Watch Me While I Die: Stephen Daldry’s The Hours
This “sensitive” film prefers its women dead – metaphorically or literally What happens when a film about women tries to force us to the conclusion that the thinking woman, or[…]
Category: Reviews
Ho-hum Intrigue in Barcelona: Gaudi Afternoon on DVD
It’s little wonder this yawner didn’t get a theatrical release Gaudi Afternoon, a 2001 San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival entry, never got a theatrical distributor and has[…]
Sad, Angry Man: Basil Dearden’s Victim on DVD
A landmark work in the queer canon arrives on DVD Basil Dearden’s excellent thriller Victim was released in 1961, during roughly the same time as the ascension of Britain’s “angry[…]
Brainpower: Ken Russell’s Billion Dollar Brain Reassessed
“Into the 21st century, son. This is how wars are gonna be fought and life is gonna be lived.” 1967 was a fascinating year for thrillers. John Boorman sent Lee[…]
Daddy and Father in The Emerald Forest
On civilization and its discontents I recently saw a list of Luddite movies that listed Cameron’s The Terminator (1984), Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936), and Lang’s Metropolis (1927), among others. Luddites[…]
Animation · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Treasures of Puppet Cinema: Pinocchio, Attack of the Puppet People, Black Devil Doll from Hell
Wooden bottom boyz, teensy teens, and a Satanic blackface Charlie McCarthy – these are just a few of the offerings from le cinema puppet! Pinocchio Walt Disney made horror movies[…]
Actors & Personalities · Essays · Reviews
Andy Kaufman, Tony Clifton, Mr. Ripley, and the Elisions of Identity
I had an opportunity to see a double feature a couple of years ago on a British Airways flight to Madrid. The size of the screen certainly reduced any desire[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Fred Astaire Meets Artie Shaw in Second Chorus
New DVD also includes Ezio Pinza, Lena Horne, and Duke Ellington “The worst picture I ever worked on.” That was Fred Astaire’s overly sour take on Second Chorus. It’s easy[…]
Brotherlove and Motherlove: Rocco and His Brothers on DVD
These brothers may be a little too close “Viscontiesque” doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, and hasn’t entered the language as “Felliniesque” has. But Visconti’s movies are at least as[…]
40th New York Film Festival (Sept. 27-Oct. 13, 2002)
“No reassurance and little escapism – just right for the current state of uncertainty” New York feels unsettled these days, an agitation reflected even at the venerable Film Festival, whose[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Of Horny Hunchbacks and Stitch Bitches: Le Cinema Milligan
If you think his films are bad, wait till you see his life Among its many pleasures, the sixties opened the floodgates for cinematic sleaze. Subjects hitherto found only in[…]
The Wizard of Awe: Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away
The creator of Princess Mononoke brings his sleek Boschian vision to America, courtesy of Disney “Being enclosed, protected, and kept away from dangers, children cannot help but enlarge their fragile[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Chained Girls (1965): A Twilight Tale of the Third Sex
Who is that comely, vicious gal plotting mayhem from the shadows? Why, the dyke of 1960s pop culture, of course. “Lesbians have their variations from one group to another. There[…]
Candy, or Libertinism
“I’ll do anything … ANYTHING” to save Daddy!” Introduction Based on the famous – or better, notorious – faux pornographic novel by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, Candy (Christian Marquand,[…]
Essays · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
Defense of the Clones: Lucas’s Latest: Cheap Thrills or Sophisticated Filmmaking?
A close reading points to the latter. For those who see popular film as capable of providing more than cheap visceral thrills, the dismal nature of recent writing on Attack[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Fred Goes Over the Top with Eleanor Powell in Broadway Melody of 1940
The semi-sweet smell of excess Have you got a yen for understated elegance and class? Then keep on truckin’, dude, because this 1940 M-G-M black-and-white monster/masterpiece ain’t for you. M-G-M[…]
Activist & Political · Reviews
Censorship and Indian Cinema: The Case of Anand Patwardhan’s War and Peace
Cutting-edge films continue to be cut – or suppressed entirely – by India’s clueless Censor Board “Censorship is when a work of art expressing an idea which does not fall[…]
LGBT & Queer · Reviews · Uncategorized
Boys on the Side: A Survey of Adult/Youth Relationships in Movies and TV
Surprise – it could be a lot worse. In a February 2002 commentary for her syndicated column “Lesbian Notions,” Paula Martinac recalls her angst at browsing through her local lesbian[…]
Being a Kid Is a Drag – Onscreen
There are drag queens and then there are drag princesses Why would an eight-year-old boy want to wear a dress? “Scotsmen wear dresses, they’re called kilts. King Tut wore a[…]
Fritz Lang’s Assumption Factory: Social Agreements and Schisms in Fury, Modern Times, and A Clockwork Orange
Two films of 1936, Chaplin’s Modern Times and Fritz Lang’s Fury (with Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney), appear to have little in common. The former sardonically depicts a man at[…]
Links + BSA
