is there an art to being photographed? I believe there is, and when I say that, I am thinking of four artists in particular, all of whom reached their peaks[…]
So long, Beverly Garland (1926-2008)
In addition to losing Forry Ackerman (see below), we lost another icon of the classic horror genre, Beverly Garland, this weekend. Garland was a true Hollywood survivor, battling and slinking[…]
Bye Bye Forry (Forrest J Ackerman, 1916-2008)
I just learned by way of CINEBEATS that Forrest J Ackerman, a man who inspired so many of us – as film fan and friend to film fans, as a[…]
Happy Birthday, California Mountain Snake!
It’s a birthday today for DARYL HANNAH, beloved uber-babe whose been immoralized in at least two classic films: Bladerunner and Kill Bill. Even if these were the only two roles[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Links: Fifteen years in the wilderness, THIRTEEN & the womb of fear
Time keeps on slippin’ and the internet expands fast as the universe itself, which means we should all link to each other, lest distance grow long. I’ve had transcendence on[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
An Evening With Kenneth Anger
Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a screening of some of Kenneth Anger’s most recent short films – hosted by Mr. Anger himself. The legendary “underground filmmaker” was[…]
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