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[…]
Category: Artists
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”[…]
Actors & Personalities · Genres
Un-Movies: When is a movie not a movie?
All movies have the potential to become a non-movie, particularly when the movie showcases a cause, a disease, a celebrity, an actor’s virtuosity, a play or musical. The movie becomes[…]
Documentaries · Visual Artists
Surreal Women: Leonor Fini and Kay Sage Documentaries
“All there is to do now is scream.” One view of “outsider art” is that it’s often the product of a hyper-productive, typically male naif who’s closer to his own[…]
Aural Drag: This Is What It Sounds Like, When Men Cry
Bwaaaaah! There’s a whole new wave of sensitive guy films emerging in the last few years, a wave that finally begins to recede (hopefully) with the stunning failure of Cameron[…]
Proust Regained: On Raul Ruiz’s Time Regained and Filming the Unfilmable
“In a single bold stroke, Ruiz films the novel according to the play of images, feelings, scents, and tastes that Marcel experiences.” 1. An attempt to film Proust’s Remembrance of[…]
Auteur in Distress: On Wallace Beery, von Sternberg, and Sergeant Madden
Cinema’s supreme pictorialist surrenders to “the cop on the beat” Wallace Beery was always a strange case. An outstanding character actor throughout the silent era and the early sound period,[…]
What the Sound Is Saying: How Music Moves in Bertolucci
“Who doesn’t want to be rescued by their narrator?” Sometimes a film’s camera takes you on one track, while its music sends you on another, wider one: it offers you[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Silents
Blossom in the Dust: Lillian Gish, The Wind, and Mr. Griffith
“I was never young, and if you were never young, how can you ever feel old?” Towards the end of Follow Me, Boys! (1966), a particularly obnoxious piece of Walt[…]
Spirit in the Dark: Barbara Kopple on Filming the Group That Wouldn’t Shut Up & Sing
“Just put your sneakers on and go. Go on the journey.” New York native Barbara Kopple has been a vital and socially progressive voice in documentary filmmaking for the past[…]
SF & Fantasy · Visual Artists · Writers & Critics
Expanding the Possibilities: Peter Chung Talks About Aeon Flux, Matriculated, Dark Fury, and More
“The more you’re able to project your own world upon the work, the more power it has.” Peter Chung is not your average sci-fi figure. First, he cuts a studied[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews · Silents
Step Right Up and Call Me Speedy! Harold Lloyd — Almost All Isn’t Enough
The last of the great silent clowns now on DVD “Step Right Up and Call Me Speedy!” Harold Lloyd has often — too often, really — been called the Anthony[…]
Reviews · TV & Streaming · Writers & Critics
Nine Hamlets: Olivier, Burton, Jacobi, Kline, Gibson, Branagh, Scott, Hawke, and Lester All Take a Stab at the Original Man in Black
“Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?” Hamlet, it must be said, is not[…]
Les Fleurs du Mal: The Leopard Man and Le Corbeau: Tourneur and Clouzot Deliver Homefront Perversity, Paranoia, and Subversion
“Nothing is so transient as sanity and safety . . .” Free from his past and sufficiently angry to wage war, Germain enlists Vorzet’s talents as psychiatrist — he believes[…]
Family Is Hell and So Is the World: Talking to Michael Haneke at Cannes 2005
“All of us have these hidden moments in our lives . . .” “I wish you a disturbing evening!” This is how Michael Haneke, who won Best Director award at[…]
Asian · Directors · Interviews
The Immortality Blues: Talking with Fruit Chan About Dumplings
And other tasty subjects Fruit Chan’s Dumplings provoked unprecedented attention at the 2005 Melbourne International Film Festival, first and foremost because of its controversial and idiosyncratic narrative, but also because[…]
Actors & Personalities · Westerns
Golden Boy: The Sexy Ways of Joel McCrea
“Easy to overlook but endlessly rewarding to look over” Joel McCrea, an amiable, modest actor who turned down parts because he felt he wasn’t good enough for them, began his[…]
Riefenstahl’s Heights and Wiseman’s Follies: Allegories of Flesh in Olympia and Titicut Follies
The body beautiful meets the body besieged Leni Riefenstahl and Fred Wiseman, though rarely grouped together, are in a category apart from most documentary filmmakers in that they both used[…]
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