Counterculture · Essays · Writers & Critics
On the Road to the Ninth Circle of Hell: Easy Rider Merges Lanes with Dante’s Inferno and Faust
How Easy Rider laid the groundwork for Wild Hogs
Category: Genres
Actors & Personalities · Experimental & Underground
In a Garden of Tin Men: Marion Eaton (1932–2011) Remembered
“Marion’s character in Thundercrack!, the daft and delusional farm widow Gert Hammond, harkened back to a much more handcrafted Tennessee Williamsesque archetype. She infuses Gert with real pathos as well as genuine creepiness in a series of hauntingly photographed monologues that transcend the film’s threadbare conceits.”
Turn, Turn, Turn: The Seasons of Korean Cinema
“If the technical advancement of cinema now means that nature has been conquered, and most movies take place in a meteorological nowheresville created in a digital effects lab (where the weather is either hyper-real or airlessly unpresent), it strikes me as significant that the weather, the presence of the seasons, persists so strongly in Korean cinema, even as it has grown to rival Hollywood in sophistication, ambition, and technical achievement.”
The Bird Identity: Brad Bird’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol
“Some of the most refreshing aspects of Ghost Protocol are the ways in which it defies so many of the accepted conventions of modern action movies, most of which can probably be attributed to Bird’s economic and meticulous mise en scène.”
“Dad, Is That You?” Revisiting M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense
“Fatherhood, in a sense of a conscious begetting, is unknown to man.” — James Joyce, Ulysses
Blue Movie: Rediscovering the Spark in Shinya Tsukamoto’s A Snake of June
“An incessant downpour dominates every exterior scene, and even some interior ones through sound. Water becomes a central motif, from Rinko relaxing contemplatively in the bath to Shigehiko watching people drown in the tank.”
“You Know Billy, We Blew It”: Historical Influences on the “Rough Rebels” and How the Counterculture Was Excluded from Hollywood
Hippies and radicals, back of the (cultural) bus
There’s a Holdup in the Bronx, Brooklyn’s Broken out in Fights — but Who Gives a Damn? Joe E. Ross and Fred Gwynne, not as funny as I remembered them in Nat Hiken’s Car 54, Where Are You?
You can go home again; it’s just not a lot of fun when you get there
Mind over Mother: Ecstasy and Cruelty in Brian De Palma’s Carrie
“One reason for [Carrie’s] success in both print and film, I think, lies in this: Carrie’s revenge is something that any student who ever had his gym shorts pulled down in Phys Ed or his glasses thumb-rubbed in study hall could approve of. In Carrie’s destruction of the gym . . . we see a dream revolution of the socially downtrodden.”2
Activist & Political · Reviews
The Plague 2.0: On Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion
“The original industrial accidents as, for instance, the derailment of a train or the crash of an airplane, were all specific, localized, and particular accidents. They were taking place at a certain place and at a certain moment in time. Now, however, the revolution of instantaneous transmissions brought about by telecommunications makes the accident global.” — Paul Virilio
Actors & Personalities · Experimental & Underground
Robert Cowan (1930-2011): Unsung Superstar of the Underground
“Bob and the new people he introduced us to were very inspiring because it meant to me, by seeing them, that you can get older and still run around in a world of uncharted horizons.” – George Kuchar
The Savvy Tivo: Exotic Pre-codes for 12/12-12/20
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
Criterion goes Pre-Code: DESIGN FOR LIVING (1933)
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.
This week’s TCM pre-code musts: BOMBSHELL, ONE WAY PASSAGE, CITY STREETS
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!).
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
Exit Through the Gift Shop: Cavemen to the Right
“Are we watching a faux-documentary within an entertainment vehicle? One suspects only Banksy knows. And he’s too busy painting to tell us.”
Religious Allegory and Cultural Discomfort in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky: And Why Larry Crowne Is One of the Best Films of 2011
“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
Burning the Candle at Both Ends: Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies (2010)
“There are truths that can only be revealed on condition of having been discovered.”– Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies (2003)
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