Window to the (Critic’s) Soul
Film Criticism 101: Why You Should Recycle the Promo Packet To be sure, there are many distinct methods of film criticism that might be employed with equal, and mutually exclusive,[…]
Category: Writers & Critics
The Complete A of Altruism: In Which the Selfish Gene Explains Everything
Except whether to laugh or cry
Out of His Head: Metaphysical Escape Attempts in the Screenplays of Charlie Kaufman
“Kaufman’s homunculi schema is an implicit mockery of our bottomless ignorance of the nature of consciousness.”
On How Things Seem: The Views of Robert Warshow
“Where Warshow distinguishes himself from Kracauer and other sociological critics is his reaction to the ‘absorbing immediacy’ of films.”
Bye Bye Forry (Forrest J Ackerman, 1916-2008)
I just learned by way of CINEBEATS that Forrest J Ackerman, a man who inspired so many of us – as film fan and friend to film fans, as a[…]
Film Criticism as a Man’s Job: A Belated Look at the Legacy of Manny Farber
“Farber’s writing is the pure antithesis of academic ornately sophisticated with a vernacular punch, stuffed with contradictory statements and astounding paradoxes.”
Ebert Hit Eject
Unless you’ve been living in a film industry bubble the last few days, you’re probably aware of Roger Ebert’s now (in)famous review of Tru Loved, which he wrote based upon[…]
Robin Wood Retires
Everyone who writes about film can name other writers about film who have influenced them. For me, the big three are Andrew Sarris, Raymond Durgnat, and Robin Wood. Wood, author[…]
Directors · Essays · Writers & Critics
Counter Clockwise: Or Lay Quiet Awhile with Ed and Id Molotov
Re-examining the Crossed Wires in Kubrick’s and Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange
FilmCrit and the Skidoo Epiphany
Over the weekend I read an essay on J.D. Salinger which Janet Malcom published in the New York Review of Books back in that now lost and fabled time, June[…]
Historical & Epic · Writers & Critics
Bowling for America: Robert Warshow, There Will Be Blood, and the Topography of Desire
“The king-times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist. But the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it.”
Festivals & Awards · Writers & Critics
Twenty-One Years in the Midday Sun: Revisiting Roger Ebert’s Cannes
Here’s lookin’ at you, Roger
Crime · Reviews · Writers & Critics
Critics Cornered: On Reviewers’ Reactions to David Ayres’ Street Kings
“Anyone who speaks unsanitized thought is going to lose.”
Favorite Screenwriting Device No. 42 – The Sympathetic Listener
Much has been written about the scene in There Will Be Blood in which Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) confesses his innermost feelings to his purported half-brother, Henry Brands (Kevin J.[…]
Composers · Essays · Music & Musicals · Sound & Language · Writers & Critics
False Consonance and False Consciousness: Contrarian Notes on the Ideology of Film Music
“Defenseless against music, I must submit to its despotism and, depending on its whim, be god or garbage.”
Kim Masters, Natural-Born Killer
Kim Masters, Slate’s assassin for hire, who clearly does not know the meaning of the words “You’ll never have lunch in this town again,” pisses all over Jerry Seinfeld’s major[…]
Notes on a Scandal: On Film Criticism and Its Teachers
Will the twain ever meet? Why isn’t film criticism taught by film critics in British universities? Or to put it another way; why have we never heard of those who[…]
Artists · Interviews · Stars · Writers & Critics
Cruising with Camille: An Interview with Camille Paglia
“Please note that even Margo Channing, threatening a ‘bumpy night’ for her hapless guests, merely fumingly forecasts. It’s a gesture of mind, not body.” Introduction Camille Paglia, the scholar and[…]
One night on the Sleazoid Express
Tom Sutpen’s classy review of Sleazoid Express, by Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford, certainly brought back the memories, to wit: After I came back from Vietnam in December 1969 I[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Writers & Critics
Sleazoid Express (2002)
Here in America we have something that, with the straightest of faces, we call our Film Heritage. What people usually mean when they invoke this solemn, unconscionably sentimental honorific is[…]
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