Chimp versus film critic: which is smarter?
You know the old gag: set a dozen chimpanzees in front of a set of typewriters, and sooner or later they would type out every sentence in the English language,[…]
Category: Writers & Critics
The Ballad of Smith & Siegel:First Stanza
There’s always something very dubious about public feuds; spitting contests luminaries get into that play themselves out in a mass media culture hooked on diversion. No matter how vituperative and[…]
BRICKBATS TO LOS ANGELES TIMES
Last month, the Los Angeles Times Magazine published a cover story concerning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. The story was written by L.A. Times Book Editor, David L. Ulin, and in it,[…]
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[…]
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[…]
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[…]
Pulp with a Soundtrack: Getting Elmore Leonard on Film
“My sound is the absence of me.” – Elmore Leonard The curious thing about Elmore Leonard is that while his books move fast, the films that capture his tone seem[…]
Class Dismissed: Revisiting Losey and Pinter’s Misunderstood Masterpiece, The Servant
They also serve who only stand and annihilate
Sirk and the Critics
(above) The happy-go-lucky “Sirk ensemble” from All That Heaven Allows: Russell Metty, Agnes Moorehead, Sirk, Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Ross Hunter, and dialogue director Jack Davis.
Sarris on Sirk
The very strange, controversial career of Douglas Sirk raises perplexing questions about form and content in the cinema. For one thing, Sirk’s literary source material has ranged from Anton Chekhov[…]
Zuckerman and Zugsmith on Sirk
GEORGE ZUCKERMAN ON SIRK Robert Wilder’s novel had been shelved and written off (because of Breen office objections and a threatened lawsuit by the Reynolds tobacco family) when I first[…]
Books · LGBT & Queer · Writers & Critics
“I Changed My Socially Constructed Sexual Identity!” Jenni Olson on The Queer Movie Poster Book
“The butler did it … to everyone!”
Documentaries · DVD & Blu-ray · Writers & Critics
“Being There”: No Maps for These Territories on DVD
“I was just doing my job.”
Music & Musicals · Writers & Critics
Shakespeare Improved! Cole Porter Teaches the Old Bard New Tricks in Kiss Me Kate
“Why, you’d make a perfect shrew!”
Essays · SF & Fantasy · Writers & Critics
Patriotism, Politics, and Propaganda: The Naturalization of Friday’s Man, Robinson, in Robinson Crusoe on Mars
Defoe’s classic translates surprisingly well to outer space in this 1960s gem
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Genres · Writers & Critics
Dancing with Werewolves: John Sayles in Roger Corman’s Hollywood
It Came from New World Pictures!
They Lost It at the Movies: Film Culture in the Age of Positif and Cineaste
“I can’t believe that you let those people put pictures on your skin.” C. W.’s father to C. W. Moss in Bonnie and Clyde
Actors & Personalities · Writers & Critics
Manhattan to America: Drop Dead! The New Yorker Takes a Slap at Julia Roberts
“The more he writes about Julia, the madder Tony gets.” One thing the American people do not need in their lives is more stress. They do not need some tea-sipping,[…]
Olivier’s Hamlet (1948) on DVD
A pristine transfer of one of the Bard’s most gothic – and gayest, in Olivier’s hands – works Criterion is continuing its mining of the wonderfully rich Janus film catalog[…]
Anthony Asquith’s Pygmalion (1938) on DVD
Wendy Hiller triumphs in the fine 1938 film of Shaw’s masterpiece The plays of George Bernard Shaw have long been a cinema staple. Works like Caesar and Cleopatra, Saint Joan, Major[…]
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