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[…]
Category: Artists
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[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
Abstract Film Palimpsests: On the Work of Rey Parla
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
A Frontline Guy: An Interview with Burt Young
“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
Mish-Mash Planet: The Cult of Rita Hayworth in You Were Never Lovelier
“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[…]
Death Becomes Him: Robert Altman’s Prairie Home Companion
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[…]
Finding the Funny, One Dick Joke at a Time: Comedy Central’s Pam Anderson Roast on DVD
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
Forbidden Fruit? Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible III
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,[…]
Woody Allen, Misanthropy, and Match Point: Or How Death Got the Last Laugh
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
Looking at Charlie — First National, Shoulder Arms, and The Kid: An Occasional Series on the Art and Life of Charlie Chaplin
“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[…]
In Love with Liv Who Loves Life: Surviving Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf
“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[…]
The Ballad of Smith & Siegel:First Stanza
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[…]
The Lewton-Friedkin-Kubrick Connection
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[…]
BRICKBATS TO LOS ANGELES TIMES
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,[…]
Notes on Naruse: An Auteur Ascends
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
Camping out with James Bidgood: The Auteur of Pink Narcissus Tells All
“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[…]
Four Films in Search of an Author: Egoyan Since Exotica
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.[…]
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