“Alexei must be condemned to the pointless, loveless, and finally false freedom of a spinning limbo, as unfinished and unfinishable as the best Bakhtinian polyphony.”
Category: Artists
Norma Shearer: The Primrose Path to MGM Stock
“She hovered somewhere between the realest of realities and the most blatant of impersonations.”
Film Criticism as a Man’s Job: A Belated Look at the Legacy of Manny Farber
“Farber’s writing is the pure antithesis of academic ornately sophisticated with a vernacular punch, stuffed with contradictory statements and astounding paradoxes.”
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries · Music & Musicals
It Ain’t Me Babe: On Dylan and Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There
I’m not the one you want babe / I’ll only let you down.”
Alfred Hitchcock at the Drag Ball: When Being Blonde and Soulless Is Not Enough
“Mother … my mother … um, what’s the phrase? She isn’t quite herself today.”
The Last Mistress: An Interview with Catherine Breillat
“When I make movies, nothing is limited.”
Ebert Hit Eject
Unless you’ve been living in a film industry bubble the last few days, you’re probably aware of Roger Ebert’s now (in)famous review of Tru Loved, which he wrote based upon[…]
Robin Wood Retires
Everyone who writes about film can name other writers about film who have influenced them. For me, the big three are Andrew Sarris, Raymond Durgnat, and Robin Wood. Wood, author[…]
The Commodification of Anna Faris
I first noticed Anna Faris in the Scary Movie franchise in which she parodieamong other things, Neve Campbell’s role in Scream. Following that, Faris provided expert comic relief playing supporting[…]
Jack Hill Speaks
Director Jack Hill took the time to send along his thoughts on Noah Berlatsky’s article “Men in Women-in-Prison: Masochism, Feminism, Fetish” in the most recent issue of Bright Lights. Hill,[…]
A Real Director’s Cut: Cassavetes Edits Himself in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
It is the subjective fever dreamof a psyche carving fantasy out of reality as he goes.”
Directors · Essays · Writers & Critics
Counter Clockwise: Or Lay Quiet Awhile with Ed and Id Molotov
Re-examining the Crossed Wires in Kubrick’s and Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange
George Sanders: A Mitigated Cad
“Where on the screen I aminvariably a sonofabitch, in life I am a dear, dear boy.”
Directors · Documentaries · Interviews
Paradise Betrayed: Talking with Terence Davies About Of Time and the City
“You can’t stop time. It stops you.”
Counterculture · Directors · Interviews
The Mole Man: Going Underground with Alejandro Jodorowsky
“I think Spielberg is the son from when Walt Disney fucked Minnie Mouse.”
The Kids Are Not All Right: Larry Clark on WassupRockers and More
“For me it was like, How do Imanipulate this kid so he can do this and he’s comfortable?, which isall part of directing.”
Directors · Horror · Interviews
Object in Mirror May Be Closer Than It Appears: Stuart Gordon Talks about Horror, the Absurd, and Stuck
“These two people are stuck in life.”
The Rote High School Persecution of Ellen Page
There’s something definitely original about the scattershot editing collage techniques of THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS (2007), getting a belated US DVD release after a year in Canada and the broken film[…]
FilmCrit and the Skidoo Epiphany
Over the weekend I read an essay on J.D. Salinger which Janet Malcom published in the New York Review of Books back in that now lost and fabled time, June[…]
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