Some Cameroning, Part 2 – Cameron as Auteur
Can a filmmaker spend most of his or her artistic life recycling other people’s ideas and still be a true auteur? Sure. Why not? Any idea, theme, style, or attitude[…]
Category: Genres
Tortured Longing is the new coke
I can feel the Twilight zeitgeist in the air tonight, perhaps it’s because I live across from the cinema and the line around the block and I hear them out[…]
Roman Polanski: What’s on Trial?
What is fascinating about the Polanski case is that it is not particularly about Polanski. Looking at the debate raised in France (where I live) and the United States –[…]
Playing It Safe with John Dillinger: Michael Mann’s Public Enemies
“Dillinger had recently undergone plastic surgery to alter his face and to try to remove his fingerprints. But Public Enemies does not dare to depict that kind of desperation and that determination to survive under any circumstances.”
Far from Elementary: Debra Chasnoff’s Straightlaced: How Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up
“I told him, ‘I’m not gay. My neck was cold.'”
Activist & Political · Reviews · War
How James Stewart Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb: Anthony Mann’s Strategic Air Command
“Chew popcorn to avoid grinding teeth, comrades.”
Of Perfect Plans and Acts of Creation: Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing
“His plan mirrors Johnny’s, that is, pieces of the plan are known to one person: Johnny and Stanley; and not until the end do we see most of their pieces come into place.
Essays · LGBT & Queer · Writers & Critics
Contagious Homosexuality: Cruising and Sodom and Gomorrah
“In both Sodom and Gomorrah and Cruising, homosexuality – and its alternate currents – is caught with a glance.”
Activist & Political · Reviews
“They Come in Peace”: Andy Fickman’s Race to Witch Mountain
“Only saviors can save polluted planets, yellow cab drivers are losers . . .”
Porno to the People: The Danish Revolution That Liberated America
“Tease was out, honesty was in.”
Activist & Political · Directors · Interviews
Just Say Oui: An Interview with the Yes Men
“I’m shitting bricks, thinking he’s onto me.”
The Dead Things We Already Are: Pod People, Body Snatching, and the Horrors of Business as Usual
“We keep returning to this story about pod people because we’re terrified of the continuing erosion of our physicality in the postmodern era.”
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Lucky 13: The 2009 Portland Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
Getting out of the ghetto
Activist & Political · Crime · Historical & Epic · Reviews
The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover: Larry Cohen’s The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover
How a movie exposé of “abuse of power” defends those in power and their institutions
Reviews · Thrillers & Action · War
Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: Film Kills
“Tarantino thus concedes some of his omnipotence to the medium he so deftly manipulates.”
“Do You Find Me Sadistic?” Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds
“This is the World War II film confronting its Jungian shadow, acknowledging its darkest impulses and finally purging them.”
Activist & Political · Drama · Reviews
Critical Distance: What Knowing Knows About 9/11
“Where Cloverfield provocatively blurs the line between being ‘about’ 9/11 and being (mere) entertainment, Knowing lands squarely in the latter camp.”
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Interviews
Film and Film and Film: An Interview with Jonas Mekas
“One who knows how to, as they say, ‘read’ the images, can tell everything about me.”
Past Sunset: Noir in the West
“I don’t need other people. I don’t need help. I can take care of me.”
An Atheist’s Guide to “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
When you believe in things you don’t understand, you suffer. – Stevie Wonder * * * In 1949 Walt Disney Studios produced the last, and arguably the best, of their[…]
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