Actors & Personalities · Comedy
Ernie Kovacs: An American Secret
“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
Category: Genres
The Perverse Privilege of Degradation: American Politics in the Age of Assimilation
A Final Statement of the Obvious
On Dangerous Ground: Some Noteworthy “Moving Camera Movies” of 2010
Whether neo-noir or horror, underexposed or ignored, several films of 2010 employed devilishly motivated moving camera to disturbing effect.
Pseudo-Innocence and Encased Fantasies: Inside the Unconscious of the National Rifle Association
“I like this exhibit . . . it’s very familiar.”
Going to Alaska: Vision Quests, Quasi-Indians, and Great Escapes on the Last Frontier
“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
Fractured Synthesis: The Blender Aesthetic of Outsider filmmaker Bob Moricz
“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.”
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Strike, Red Psalm, The Phantom Carriage, Meek’s Cutoff, Go West, Battling Butler
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
The Way That You Use It: Reassessing The Color of Money in the Scorsese Canon
“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.”
“Filled with Ritual”: Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited
“[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
Halloween Film Guide to: Kali Chthonian Feminine Subtext
For the Halloween devouring Other in you: Here’s a small sampling of films for inciting you or your other to an orgy of castration and Kali-esque bloodletting…
Fantasia (1940): The Varieties of Religious Experience
Walt Disney’s masterpiece, Fantasia, may seem at first like a random collection of animated shorts whose only common factor is that each was inspired by a well-known piece of classical[…]
Documentaries · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Docurama Bizarra: MELLODRAMA; ELEPHANT IN THE LIVING ROOM
A documentary on the weird world of Ohioans keeping dangerous wild animals as pets (it’s legal there), this film couldn’t be more timely in the light of recent events
Documentaries · Reviews · TV & Streaming
Wham! Bam! Islam!
[Editor’s note: Wham! Bam! Islam! plays on PBS on Thursday, Oct. 13 as part of its estimable Independent Lens series. Check local listings for time.] In July 2010, Dr. Naif[…]
TCM Musts: 12:15 AM EST tonight – THE GLASS KEY (1942)
It’s not ‘rare’ by TCM standards, but its not easily available on DVD, so hey – you should maybe DV-R this if you haven’t already and then keep it[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
George Kuchar and the Great Beyond
by Bob Moricz [Editor’s note: This is our second tribute to George Kuchar, who passed away in San Francisco on Tuesday, September 6, 2011, age 69, from prostate cancer. He was[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
George Kuchar: A First-Person Life
[Editor’s note: George Kuchar passed away in San Francisco on Tuesday, September 6, 2011, age 69. The cause was prostate cancer. He was beloved by many, and was certainly a[…]
Forgotten Fathers – Maurice Tourneur, Richard Oswald
The Frenchman, Maurice Tourneur, and the Austrian, Richard Oswald, were major producer/directors during cinema’s Silent Era, but are hardly remembered today. These days, movie lovers are more likely to know the films and[…]
Green Hornet Makes America Bossy Bottom: Who’s Topping Who?
“Britt looks like the top as he bends Kato over and as he barks orders at his employee, but as every physical confrontation in the film demonstrates, Kato is the stronger man in both mind and body.”
Activist & Political · Essays · SF & Fantasy
Green Lantern: The Allegory of Fear & Will Unfolded
“Facing fear and not concoctions of fear serving the needs of our own resident guardians of wealth and power is a far different enterprise than joining the enthusiasts of self-empowerments’ call “to just wish it.”
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