Serious Joke: The Coen Brothers’ Emergence as Jewish Humorists
“The films of the Coen brothers seem to take place in a postmodern Chelm, displaced chronologically and geographically.”
Category: Comedy
Here Come the Bromides: Living in the Era of the Bromantic Comedy
“Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.” — Vladimir Nabokov
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors
Looking at Charlie: City Lights: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin
“If you could only see me as I really am, not as I appear but as I really am, as I am in my heart.”
Vicky and Woody and François: On Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona
The return of Jules and Jim?
Blood, Sweat, and Canvas: How Barton Fink Can Set You Free
“All the world’s a hell ten feet square”
Who Do You Love? Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game Reconsidered
Was Le Grande Jean too soft on the aristos?
The Double Standard: The Twins of Two-Faced Woman and Sylvia Scarlett
“She is both sentimental and shameless.”
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors · Silents
Looking at Charlie – the Mutuals: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin
“Love backed by force, forgiveness sweet, brings hope and peace to Easy Street” “Fulfilling my contract with Mutual was, I suppose, the happiest period of my life.” Charlie Chaplin had[…]
Comedy · DVD & Blu-ray · Pre-Code
Dinner Is Served: The Return of MGM’s Witty ’30s Romp
Cukor’s all-star gala remains a tasty dish
No Cellos, Please, I’m American: Mike Nichols’ Closer Is Haute Merde
All glitz and no guts
“If I were different, maybe things could be the same, only different.” Leo McCarey’s Screwball Classic The Awful Truth on DVD
Cary Grant and Irene Dunne live our dreams
Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Revisiting Preminger’s The Moon Is Blue
Mixing it up with Otto and Alfred (Kinsey, that is)
Welcome to the Chest Club: Tina Fey’s Mean Girls
Freaks and Geeks redux
Forgotten Master: The Career of Gregory La Cava
Lubitsch wasn’t the only one with a “touch”
Comedy · Drama · Music & Musicals
The Masked and Anonymous Carnival of Disappointment, Exploitation, and Profound Ironies
“We’re all trying to kill time, but time ends up killing us.”
Down with Underrated Masterpieces! Looney Tunes: Back in Action and Down with Love
The sound of no hands clapping
Comedy · LGBT & Queer · Pre-Code
Wheeler and Woolsey Queered
The downright peculiar pleasures of pre-Code Wheeler and Woolsey
Some Bark, No Bite: The Mouse That Roared on DVD
Strangelove gets sweet
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