“On one level, Vertigo bewitches us with eerie fascination; on another, it leads us on a wild goose chase in search of Scottie’s character. But could the latter really have been Hitchcock’s[…]
Directors · Interviews · Silents
Outtakes from an Interview with Dwan, December 1980 * * * Fairbanks, Shirley Temple, Ronald Reagan, all the “pansies and poseurs of Hollywood” – no one was safe from the[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer
Junkies, queens, washed-up B-movie hags – these are the scintillating “family values” advocates that campmeister and right-wing Republican Morrissey serves up. * * * Much of the myth, if we[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
(from Triste, Solitario y final (Sad, Alone, Final), a novel by Osvaldo Soriano, Einaudi Editore “Roll it!” Makeup had changed the fat man’s face into a clownish mask. He’s in an enormous[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
Laurel’s mask – the goofy, sweet-natured grown-up child – had its roots in the classic commedia dell’arte. The reasons why Stan Laurel is always entered in film annals as an[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
Chaplin’s most famous “creation” was his little tramp – but Stan Laurel did it first, as Chaplin knew all too well. One of the most troubling aspects of Stan Laurel’s[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian · Historical & Epic · Reviews
This epic set in the 16th century deals with war, honor, courage, and yes, that homo subtext ever present in male bonding movies – punctuated by Toshiro Mifune’s bold butt-baring[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
Barbara Hammer continues the groundbreaking investigations into gender that started with Nitrate Kisses – this time using autobiography to tell her truths. Barbara Hammer is best known for her groundbreaking[…]
Actors & Personalities · Pre-Code · Producers & Studios · Reviews
Nobody “did” the Depression, or sexual excess, or populist uprisings, better than the Brothers Warner. Conventional wisdom says that before the taboo-busting ’60s, all deviance in American filmmaking was suppressed.[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · LGBT & Queer
The “world’s worst director” never apologized for wearing women’s clothes, though many have questioned his taste in sweaters. The story goes that Disney Studios threw Tim Burton a bone in[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
“Asta brings a subtle twist to her version of Hamlet not by playing a man, but by playing a woman disguised as a man, adding another level of gender complexity.”[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian · Reviews
Jackie invades America for the second time. Is America finally ready? Jackie Chan’s “newest” film, Rumble in the Bronx, is only new to U.S. audiences. This film was released in 1994[…]
M-G-M’s nearly forgotten Queen of the Lot is enjoying a mini-revival America was built on a vague egalitarianism that scorned the worship of kings and queens, and no wonder —[…]
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries · Reviews
Literally burned by Preminger, driven crazy by an army of husbands, hangers-on, and J. Edgar Hoover, Jean Seberg lives on in a new documentary Jean Seberg was always more icon[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Interviews
Behind that mountain of oversized tits-and-ass that make up his “body” of work is an extremely intelligent, charming, and funny man, well-versed in cinema history and pop culture. My first[…]
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries
There was more to Carmen Miranda than insane hats and leering grins, a recent documentary shows Camp depends on a glittering surface that often resists penetration. Carmen Miranda is one[…]
Actors & Personalities · Exploitation & Erotica · Interviews
“In the future, everybody will be so sexually satisfied, there’ll be an end to violence, rape and war. We will establish contact with extra-terrestrials and they will be very sexy.”[…]
Actors & Personalities · Artists
With his lacerations, deformities, faux stump legs, and shaved head, Chaney was the original Modern Primitive. ReSearch Publications in SF specializes in cultural demi-mondes, everything from Burroughs and J. G.[…]
Actors & Personalities · Artists · Directors · Interviews
Is Gregg Araki’s new film really “a more radical personal and political film than Oliver Stone could have managed in his wettest of wet dreams?” Matthew L. Severson says so,[…]
Artists · Directors · Interviews
What does it mean to be a “madwoman” and an artist in American society? A review of Allie Light’s documentary on the subject, along with an interview (below), tries to[…]
