Dana Andrews: The Forties Hero and His Shadow
“It’s not difficult for me to hide emotion, since I’ve always hidden it in my personal life.”
Category: Artists
Actors & Personalities · Asian
“From Slumdog to Heartthrob”: Dev Patel’s Journey in Hollywood So Far
The next step for a Hollywood that is coming to see the true potential of Dev Patel’s abilities is to let him shine in his own right, and in his[…]
5 Greatest Films Never Made: From Gifford/Coppola to Wurlitzer to Faulkner/Orwell
By all accounts The Drop Edge of Yonder, or Zebulon as the script was titled, was truly one-of-a-kind, going way beyond the acid-western genre Wurlitzer helped create. In part we[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian
Japanese Cinema’s Uncommon Man: Tatsuya Nakadai’s Dissidents, Outcasts, and Shadow Warriors
“Like Hollywood’s new postwar men, he offered a multifaceted, ambivalent masculinity far from monolithic wartime ideals.”
Actors & Personalities · Books · Characters · Hollywood
Books: Celeste Holm Syndrome: On Character Actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age, by David Lazar
David Lazar, Celeste Holm Syndrome: On Character Actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age (Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, October 2020) * * * I’d have to say that the best definition[…]
Drama · Theory · Writers & Critics
André Bazin and Graham Greene (and Alfred Hitchcock): Some Points of Contact
Bazin would always harbor reservations about The Third Man, but, due to that film, Greene’s presence would continue to loom large in discussions of Orson Welles, who was, of course,[…]
Books · Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · Women in Film
Her Incantatory Voice: Barbara Rubin and Christmas on Earth
From the same desert, toward the same dark sky, my tired eyes open on the silver star, forever; but the Three Wise Men never stir, the Kings of life, the[…]
Troubling Mastery: Scorsese’s and Kubrick’s Psychosexual New York Odysseys
About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position. – W. H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux-Arts” (1940) “It’s also a film I cherish[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Memoir
Adagio: Phil Solomon on His Life as an Artist
“I’ve always been interested in the idea of cinema and loss, the beautiful and poignant conjuring of human presence and its absence. It’s an illusion, we know that, and yet[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Cinematographers · Interviews · War
The Greater Symphony: Talking with Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel about Da 5 Bloods
When I take on a project, one of the first things I try to do is get an idea of the overarching tone the director is looking for. Then I[…]
“Who is the third who walks always beside you?” Carol Reed, Graham Greene, and The Third Man
If Harry, viewed through the lens of Greene’s perverse Catholicism, is some kind of dark Jesus, then Holly is his betraying Judas, and Anna is his Magdalene. Both Harry and[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · LGBT & Queer
Seeing Double: Two New Films by Jayro Bustamante – Temblores and La Llorona
Despite their focus on timely sociopolitical matters, the films are almost never didactic (the final act of Temblores is an exception), because Bustamante is too keen to explore and shed[…]
SF & Fantasy · Women in Film · Writers & Critics
A World Like This Deserves Contempt: Adapting Harlan Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog
A Boy and His Dog’s promotional advertisements also reveal how the novella was adapted and modified to suit the tastes of the American popular film-going public. The movie’s promo posters[…]
Directors · Journalism · Silents
The Daredevil Reporter (Der Teufelsreporter) (1929): Billy/Billie Wilder
Before Wilder considered his own career as a filmmaker as having begun, and then reached movie fame on the other side of the Atlantic, he left behind a stumbling career[…]
Directors · Indigenous · Interviews · Women in Film
On Canción sin nombre (Song Without a Name): Talking with Director Melina León
It’s the kind of film I wanted to make where you see social implications growing from a personal story. What made it very hard was the sadness of it and[…]
Exhibition · Film Technology & History · Impresarios & Moguls · Movie Theatres · Silents
Prologue to Hollywood: Sid Grauman and the San Francisco Origins of Tinseltown Spectacle
While Grauman is mostly known for spectacular venues reflecting Hollywood’s film fantasies, his early San Francisco period indicates that throughout his career he showed remarkable consistency in referring to the[…]
Directors · Drama · Interviews
On Driveways and Spa Night: Talking with Director Andrew Ahn
“I try very hard to give the characters in my films a sense of humanity. I want this feeling for the audience that these characters exist outside of the frame.[…]
Weird American Odysseys: Music, Authenticity, and the Coen Brothers
“When somebody’s wearing a mask, he’s going to tell the truth. When he’s not wearing a mask, it’s highly unlikely.” – Bob Dylan (while not wearing a mask), Rolling Thunder[…]
Cityscapes · Counterculture · Directors · Drama · Sex & Relationships
Jacques Demy’s Model Shop (1969): The “Baroque Geometry” of Los Angeles in the 1960s
“I reckon LA as the noisiest, the smelliest, the most uncomfortable and most uncivilized major city in the United States. In short, a stinking sewer. . . .”1 – Adam[…]
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