Notes on a Scandal: On Film Criticism and Its Teachers
Will the twain ever meet? Why isn’t film criticism taught by film critics in British universities? Or to put it another way; why have we never heard of those who[…]
Category: Artists
Uncategorized · Visual Artists
The Gorey Factor
Some still dispute whether Edward Gorey (1925-2000) was fundamentally an artist who wrote, or a writer who drew. Gorey was, in fact, both an accomplished writer and an accomplished artist[…]
Artists · Directors · Producers & Studios · Reviews
Nearer My Corman to Thee: Roger Corman Remembers, and Roger Corman Remembered
Give us another naked nurse and some more explosions! Roger Corman, who turned 81 in April 2007, has assured his place in the history books several times over. As fast[…]
Our Time of Troubles: Ken Loach on War, Irish History, and The Wind That Shakes the Barley
“But I was accused of enjoying walking up and down the red carpet! Their rage knew no bounds.” Now 70, British director Ken Loach has for over 40 years made intimate, compelling,[…]
Uneasy Living: The Insecure Charm of Jean Arthur
“Funny, tender, a little neurotic, a little erotic, and always spontaneous …” A Foreign Affair (1948) is a blunt Billy Wilder comedy set amid the ruins of Berlin, and it’s[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
More Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, The Nutty Professor, no Gorilla (I think), and no Allen Ginsberg (or Ginzberg)
Since my esteemed Bright Lights After Dark (and Bright Lights Film Journal) co-contributor C. Jerry Kutner posted his last entry in the (now) ongoing Nutty Professor debate out here in[…]
FREDDIE FRANCIS (1917-2007)
I’d like to join Tim Lucas and others in acknowledging the passing of Freddie Francis, a fine underrated director and one of the greatest of English cinematographers. He deservedly won[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis vs. Julius Kelp & Buddy Love
In a comment to my previous Jerry Lewis post, Tom Sutpen wrote: Couldn’t agree more . . . except . . . Jerry Lewis has always steadfastly denied any Martin[…]
Farley Granger: Senso and Sensibility
In four films, two for Alfred Hitchcock (Rope {1948} and Strangers on a Train {1951}), one for Nicholas Ray (They Live by Night {1948}) and one for Luchino Visconti (Senso[…]
Twin Piques: Church and Bourgeoisie in Buñuel
That Obscure Agent of Misanthropy? Un Chien Andalou (1929), the “surrealist masterpiece” made in collaboration with Salvador Dali was, in one sense, a new sugar-free version of Rene Clair’s original[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian
Beauties and Furies: Hong Kong’s New Wave of Women Stars
“The women of To’s world are not just endearingly kooky, but often unacceptably bizarre and amoral in their excited reactions to events.” Five years ago, I was starting to think[…]
A Very Special Favor: More Strange Drag from the Hudson Closet
“Never mind that Hudson was a gay man playing a straight man playing a gay man in love with a man who was really a woman.” Universal Studio, never in[…]
Caveh Zahedi’s PSA: Talking with the Auteur of I Am a Sex Addict
“Not only is it personal — it’s downright embarrassing.” Fourteen years in the making and spanning eighteen years, Caveh Zahedi’s I am a Sex Addict, despite a lukewarm reaction upon[…]
Artists · Directors · Movies · Reviews
Inherit the Wind: Talking with Peter Bogdanovich and Joseph McBride About The Other Side of the Wind
Life with the restless ghost of Orson Welles’ last movie In 1970, after two decades of European exile broken only by his brief return in 1957-58 to make Touch of[…]
The Reckless Art of Erich von Stroheim Part One: The Pinnacle
“Like every other skilled fabulist on earth there would forever be a part of Stroheim that truly believed his own fantasies.” 1. True Fake Nobleman Somewhere between his departure from[…]
The Peculiar Kind: The Humor of Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation
“People are constantly falling back on their beds — but always in languor, never in passion . . .” It’s difficult not to be grateful to a film that introduces you to six or[…]
Welcome to the Modern World: Program Notes for a Michelangelo Antonioni- Jack Arnold Film Festival
“As much as the landscape is a character in It Came From Outer Space, it dominates Antonioni’s L’Avventura . . .” The surprising affinities between the careers of Italian “art film” director Michelangelo[…]
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