Luis Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire on DVD
The longest episode of foreplay in cinema history? Pierre Louys’ novel The Woman and the Puppet, first published in 1898, has been a popular source for cinema, with at least[…]
Category: Genres
Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey on DVD
The Criterion Collection offers another scrumptious golden-era DVD Criterion has spruced up the peerless 1936 Universal comedy My Man Godfrey and given it a bright new sheen. The digital transfer[…]
LGBT & Queer · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
Queer for the Rings: Frodo and Sam Find Fellowship
Pretty boys in danger: How yummy! Poor Frodo Baggins! He spends almost all his time in The Fellowship of the Ring 1) anticipating penetration; 2) suffering penetration; or 3) recovering[…]
Mastering Middle Earth: Fellowship of the Ring
Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkien’s classic soars despite its flaws There’s a very obvious problem when transferring any book to the big screen, namely that some of us may already[…]
Asian · Essays · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Better Beauty Through Technology: Chinese Transnational Feminism and the Cinema of Suffering
Feminism adrift in a sea of ogling orientalism, global capitalism, and fatalist aesthetics INTRODUCTION Chinese Women’s Issues Under the Polar Aesthetics of Female Suffering and Mulan-ism Since the 1919 May[…]
Reviews · Silents · Thrillers & Action
The Diabolical Dr. Mabuse on DVD: The Crimes of Dr. Mabuse; The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse; The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
Please pay attention to the madmen behind the curtain “You have no existence except as my tool. The individual has no being except insofar as he is part of a[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Fred Astaire Goes Solo in Damsel in Distress
Nice work if you can get it When Fred & Ginger went splitsville after Shall We Dance, Astaire decided that he didn’t really need a dame, an idea that tends[…]
Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Beautiful Mystery and I Like You . . . I Like You Very Much on DVD
The DVDs of these two rare gay pink films could use some extras and better source prints, but at least they’re here! Sluggishly but steadily, one segment of once-inaccessible Asian[…]
Carry On Sitcom: The British Sitcom Spin-off Film 1968-1980
These cinematic dogs get a pat on the head before being given the boot When Ealing comedy, the cinematic brand that uniquely embodied 20 years of idiosyncratically “charming” English humour,[…]
Documentaries · Historical & Epic
Beauty and the Beast: The Architecture of Doom, a Documentary
The artistic underpinnings of Nazi terror The puzzle of Hitler and the Holocaust continues to twist in and out of the popular consciousness like a particularly hardy virus, most recently[…]
Mozart’s The Magic Flute on DVD
Ingmar Bergman does it again! Back in 1976, Ingmar Bergman made a movie of Mozart’s famous opera The Magic Flute.1 Twenty-five years later, it remains the finest operatic film ever[…]
Dixiana on DVD: Has Everything but Bill Robinson’s Feet
Where’s the rest of him? Why, Roan Group Archival Entertainment, why? Why did you go to the trouble of restoring the thoroughly lame 1930 musical Dixiana and then fail to[…]
Mondo Tranny: Monika Treut’s Gendernauts
This love letter to San Francisco’s tranny community is a little too loving Gendernauts (1999) opens with a curious and none too appetizing image – a mangy old spotted hyena.[…]
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[…]
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[…]
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