Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors
Pierre Etaix: Revisiting a Forgotten Master
“The man’s a genius!” —Jerry Lewis
Category: Genres
Dreamtime – Inception vs. Secrets of a Soul (G.W. Pabst 1926)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df1CGxqS1MA] Nine out of ten bloggers agree – the dreams in Christopher Nolan’s INCEPTION are not particularly dream-like, at least, not much more so than the action sequences in your average[…]
The Last Airbender: The Most (Incomplete) Fantastic Journey
Talk about wish fulfillment for kids – the Airbender mythos has it nailed. As a child dreams of gaining superpowers, he may wish for them all: i.e, the numerous abilities of[…]
Jonah Hex-ing the Western
Call this a western exploitation film. Jonah Hex, based on a comic book series of the same name, has much more action than thought or sense. It borrows from the[…]
New Film from “Triplets” Director
Hand-drawn animation, once the mainstay of Disney and other studios that created “cartoons” for popular consumption, is becoming something of a lost art. Audiences seem to prefer Pixar-style CGI. Disney[…]
Metropolis: Restored, Reborn, and Rolling Out
In his nonfiction text On Writing, Stephen King describes the artist’s work as telepathy. Hardly the new-age type, King is referring to how thoughts can transmit though a quiet practice[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards
Warsaw Doc Festival
The Miscreants of Taliwood, dir. George Gittoes Nénette, dir. Nicolas Philibert I recently spent a week at the Warsaw Documentary Film Festival. The two films that made the deepest impression[…]
Two in the Wave: Fathers of a Revolution
If any movement made cinema history into a reactionary narrative, it would be the French New Wave. A batch of cinephiles, most working as critics for Cahiers du Cinema (established[…]
Frazetta and the Mothman
Another masterpiece by the late Frank Frazetta (1928-2010), and a classic example of how Hollywood studio thinking — a misguided attempt to reach the widest demographic possible — destroyed the potential[…]
Babies: A Nature Doc Starring Humans
From the outset, it seems to be a bold-faced cash-in culled from little investment. In Babies, a French-produced doc which got a surprisingly wide release this past weekend, we have[…]
Directors · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
William Cameron Menzies and the Totalitarian Menace
Can a film’s designer be its effective auteur? He can, if his name is William Cameron Menzies. Menzies is best known for directing and designing two classics of the science[…]
Essays · Noir · Writers & Critics
Ossessione: Shabby Little Shocker?
Or Advanced Guide to Cinematic Survival?
In Praise of Dangerous Men: Patton (1970)
“The very idea of losing is hateful to Americans.”
Animation · Essays · SF & Fantasy
Living Backward: The Millennials’ Alice
“We are but older children, dear, Who fret to find our bedtime near.” — Lewis Carroll, “Child of the Pure Unclouded Brow”
Crime · Drama · Exploitation & Erotica
Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom: An Introduction
Take your seats for a “dark-hearted, midnight fantasia of ecstatic sadism, voyeurism and psychosis”!
Actors & Personalities · Comedy
Forgotten Charleys I: Charley Bowers: Silent Comedy’s Wizard of the Bizarre
“He is Aladdin and the camera is his lamp.” — James R. Quirk
Activist & Political · LGBT & Queer
The Irish Queer vs. the IRA Macho in Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto
“The transvestite’s camp humor is here used to stress the unsustainability of the military discourses on which the justification of IRA terrorism is based.”
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Silents
Forgotten Charleys II: Charley Chase: Mr. Normal Unleashes His Comic Demon
“He could be suave or awkward, likable or pesky, average or eccentric, a winner or a loser, a fussy nerd or the life of the party, all the while remaining Charley Chase.”
Activist & Political · Documentaries
Troubled Waters: Crashing into The Cove
“To twist Gayatri Spivak’s famous phrase, it’s a case of (mostly) ‘white men saving cute dolphins from yellow men.'”
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Essays
Corn-Fed Culture: Living Large and “Eating Shit” in King Corn and Fast Food Nation
“The films analyzed here explore the (crude) question: what are the individual and social consequences of eating shit?”
Links + BSA
