Painting influences film. Film influences painting. The portraits of Los Angeles painter and performance artist Stacy Lande (pronounced, “lan-dee”) appear equally influenced by 19th Century Symbolism, 20th Century Expressionism, and[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Writers & Critics
Here in America we have something that, with the straightest of faces, we call our Film Heritage. What people usually mean when they invoke this solemn, unconscionably sentimental honorific is[…]
Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai (1948) is one of the most anti-noir of classic noirs. “Shanghai” in The Lady From Shanghai means the same thing as “Chinatown” in[…]
C. Jerry Kutner’s proposition on noir-as-genre versus noir-as-style, “We shouldn’t be asking, “Is it noir or not-noir?,” but rather, “How noir is it?,” has prompted me to revisit my own[…]
Takashi Miike’s Imprint is being advertised on its DVD box cover as “Banned From Cable Broadcast.” Although other episodes (notably, Dario Argento’s Jenifer) were partly censored, of the 13 one-hour[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
Anyone infatuated with silent film, like me, is always on the lookout for that one pre-talkie film that will win over the unconverted, and I think I’ve found a mighty[…]
A while back, I talked about the re-emergence of Romantic “blue flower” imagery in films like Batman Begins and A Scanner Darkly. Add one more film to the list –[…]
[dailymotion id=23yvenWOLheom26Si]The Town(Josef von Sternberg; 1945) Produced under the imprimatur of the U.S. Office of War Information, The Town was the only film directed in its entirety by Josef von[…]
I have seen the future, and it works, pretty well. The Ant Bully is pitched younger than just about any cartoon I’ve seen. There are no “over the kids’ heads”[…]
SF & Fantasy · Writers & Critics
The classic ’60s sci-fi anthology series, The Outer Limits, was conceived by eccentric writer/producer Leslie Stevens. How eccentric?? It was Stevens who later wrote and directed Incubus (1965), starring William[…]
SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming · Writers & Critics
Playwright. Screenwriter. Producer. Known primarily for two major achievments: (1) He wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). (2) He was the producer and chief writer for the first[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
pa·limp·sest: n., Writing material (as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased; something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the[…]
“Shot in earthbound Eastman color, It’s Always Fair Weather doesn’t look or feel like the Technicolor froth that preceded it.” There’s a scene in the 1949 musical On the Town when Frank[…]
Not the usual suspects Way back in 1987, two vampire movies were released within a few months of each other. The first was Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys, a big[…]
Jürgen Flimm and Brian Large supply a stage production that lives on DVD A stage production that doesn’t look stagy on home video? I said it couldn’t be done, more[…]
“Glassman uncovers networks of influence and inference, whole microhistories around the camera . . . “ Interviewed by Peter Cowie for Cowie’s book Revolution! The Explosion of World Cinema in[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
“LOST CHILD WANTED — Last seen with a little man with large flat feet and a small moustache” In 1917, for the first time in his life, Charlie Chaplin took[…]
“The film is a kind of subtle argumentation by analogy, whose success rests on the viewer’s desire to identify with Gore.” Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth may get the honor[…]
“Lord, my Lord! How true it is that whoever work for you is paid in troubles.” ~ St. Teresa of Avila Junkies and saints know about giving. After shooting up[…]
If almost any director or screenwriter other than Richard Linklater had been given the opportunity to make Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly into a movie, I think their immediate[…]
