“Nude on the Moon’s exploitation is as innocent as the Good Christo-Nudist’s reclaiming of a pre-figleafed (albeit non-recreational) Eden.”
Category: Genres
Essays · LGBT & Queer · Photo Essays
Retro Virus: Did AIDS Perform Nensha?
“Be aware: there are forces at work here of which we have no knowledge.”
Actors & Personalities · Asian · Silents
The Goddess in Her Element: Ruan Lingyu in Shanghai
“This is an actress who shows excitement down to the curl of her fingers, and whose face reveals every kind of mercurial change.”
Tex Avery: Arch-Radicalizer of the Hollywood Cartoon
“Tex Avery — Arch Radicalizer of the Hollywood Cartoon” consists of slightly glorified program notes that I wrote for the Zagreb Animation Festival in 1978. It was a big hit in the Old World and was published in Russian, Croatian, Dutch, French, and Italian (twice), but the only time it ever got printed in English was by Gary Morris in his cinephile-revered rag called Bright Lights. Now, thirty-one years later, Mr. Morris has decided to reissue the piece online. I have forgone attempting any actual rewrites, though, because the observations have not dated especially egregiously, except for my discussion of the then-current state of cartoon criticism. The biggest faux pas contained herein is my overconfident assertion that cel animation would inevitably dominate the future of the medium (oops – maybe not), as CGI was then but a distant pixel on the historical horizon.
Actors & Personalities · Interviews · Sports
Return of the Obsessed: James Toback Steps into the Ring Again with Tyson
“And then he said, ‘It’s like a Greek tragedy. The only problem is, I’m the subject.'”
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries
“Just Another Man”: On James Toback’s Tyson
“Toback, to his credit, and despite the empathy he feels toward his subject, doesn’t pull his punches.”
DVD & Blu-ray · Experimental & Underground
Opposition Compositions: Treasures IV: American Avant Garde Film 1947-1986 on DVD
“Avant garde filmmaking has been defined almost entirely in opposition to the Hollywood mainstream.”
Actors & Personalities · Exploitation & Erotica · Pre-Code
Desperation and Divinity: “Help us, Mae!”
Hazy thoughts on the transition from real sex to digital hallucinations
The Branding of THE CHEAT
Kicking off the second pre-code set to come out this year, we’ve got THE CHEAT (1931, another in the “rich ne’er do well offers to ‘help’ married woman” genre. This[…]
The Code and its Perfect Specimens
There’s TWO pre-code sets out for spring: Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 3 and this week comes the Pre-Code Hollywood set from Universal. None of the films quite measure up to the[…]
Women in Wonderland, Part 5 – Coraline (Henry Selick 2009)
Every one of Henry Selick’s four feature films to date has dealt with alternate realities. In the Tim Burton-produced The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), the ghoulish Jack Skellington finds a[…]
Women in Wonderland, Part 1 – Lost Girls
All three meet as adult women in Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s X-rated graphic novel, Lost Girls (above). Moore, the genius author of Watchmen, From Hell, and The League of[…]
Of Bullies and Blood Drinkers: Talking to Tomas Alfredson about Let the Right One In
“I think the most horrifying images are the ones you make yourself. Is there someone standing behind the door, or is it just two shoes standing there?”
“Oh Mary, Don’t Ask”: The Boys in the Band on DVD
“In the ensuing post-Stonewall civil rights struggles, The Boys in the Band became crazy Aunt Betty locked in the attic when guests came over.”
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors
Looking at Charlie: City Lights: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin
“If you could only see me as I really am, not as I appear but as I really am, as I am in my heart.”
Activist & Political · Documentaries
What Is Cheaper Than Nothing at All? Czech Dream, Culture Jamming, and Consumerism
“I jam because I am without ID.”
Liverpool Lullaby: On Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City
“Through cinema the past is regained.”
Griffith’s Great American Pastoral: Location and Meaning in Way Down East
“The air is saturated with their feelings for each other as they listen to ‘the distant music of the falls,’ the same falls, of course, that will threaten to kill her.”
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