Actors & Personalities · Exploitation & Erotica · Pre-Code
Desperation and Divinity: “Help us, Mae!”
Hazy thoughts on the transition from real sex to digital hallucinations
Category: Genres
Screening Hong Kong: The 33rd Hong Kong International Film Festival
One of the world’s largest cinema events is also one of the most ambitious
The Child Is Father to the Child: On the Friday the 13th Series
“You can depend on Jason.”
Busby Berkeley’s Hollywood Hotel: Bring on the dancing girls! Oh, wait! There aren’t any!
Thank God for the Benny Goodman Quartet
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[…]
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.”
Activist & Political · Directors · Interviews
Maps and Movies: Talking with Deepa Mehta
“I think it’s really important for you, or anybody who wants to be a filmmaker, to really be honest with yourself.”
Dizzy from the Altitude, Happy to Plummet: Pre-Code Cinema and the Post-Code-Shock Syndrome
“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.”
Sinners’ Holiday: An Ode to Pre-Code
“Code? What Code?”
Lysergic Landscapes: John Maybury’s Read Only Memory
“Story, characters, and other reassuring elements are simply obliterated by what appears to be Maybury’s elaborate private mythology.”
Spike Lee’s “Uniquely American [Di]vision”: Race and Class in 25th Hour
“Is it simply that the hero must be white for a mainstream American audience to care for him, or for the mainstream critical establishment to value Lee’s work?”
Little Stabs of Queer Happiness (and Horror): Random Short Reviews of the Worthy and the Worthless in Recent and Old School Cinema
“Heterosexual brides-to-be are one of the demographics that arrive by the busloads to partake of Darcelle’s mad mix of risqué zingers, over-the-top musical routines, and mother-hen reassurances.”
Activist & Political · Animation
The Responsible Dream: On Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir
“We were the Nazis.”
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.”
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