Directors · Interviews · Silents
Outtakes from an Interview with Dwan, December 1980 * * * Fairbanks, Shirley Temple, Ronald Reagan, all the “pansies and poseurs of Hollywood” – no one was safe from the[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer
Junkies, queens, washed-up B-movie hags – these are the scintillating “family values” advocates that campmeister and right-wing Republican Morrissey serves up. * * * Much of the myth, if we[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
(from Triste, Solitario y final (Sad, Alone, Final), a novel by Osvaldo Soriano, Einaudi Editore “Roll it!” Makeup had changed the fat man’s face into a clownish mask. He’s in an enormous[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
Laurel’s mask – the goofy, sweet-natured grown-up child – had its roots in the classic commedia dell’arte. The reasons why Stan Laurel is always entered in film annals as an[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
Chaplin’s most famous “creation” was his little tramp – but Stan Laurel did it first, as Chaplin knew all too well. One of the most troubling aspects of Stan Laurel’s[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian · Historical & Epic · Reviews
This epic set in the 16th century deals with war, honor, courage, and yes, that homo subtext ever present in male bonding movies – punctuated by Toshiro Mifune’s bold butt-baring[…]
See Val Kilmer feed psychedelic mushrooms to the crazed beast-people! See Aissa’s forbidden jungle dance! See the terrible white monster who lumbers across the sets in pancake makeup and Bea[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
John Waters, Zsa Zsa Gabor, The Bad Seed, Supermarionation – the late Doris Fish trawled through the lowest depths of culture for her homemade camp fairy tale. Drag queen diva Doris Fish[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
Barbara Hammer continues the groundbreaking investigations into gender that started with Nitrate Kisses – this time using autobiography to tell her truths. Barbara Hammer is best known for her groundbreaking[…]
Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
This grimy, exciting artifact from the ’60s shows how important beauty contests were to the queens who ruthlessly – and kind of sadly – mimicked their straight counterparts. The rank[…]
Documentaries · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
The U.S. must eventually come to its senses and leave this little island and its vital citizens alone. Americans’ view of Cuba is based more on the right wing’s mythmaking (a process[…]
Actors & Personalities · Pre-Code · Producers & Studios · Reviews
Nobody “did” the Depression, or sexual excess, or populist uprisings, better than the Brothers Warner. Conventional wisdom says that before the taboo-busting ’60s, all deviance in American filmmaking was suppressed.[…]
Harlow, Bankhead, yes, even patrician Norma Shearer “strayed” before the Hays Code ended their fun. Feminist film historians usually focus on Warners and RKO as the prime exponents of the “bad girl” genre[…]
Jackie’s almost eclipsed by the great Michelle Khan. Watch out for that building! Supercop is the second crucial step, after Rumble in the Bronx, in the repackaging of Asian superstar Jackie Chan for American[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · LGBT & Queer
The “world’s worst director” never apologized for wearing women’s clothes, though many have questioned his taste in sweaters. The story goes that Disney Studios threw Tim Burton a bone in[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
“Asta brings a subtle twist to her version of Hamlet not by playing a man, but by playing a woman disguised as a man, adding another level of gender complexity.”[…]
The 2014 release of James Franco’s Interior. Leather Bar. reminds us it’s time to revisit the still-notorious film that inspired it. * * * History shows us how easily yesterday’s[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Stand back when ballooned-up, masacara-drenched go-go girls leave the confines of their cages for a murderous desert rampage! A cornerstone of both camp and punk cultures — no mean feat[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian · Reviews
Jackie invades America for the second time. Is America finally ready? Jackie Chan’s “newest” film, Rumble in the Bronx, is only new to U.S. audiences. This film was released in 1994[…]
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries · Reviews
Literally burned by Preminger, driven crazy by an army of husbands, hangers-on, and J. Edgar Hoover, Jean Seberg lives on in a new documentary Jean Seberg was always more icon[…]
