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.”
Category: Genres
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)
Activist & Political · Essays · SF & Fantasy
When We Dream, Do We Accumulate Capital? On Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)
“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 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
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.”
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[…]
Genres · SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming
Concocting Character in Television: The Case of Star Trek’s Annoying Old Men — and the Beautiful Young Women Who Love Them
“The arrival of Kirk on the scene precipitates a kind of crisis in the equilibrium of this pair of older, controlling-male and young subordinate-woman. What happens is that the woman is somehow awakened by the arrival of the Enterprise crew — awakened sexually, but also in a much broader sense.”
Activist & Political · SF & Fantasy
Cylons, Avatars, and Barack Obama: Science Fiction and Hybridity After 9/11
“Veering away from jingoistic portrayals of ‘us’ and the ‘Other,’ these films advocate instead a complex and globally entwined future of hybrid identities along with critical consideration of the political and cultural consequences of advanced technology.”
Activist & Political · Reviews
Between Silence and Sound: Children of a Lesser God
“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other.” — Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (73)
Directors · Experimental & Underground
A Dream That Was Not All a Dream: The Films of André Delvaux
“For him, film was not only a profession but a mean of investigating cinema as a language, an investigation in which theory and film practice went hand in hand.”
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