Activist & Political · Crime · Essays
“I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.” – Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) in The Departed
Actors & Personalities · Asian
“Endless self-parody is not a ‘new idea’ — and unless conducted with the awareness of the irony inherent in the process, it is a prank a person may play for years before realizing the joke is on him.”
The horror lingers and seeps; the feelings are sponged away.” — Anthony Lane, “Road Kill” The New Yorker September 26, 2011
In darker shadowy lairs, Myrna Loy meets with her devoted astrologer, Swami Yogadaci (the ever villainous C. Henry Gordon) to figure out how and when the constellations want her to assassinate her former sorority snubbers. Loy’s the villain, ostensibly, but you’ll be rooting for her all the way (unless you’ve never felt the sting of a snubbing yourself).
DVD & Blu-ray · Pre-Code · Reviews
Unseen for years thanks to its “dangerously progressive” attitudes towards sexual relationships outside wedlock, tomorrow, Tuesday 12/6/12! Criterion has released it in the stand-alone glory it deserves, replete with extras and an essay by the great Kim Morgan.
Murders are talked over via close-ups of cat statues, and a very dirty fella named Blackie gets offed by Guy Kibee (as you’ve never seen him before!).
“Are we watching a faux-documentary within an entertainment vehicle? One suspects only Banksy knows. And he’s too busy painting to tell us.”
“You can laugh while Rome is burning, but believe you me, Poppy, it is burning, and if you don’t wake up, then you will be burnt to a cinder . . . I mean, look around you. What do you see? Do you see a policy of bringing happiness to people?” — Scott in Happy-Go-Lucky
“There are truths that can only be revealed on condition of having been discovered.”– Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies (2003)
Activist & Political · Essays · SF & Fantasy
“Nolan is making evident, both through form and narrative, his criticism of the sweeping radicalization of cinematic work that has privileged the technological wonder of the movies over formulations of innovative and complex narratives that deal with human existence.”
Actors & Personalities · Comedy
“Ernie’s contract is reported to contain a clause forbidding him ever to consult a psychiatrist. The network is afraid if he ever became normal he’d be ruined.” — Dorothy Kilgallen
A Final Statement of the Obvious
Whether neo-noir or horror, underexposed or ignored, several films of 2010 employed devilishly motivated moving camera to disturbing effect.
“I like this exhibit . . . it’s very familiar.”
“He said he might not survive, and ended with the ritual declaration: ‘I now walk into the wild.’ Civilization had ‘poisoned’ him, but the best of civilization gave him words to describe both what he was fleeing, and what he intended to embrace.”
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Uncategorized
“Moricz’s work assaults the viewer with a whiplash barrage of familiar plot lines, trite turning points, and cliché characters spouting simultaneously banal and inflated rhetorical dialogue, all infusing narratives propelled by a poignant and urgent anxiety derived from the tensions of everyday life.”
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
“This film is about process, about transitory states, about the journey in between the grimy Chicago pool halls that serve as Vince and Eddie’s intellectual and physical training grounds.”
“[B]ecause the story is filled with ritual and religion, we were always going into temples. I was particularly obsessed with participating in any religious ceremonies I could get involved with.” — Wes Anderson, on the making of The Darjeeling Limited
