Gore Galore: Takashi Miike’s Audition
This is one audition you may want to skip Reports from the front lines of early cinema suggest that many viewers during the ‘teens and before were terrified by the[…]
Category: Genres
Mr. Belvedere Joins the Scouts: Mister Scoutmaster’s Man-Boy Love
What’s going on in that tent? At a time when the Boy Scouts of America is reeling from the backlash,1 and the backlash to the backlash,2 to the Supreme Court’s[…]
On and Off, On and Off: Riding Through Roger Rabbit’s World
There’s more trouble in Toontown than even the Toons imagined Cartoons and animated features have never been strictly made for children. But not until the 1960s did the cartoon gain[…]
Gay Pride, Italian Style: Ferzan Ozpetek’s Le Fate Ignoranti (Ignorant Fairies)
Ozpetek’s queer melodrama excites and disappoints in equal measure Italian cinema is finally discovering that films with gay and lesbian characters can do extremely well at the box-office, in spite[…]
Occupied Territory: Sylvie Groulx’s In the Shadow of Hollywood
America’s cultural colonizing is scored in a French-Canadian documentary you’ll probably never see Imagine if you walked into your local Starbucks and could only order caramel lattes. No cappuccinos, no[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Fred and Ginger Miss a Step in Shall We Dance
“Let’s call the whole thing off?” Shall We Dance (1937) is the last and least of the great Fred & Ginger musicals, saved from ignominy by a superb score courtesy[…]
Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · Music & Musicals
Rave On: Five Indie Music Docs on Four DVDs: Dancin’ Barefoot/Blank Generation; Rage: 20 Years of Punk Rock West Coast Style; Songs for Cassavetes; Better Living Through Circuitry
Every social movement needs a soundtrack, and, despite widespread reports of apathetic youth and political stasis, the twilight years of the twentieth century were rife with both. The indie movements[…]
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
QFilmistan: The First South Asian LGBT Film Festival (September 2001)
A treasure trove of short queer cinema – and one feature – from cultures where creating it can be a criminal act Despite its status as one of the world’s[…]
Experimental & Underground · Reviews
Snapshots from Hell: Richard Kern – The Hardcore Collection on DVD
Kern’s trashy teens fight and fuck their way through an incomprehensible world Transgression seems more like concept than reality in these no-boundaries days, but in the ‘80s and early ‘90s[…]
Directors · Horror · Interviews
The Wizard of Gore: Herschell Gordon Lewis Speaks
Wit and wisdom from the man who created one of cinema’s most enduring genres JOHN WISNIEWSKI: Your background in academics was quite different from that of your partner David Friedman.[…]
Experimental & Underground · Horror · Silents
Jean Epstein’s The Fall of the House of Usher
Poe’s favorite story dressed to kill by a legendary surrealist auteur Poe has proven to be one of the more enduring sources for filmmakers, not only because there’s something modern,[…]
Cinematographers · Documentaries
Fear of Darkness: Profiling Sven Nykvist in Light Keeps Me Company
Bergman’s cinematographer found more solace on the set than in real life Cinematographer Sven Nykvist’s work with Ingmar Bergman is considered one of the key collaborations in modern cinema, and[…]
Historical & Epic · Reviews · Silents
Behind the Brocade: Abel Gance’s Lucrezia Borgia
The Borgias are having an orgy Old master Abel Gance directed this juicy potboiler of family values run amok as a frankly commercial job to put baguettes on the table.[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Reviews
Bob Dylan in D. A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (1967)
The dude with the ‘tude “If Bob Dylan is a poet, so is Cassius Clay.” So sneered Norman Mailer in 1965, before he realized what the sixties were about, and[…]
Buried Alive: François Ozon’s Under the Sand (2000)
A French angst-fest mostly redeemed by Charlotte Rampling’s nuanced portrait of a woman unhinged François Ozon’s latest film will come as a bit of a shock to seasoned Ozon watchers,[…]
Asian · Historical & Epic · Reviews
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Art Film Hidden Inside the Chop-Socky Flick
Ang Lee: third-wave feminist? The reviews of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon have been positive – but the critics, somehow, seem more impressed by the trimmings than the turkey.[…]
Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
The Girls Can’t Help It: Baise-Moi (2000)
Feminist screed or fetish-screwfest? Flip a coin Female revenge films aren’t exactly an unknown quantity, especially in the exploitation circuit. Pam Grier was one of the genre’s superstars in the[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
Sweet Movies: Four by Dusan Makavejev: Man Is Not a Bird; WR: Mysteries of the Organism; Love Affair, or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator; Innocence Unprotected
Free-associating with a master of free cinema “Free cinema” has the dull ring of an oxymoron. The extreme level of control required and the mass of pressures that collide in[…]
Documentaries · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Feedback from the Global Village: Culture Docs
From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China offers three documentaries for the price of one; Genghis Blues is too shaggy for words The collapse of Cold War rigidities and[…]
“Hand Me That 14-Inch Willy!” The Puppet Artistry of Barry Purves
This brilliant Brit’s sleight-of-hand breathes life into wood and wire At a symposium on puppet animation in Seattle a few years ago, Barry Purves, an alumnus of the Aardman Studios[…]
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