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[…]
Category: Artists
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.[…]
Actors & Personalities · Books
Kay Francis: Secrets of an Actress: New Books Reveal the “Wavishing” Star
“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[…]
Epic Sweep: On Kurosawa’s Sprawling Red Beard
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
The Hip Hooray and Bally Hoo: Busby Berkeley Explodes on DVD
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[…]
Great Scott! Herzog Profiles God’s Angry Man
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[…]
The Misery and Splendors of Cinema: Godard’s Moments Choisis des Histoire(s) du Cinéma
“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[…]
Lonesome Road: Bruckheimer’s Folly
Glory Road? Make that Dead End. The first time I knew race was more of an influence than a seven-foot center was when I went to support the Villanova basketball team[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
When Fred Met Red: Fred Astaire, Red Skelton, and Vera-Ellen Commingle in Three Little Words
It’s Bert and Harry, together again! Why are you not excited? Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby are not names to conjure with, unless you’re excessively fond of conjuring, but back[…]
Mystique Without Camp: The Allure of the Leading Man
Turning “the male gaze” on men It’s true that seeing Rock Hudson surrounded by able-bodied women is fun. In Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964) he’s blocked — trapped in a “stoic”[…]
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