“Praise the Lord and pass the absinthe!” When Marion Davies first met William Randolph Hearst, she was a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl, and a showgirl she remained. She had an uncertain[…]
Activist & Political · Reviews
“People believe what they want to believe because the guy who made this was so good that it’s real to everybody. Now who’s the master, the painter or the forger?”[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
INTRODUCTION Jack Pickford – actor, director, and alleged womaniser, alcoholic, drug-user, bootlegger and all-around scoundrel. Born in 1896, Jack was the brother of Mary Pickford, the Queen of Hollywood during[…]
Activist & Political · SF & Fantasy
Avatar metaphorically attacks all martial, colonial, and expansionist histories, which have occurred at the expense of the world’s indigenous peoples and Earth’s biocomplexity. Both implicitly, through the film’s narrative, and[…]
Activist & Political · Reviews
“To go to the cinema is like to eat or shit, it’s a physiological act, it’s urban guerrilla” ~ Marco Ferreri Francis Bacon once said: “We’re flesh, potential carcasses. If[…]
Experimental & Underground · TV & Streaming
Based on a pair of TV movie adaptations by Richard Matheson, the Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974) series ran only 20 episodes, surprising given the popular and commercial success of[…]
“Pornographic,” “voyeuristic,” “clinical” . . . at a time when gay cinema is known for its matter-of-fact, graphic handling of sex, it’s surprising that the sex scenes in Abdellatif Kechiche’s[…]
Now anyone who can scrape together a few hundred dollars can load up on enough movie streams and DV-R and giant LCD screens to never leave the house, so who needs a nice house?
Though last December’s lack of promised Mayan doomsday never panned out, December 2013 is laden with new DVDs and theatrical revivals that allow us to pretend the world ended as far back as 1979. Oh if only… we might all be rolling with Humongous by now, or Bane, or what’s the difference?
Crime · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
This is a film from the era of Bernhard Goetz, Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels, and of course, Charles Bronson finding himself facing muggers wherever he may go.
“This emergent form — the death’s head — is not a part of the scene, but rather a reflection upon it, potentially a visualization of the character’s thoughts — evoked[…]
“Studies like this misunderstand the basic use of cinematic myth (which includes action films) as a ceremonial exercise in psychic catharsis, meant to appease the angry darkness of the masculine unconscious.
“The zombies, horrified by the overwhelming stimuli of television and set upon by hordes of trigger-happy rednecks and torch-wielding schoolteachers, are one of the film’s many desperate victims of bullying[…]
“What is this anyway? Some kind of masculine power trip? I’m shoved in the back with all the goddamn tools. Screwdrivers and wrenches don’t really do it for me, you[…]
Experimental & Underground · Reviews
“What is fantasy when scripted shows that dominate popular culture are labeled ‘reality’ and social media allows everyone to be their own celebrity and put on their own performance of their best self?”
“Why should you love him who the world hates so?”
Activist & Political · Reviews
“End of Watch incorporates the visual and narrative codes of Iraq War films, inviting the viewer to draw a comparison between the battlegrounds of the “war on terror” and the mean streets of Los Angeles.”
Asian · Reviews · Uncategorized
“Now the fight becomes something more than a contest of wills, it becomes a careful discovery of kindred spirits as seen through a reciprocal poetry of martial arts form.”
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
What’s black and white and destroys Western Civilization?
Comedy · Directors · Essays · Writers & Critics
“Nowadays, schlubs play schlubs and audiences are expected to accept that geeky males can win over classically beautiful women. What does it tell us about the state of gender relations, sexual fantasy, and desire that a physically average geek like Seth Rogen can trump an iconically attractive and glamorous star like Cary Grant?”
