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
Category: Genres
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?”
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[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy
Nuts and Nice Messes: On Laurel and Hardy
“Life isn’t short enough . . .” Laurel in Sons of the Desert (1934)
Documentaries · Reviews · Writers & Critics
“Riveting”* — Not! Gerald Peary’s For the Love of Movies — The Story of American Film Criticism
Talking heads, talking of talking heads
Interviews · Noir · Writers & Critics
A Writer’s Evolution: An Interview with Eddie Muller
“[My film] is stylized and theatrical because the story is so telescoped we have a life-and-death outcome played out over 20 actual minutes.”
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
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