“He tries to trick you. I try to enlighten you. Which is the more noble pursuit?” The Illusionist was released in 2006 to generally good reviews (the consensus seemed to[…]
Category: Genres
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
UCLA Archive revisits “Cotton Comes to Harlem” and “Shaft”
The UCLA Film & Television Archive’s current series on black cinema of the 1970s has featured guest appearances by a number of actors and other people associated with films on[…]
Catfish: A New Medium for a Motif
Note: this review discusses major plot points but doesn’t reveal the surprising turn. Much of what is discussed below can be found in the promotional material. Catfish opens in Philadelphia[…]
“In Northwest China, You’re on Your Own”: A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop
Cora: Yeah, but where are we headed? Frank: What’s the difference? Anywhere. –The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946 The key to the shifty enterprise of adapting a work like the[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
“Machete doesn’t text.”
by RUTH STARKMAN This definitive statement comes from Machete, an ex-Federale played by veteran tough guy, Danny Trejo in the deliciously extreme action gore-fest Machete, which opens nationwide Friday, September[…]
Five Shameless Sci-Fi Oscar Robberies, Spearheaded By Avatar
Riding on the back of nine minutes of unseen footage, the special edition of James Cameron’s pioneering 3-D masterpiece Avatar returns to theaters today (Friday August 27). But billions of[…]
As Above, So Below – World on a Wire and The Thirteenth Floor
A MATRIX OF CONNECTIONS For a long time, I avoided watching The Thirteenth Floor (above) due to the name Roland Emmerich in the credits. Emmerich was responsible in one way[…]
The Real Villain of John Ford’s STAGECOACH (1939)
STAGECOACH (1939) directed by John Ford from a screenplay by Dudley Nichols is generally considered to be the first adult Western – adult in the sense that it took a set of archetypes[…]
Experimental & Underground · Uncategorized
Sex, Death, Dreaming
The following short films, each less than one minute in length, were created for the compilation project, OneDreamRush. First, we have Asia Argento on the fluidity of SEXUAL IDENTITY. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgIgiQ-2TNo][…]
Sanshiro Sugata: Kurosawa’s Elegy for the Reluctant Kamikaze
“Sanshiro is ultimately after spiritual gain — to achieve the purity he found in the moonlit flower.”
SF & Fantasy · Thrillers & Action
“Let’s Call It a Draw”: M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender
“Most of the major speaking roles are indeed pwned by people without color, to put it indelicately. But the rest are thankfully brought to life by a rainbow coalition of talent.”
Multiple Senses: Tom Ford’s A Single Man
“Ford creates a unique cinematic experience in which the visual, the aural, and even the olfactory mix to produce a powerful synesthetic experience.”
Counterculture · Essays · SF & Fantasy
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”: Avatar’s Psychedelic Fantasy
“What entertains us may be shaping us.”
Experimental & Underground · Memoir
Spade Work: Four Autobiographies and an Elegy: My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2008); Of Time and the City (Terence Davies, 2007); Hommage (Jean-Marie Téno, 1985); Gloria! (Hollis Frampton, 1979); and (nostalgia) (Hollis Frampton, 1971)
“Because they assume that memory is fallible and experience inassimilable, they’re more like inquests or excavations than diaries or memoirs. Instead of reminiscing, they dig.”
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
A Few Steps Shy of a Masterpiece: Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse Apply Themselves in The Band Wagon
“She came at me in sections . . . she was bad . . . she was dangerous . . . she was my kind of woman.”
Documentaries · Music & Musicals
Out of His Head: Vikram Jayanti’s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector
“I’m dealing in rock ‘n’ roll. I’m, like, I’m not a bona fide human being.” — Phil Spector
The Energy of an Era: Revisiting Ken Russell’s The Devils
“How else is one to approach a historical episode involving humpbacked, sexually frustrated nuns; crippled autocrats; hammer-wielding exorcists; doctors armed with holy water enemas?”
Maximum Security: Film Noir, Domesticity, and the Female Captive
“While films about men with dangerous jobs showed them returning home to supportive, contented wives, films that focused on domestic settings showed women caught in oppressive relationships or warped by the narrowness of their emotional lives.”
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