Actors & Personalities · Directors · Interviews
Birds Do It, Bees Do It: Isabella Rossellini Talks About Bug Sex, Human Sex, and Green Porno
“A laugh and information!”
Category: Artists
Crime · Reviews · Writers & Critics
Critics Cornered: On Reviewers’ Reactions to David Ayres’ Street Kings
“Anyone who speaks unsanitized thought is going to lose.”
Happy 100th Birthday Bette
Bette Davis would have been a hundred this past Saturday, and over on her indispensible Sunset Gun, Kim Morgan celebrates via a round-up of some of diva Davis’s most bad-ass[…]
The Epic Actor – Charlton Heston (1923-2008)
To see Charlton Heston in person was to realize that some people are born to be movie stars. He had a larger-than-life presence on-screen. And off-screen as well. In 1980,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Pre-Code
Miriam Hopkins & the Pre-Code Menage-a-trois
Imagine Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston deciding to live together and share Brad Pitt! How hot would that be? But no, now we live in a much more (as in[…]
Favorite Screenwriting Device No. 42 – The Sympathetic Listener
Much has been written about the scene in There Will Be Blood in which Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) confesses his innermost feelings to his purported half-brother, Henry Brands (Kevin J.[…]
Wes’s World: Riding Wes Anderson’s Vision Limited
Paging crackle, energy, and wit. Come in, please.
Actors & Personalities · Essays
Presence and Absence: Toward a Working Conception of Screen Characters
“A basic consistency on the actor’s part remains uniquely convincing as character, no matter how simplistic that character’s definition.”
Rebel, Rebel: Gregg Araki Reflects on The Living End and His Totally F***ed Up Career at Sundance 2008
“My whole thing, all my life, was march to your own drummer.”
Nuts to the Squirrels and Roués Redeemed: The Discreet Charm of Charles Boyer
“In Boyer, self-belief and theatrical technique are seamlessly fused together.”
Actors & Personalities · Essays · SF & Fantasy
A Boy and His Dog: On Will Smith, Apocalypse, and I Am Legend
“Neville remains wholly oblivious, falling into each trap the ferals set … “
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Ode to Lili: And Leslie Caron
“This MGM movie is studio-system filmmaking at its most protective, and it’s designed entirely to showcase Leslie Caron …”
Directors · Experimental & Underground
Peter Watkins and the Politics of Expression: On Edvard Munch (1974) and The Freethinker (1994)
“Watkins’ filmmaking bravely seeks an insistence on personal truth his own and the viewer’s.”
Only the Pictures: We’re All Editing, Ed
But about this audit
Composers · Essays · Music & Musicals · Sound & Language · Writers & Critics
False Consonance and False Consciousness: Contrarian Notes on the Ideology of Film Music
“Defenseless against music, I must submit to its despotism and, depending on its whim, be god or garbage.”
Remembering Maila Nurmi (1921-2008)
Maila Nurmi, aka Vampira – actress, comedienne, artist, and horror hostess – was one of the most interesting and extraordinary persons I have ever met. MAILA KNEW EVERYBODY The first[…]
Daniel Day Lewis… the New Dark God of Actors
If you’re as hung up on the mythic greatness of THERE WILL BE BLOOD as I am (if you haven’t seen it, may I advise you do so?) then you’re[…]
Edna May Oliver, Heal this Nation!
In honor of the sudden John Ford deluge at the DVD-o-teque nearest you, I’d like to suggest that Edna May Oliver, the stoically ornery widow of Ford’s DRUMS ALONG THE[…]
There Will Be Blood – Missing Links
The five films Paul Thomas Anderson has made to date fall neatly into two categories. On the one hand, there are the Altmanesque ensemble films, Boogie Nights and Magnolia; on[…]
Forever… Marlene
So after delays and cancelation and sorrow I get into Chicago for Xmas and my parents books us each in a big suite in a big empty Sheraton near O’Hare…[…]
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