What Time Now? Catching Up Hours in Tsai Ming-liang
What is the best way of placing a body? The opening scenes of The River (1997) are spent trying to make a body move and work in a realistic way. A film[…]
Category: Artists
Steele Vision: The Face of Italian Cult Cinema
“Again the camera shows how the imperfection of Asa’s face does not present an insurmountable obstacle to her being ultimately attractive.” Within cinema scholarship there is a reluctance to address[…]
Actors & Personalities · Artists · Directors · Interviews · Movies
What’s Wrong with Fast Food? A Conversation with Richard Linklater and Eric Schlosser on Fast Food Nation
With additional comments by Catalina Sandino Moreno and Ethan Hawke Introduction The distributor’s website describes Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation, a dramatic feature based on Eric Schlosser’s best-selling book, as[…]
Artists · Directors · Interviews · Movies · Reviews
Returning to Life: Talking with Almodovar, Penelope Cruz, and Carmen Maura at Cannes
“I do not have the serenity of women. But I admire it.” Pedro Almodovar’s new film Volver (Return) features an unusual number of deaths. Penelope Cruz, in the best performance[…]
The Departed: Crime All the Time
Scorsese gets all Irish on our asses, and it works I admit it. I thought Marty had lost it. I thought he had gone all lazy and cute and Hollywood,[…]
Artists · Interviews · Stars · Writers & Critics
Cruising with Camille: An Interview with Camille Paglia
“Please note that even Margo Channing, threatening a ‘bumpy night’ for her hapless guests, merely fumingly forecasts. It’s a gesture of mind, not body.” Introduction Camille Paglia, the scholar and[…]
Trailer Trash: Dumpster Diving with Jenni Olson
High camp in three minutes or less The idea that bigger is better may play better in the lexicon of size queens than in le cinema contemporaire. Hollywood’s insistence on[…]
One night on the Sleazoid Express
Tom Sutpen’s classy review of Sleazoid Express, by Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford, certainly brought back the memories, to wit: After I came back from Vietnam in December 1969 I[…]
Great Blog Topic – Monologues
Edward Copeland at The House Next Door has written a great post concerning film monologues. After considering what makes a great film monologue, he describes in detail 5 stellar examples.[…]
The Noir Portraiture of Stacy Lande
Painting influences film. Film influences painting. The portraits of Los Angeles painter and performance artist Stacy Lande (pronounced, “lan-dee”) appear equally influenced by 19th Century Symbolism, 20th Century Expressionism, and[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Writers & Critics
Sleazoid Express (2002)
Here in America we have something that, with the straightest of faces, we call our Film Heritage. What people usually mean when they invoke this solemn, unconscionably sentimental honorific is[…]
Julie! Julie! Julie!
The incredibly beautiful Julie Adams, paramour of The Creature From the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold, 1953), and object of many adolescent fantasies including, obviously, my own. What a pleasure it[…]
Another Day, Another List
RECOMMENDED READING: In the September/October 2006 issue of Film Comment, writer/director Paul Schrader’s article on, “The Film Canon – What Constitutes a Cinematic Masterpiece.” This lengthy, absorbing essay has something[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
Beautiful Betty
Anyone infatuated with silent film, like me, is always on the lookout for that one pre-talkie film that will win over the unconverted, and I think I’ve found a mighty[…]
SF & Fantasy · Writers & Critics
Joseph Stefano Obituary, Part 2: THE OUTER LIMITS
The classic ’60s sci-fi anthology series, The Outer Limits, was conceived by eccentric writer/producer Leslie Stevens. How eccentric?? It was Stevens who later wrote and directed Incubus (1965), starring William[…]
The New York Times: Protecting the gorgeous for over 100 years
When the Gray Lady interviews someone as cute as Jude Law, she doesn’t take off the kid gloves. If anything, she puts on an extra pair. In a recent article[…]
SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming · Writers & Critics
JOSEPH STEFANO (1922 – 2006)
Playwright. Screenwriter. Producer. Known primarily for two major achievments: (1) He wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). (2) He was the producer and chief writer for the first[…]
Chimp versus film critic: which is smarter?
You know the old gag: set a dozen chimpanzees in front of a set of typewriters, and sooner or later they would type out every sentence in the English language,[…]
“How My Brain Works”: An Interview with Michel Gondry
“I didn’t want to live under the shadow of other films. I want to exist on my own.” Introduction Like a mashup of cinematic countrymen Georges Melies and Jacques Tati,[…]
Acts of Revenge: Director Park Chan-wook Discusses Lady Vengeance and More
Grand Guignol, Korean style Introduction One of Korea’s most commercially successful young directors, Park Chan-wook is a polarizing figure in the disputatious world of international film circles. Though most acknowledge[…]
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