Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors
Changeling: The Comic Art of Woody Allen
“‘You can’t control life,’ he tells us in that film. ‘”It doesn’t wind up perfectly. Only art you can control. Art and masturbation.'”
Category: Comedy
Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · Mystery
The Evolution of the “Slacker-Sleuth” in The Big Lebowski and Under the Silver Lake
Whereas the Dude is a wholly passive protagonist, thrown begrudgingly into the chaos of conspiracy by the force of pure coincidence and designs of other, more motivated actors, Under the[…]
Comedy · Drama · French Cinema
Amélie, or, Only the Beginning
Amélie brings life to the unseen. * * * Talk with someone about a piece of art, and they’ll tell you about themselves. Let me share my thoughts on Amélie,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Feminism · Indies · Interviews · SF & Fantasy
The Secret of Her Success: An Interview with Helen Slater
For me, on Supergirl, I was 100% in. It was the biggest opportunity that ever happened to me, and the process of making the film was very nourishing. I think[…]
Comedy · Communism and Socialism · Directors · Drama · Eastern European · Russia · War · Writers & Critics
Hungarian Plays into American Movies: Billy Wilder’s Five Graves to Cairo and One, Two, Three
Billy Wilder turned to these two plays because they offered the situations, structure, and characters that would allow his imagination to flower and create contemporary stories – a patriotic military[…]
African American · Comedy · Drama · Eco · Race · Urban Conflict
Can’t Stand the Heat: Weather and Climate Change in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing
The fundamental question of who will suffer the most from extreme heat, and on a broader scale climate change, is bound to systemic issues of race and class. Through Lee’s[…]
Comedy · Historical & Epic · Native Americans · Revisionism · Westerns
Robert Altman’s Wild West Show: On Buffalo Bill and the Indians
Buffalo Bill and the Indians joins a select group of films whose popular failure nonetheless represented an aesthetic success: Patty Hearst (1987) and The King of Comedy (1983), come to[…]
Activist & Political · Comedy · Counterculture · Experimental & Underground
Laughing at Ourselves: On William Klein’s Mr. Freedom (1969)
This is an excerpt from the introduction to the author’s new book on Mr. Freedom (https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/isbn/9781800856943/). * * * The film calls into question both the American international and domestic[…]
Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · French Cinema · Mystery · Psychology
Fathoming the Phantom: On Bunuel’s The Phantom of Liberty
The question becomes: is it worth trying to be free? Is the struggle fruitless? Why can’t we escape our servitude to the past, to society, to others? * * *[…]
Absurdism · Comedy · Directors
Caricature and Empathy in the Work of the Coen Brothers
Ethan and Joel Coen have shared writing, directing, and producing credits on their collaborations until their recent hiatus from working together. Here they are on location for their 2004 comedy[…]
Comedy · Directors · Eastern European · Romance · Writers & Critics
How Did Hungarians Do It? The Hungarian World of Ernst Lubitsch
Lubitsch biographers and critics have accepted the lore that the Hungarian plays he used for his films were inferior. That widely held perception has come about because Lubitsch’s admirers want[…]
Comedy · DVD & Blu-ray · Music & Musicals · Production History
“Baby, I’m Having Fun”: Allan Arkush and Kent Beyda Discuss Get Crazy
ALLAN ARKUSH: Get Crazy never actually got a real release, you know. It was in theaters for a month. . . . A month? I’m sorry, a week, in some[…]
Comedy · Crime · Drugs · LGBT & Queer · New Media
Post-Irony Film & The Scary of Sixty-First
The Scary of Sixty-First expands the umbrella of “buzzword cinema” — it’s a Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy with a lesbian sex scene by a popular podcaster and it-girl of the edgy[…]
Comedy · Documentaries · Music & Musicals
Campy Love and the Underdog: Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap
This Is Spinal Tap is coated with the stylized veneer of a rockumentary turned inside out or, rather, back on itself as self-conscious dress-up, playful disguise. The cultivated image of[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Drama
The Erotic Persona of Jimmy Stewart: From Visionary to Voyeur
You would never guess either from looking at him or from the “aw shucks” way in which he’s remembered that Stewart is responsible for some of the most erotic romantic[…]
Take Your Time: A Step-Chart to the Films of Abel-Gordon-Romy
Each Abel-Gordon-Romy scenario is like a test, or challenge – in heroic terms, a trial – the filmmakers put to themselves, culminating in the couple going it alone for Lost[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors · Historical & Epic · Politics
Looking at Charlie — Modern Times (An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin)
Charlie Chaplin was born on April 16, 1889. To honor the old boy, we herewith present Alan Vanneman’s witty discussion of one of Charlie’s masterpieces, originally published in Bright Lights[…]
Comedy · Literature and Film · Theory · Writers & Critics
Whodunit? Poe and Dr. Strangelove
The oblique reference to Poe by means of the double POE acronyms, then, can be seen as linking the fundamental prophecy of Dr. Strangelove with the much earlier secular prophecies[…]
Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · Eastern European · Horror
The Cremator (1969): In Love with Death
The Cremator, only Juraj Herz’s second film, was adapted from a novel by Ladislav Fuks. It was well received, won a few awards, and was promptly banned for two decades[…]
Psycho as Comedy: The Joke’s on Everyone
We can further associate the filmmaker, the man with whom we’ve placed our narrative trust, with the “psycho” of both the title and our typical image of one, the latter[…]
Links + BSA
