Directors · Experimental & Underground
pa·limp·sest: n., Writing material (as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased; something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the[…]
Actors & Personalities · Interviews
“Get Burt!” Introduction For too many people, Burt Young is simply “That Guy from Rocky,” but to a cult that’s included the likes of Actor’s Studio founder Lee Strasberg, Sergio[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
“Speaking of impurity: what was Rita Hayworth’s image supposed to be in the ’40s?” What did we use to think of other countries? The question occurred to me while watching[…]
In which Altman doesn’t go gentle into that good night Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion, based in part on Garrison Keillor’s long-running radio show, observes the last stand of[…]
Enough engorged vagina jokes to feed a family of four for an entire year! Some pleasures — a blow job from Angelina Jolie, for example1 — lie permanently out of[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Is it a sin to see this film? There is no doubt that Tom Cruise is guilty of acting like a movie star in public. He’s jumped on Oprah’s couch,[…]
Welcome to the “nihilistic message movie” “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my works. I want to achieve it by not dying.” . . . “I don’t mind dying,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
“LOST CHILD WANTED — Last seen with a little man with large flat feet and a small moustache” In 1917, for the first time in his life, Charlie Chaplin took[…]
“If the demons leave, maybe the angels will too” All happy artists — to subvert Tolstoy’s dictum about families — are different, each in their own way, but all unhappy[…]
There’s always something very dubious about public feuds; spitting contests luminaries get into that play themselves out in a mass media culture hooked on diversion. No matter how vituperative and[…]
I saw William Friedkin’s Cruising for the first time in 25 years when it played on IFC recently. Having listened to Friedkin’s DVD audio commentary on Val Lewton’s The Leopard[…]
Last month, the Los Angeles Times Magazine published a cover story concerning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. The story was written by L.A. Times Book Editor, David L. Ulin, and in it,[…]
Pitch-black pessimism, unsparing emotional truths, and women on the verge In the eighties, an impressive full-scale retrospective of Mikio Naruse’s films traveled the world and his reputation in the West[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Interviews · LGBT & Queer · Visual Artists
“I don’t live in a harem either, but well, God, I did for awhile …” Introduction My first viewing of Pink Narcissus (1971) took place in a Gay and Lesbian[…]
Scattered pleasures and frequent irritations As someone who has followed Atom Egoyan’s career closely since his pre-Exotica days, viewing his most recent feature films has been an intensely ambivalent experience.[…]
Actors & Personalities · Books
“I’m not a star, I’m a woman, and I want to get fucked!” A combination clotheshorse/workhorse, Kay Francis made 67 films from 1929 to 1946. Her life and career are a splurging[…]
This one’s got it all, including the kitchen sink Kurosawa’s cinema is large in every sense of the word. He often spent a year or more on preparation, sometimes had[…]
Directors · Music & Musicals · Producers & Studios · Reviews
Come and meet those dancing feet, and pianos, and buildings, and . . . Give the nearest Warner Home Video executive a big hug. The company has at last remastered[…]
On the madness of Dr. Gene When I was a child and life was simple, one of my favorite forms of entertainment on the dawn of a dreary Sunday morning[…]
“Godard 24 times per second” “I need a day to tell the history of a second, a year to tell the history of a minute, a lifetime to tell the[…]
