Kurosawa on Video: Stray Dog, The Bad Sleep Well, The Lower Depths
Three of Kurosawa’s scathing critiques of Japanese society past and present – in beautiful new video transfers. Akira Kurosawa has been seen as one of the three components of a[…]
Category: Artists
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · LGBT & Queer
Seduction Is Universal: Thoughts on Radley Metzger
The master of Euro-erotica is starting to get his due in recent revivals The “golden age” of porn during the ’60s and ’70s was more fool’s gold than real for[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Producers & Studios · Reviews
Albert Zugsmith’s Opium Dreams: Confessions of an Opium Eater
Can one man’s brain contain Written on the Wind, The Incredible Shrinking Man, LSD, I Hate You!, and Confessions of an Opium Eater? If the man is Albert Zugsmith it could.[…]
Last Laugh: Was Hitchcock’s Masterpiece Vertigo a Private Joke?
“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
Angel in Exile, Part II: Talking with Pioneering Director Allan Dwan
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
Slapstick Realist: The Cinema of Paul Morrissey
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
Ollie’s Somersault: Thoughts on Oliver Hardy (and Stan Laurel)
(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
Eternal Child: The Many Meanings of a Mask (on Stan Laurel)
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
Stealing the Clown’s Clothes: Stan Laurel’s Relationship with Chaplin
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
“Richer Films . . .” Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954)
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
Tender Fictions: Barbara Hammer’s Truth Club
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
Public Enemy: Warner Bros. in the Pre-Code Era
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
It’s an Ed Wood World After All!
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
Meet Asta Nielsen: Gender-Bending Silent Star Who “Taught Me Everything I Know” (Garbo)
“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 Chan: Rumble in the Bronx
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[…]
Queen Norma – Shearer, That Is
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
Mark Rappaport’s From The Journals of Jean Seberg
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
Russ Meyer: An Interview
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
Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My Business
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
Sex Kitchens All Over Town: An Interview with Annie Sprinkle
“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.”[…]
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