Comedy · LGBT & Queer · Sex & Relationships · Uncategorized
As seen with Jordan and Mateo, Silva extends his self-fictionalization to most of the cast, taking actors and regurgitating them as screen versions of themselves. Sometimes the cinematic portraits come[…]
Documentaries · India · Labor · Uncategorized
While complaints about the industry’s orchestration of emotions and personality were commonplace, some workers also celebrated the prerogative of assembling new identities (58). Moreover, their exposure to Western cultural habits[…]
Philosophy · Theory · Thrillers & Action · Uncategorized
This article argues that the paradox of James Bond’s character (that he accords with the idea he represents precisely by deviating from it) is central to a Lacanian understanding of[…]
Books · Noir · Uncategorized
Leon Lewis (Ed.), John Alton: Essays on the Cinematographer’s Art and Craft (McFarland, 2020) * * * Widely regarded as epitomizing the visual style of high film noir as it[…]
Drama · Essays · Uncategorized
Isn’t something less reassuring and a lot more interesting going on – something more inclusive, diverse, and genuinely universal? * * * There are still too many human beings on[…]
When space seems polluted with far too many Superbeings, maybe cinema is not the first place to go for relief. Yet for those who have not given up looking for[…]
Asian · Reviews · Uncategorized
“Now the fight becomes something more than a contest of wills, it becomes a careful discovery of kindred spirits as seen through a reciprocal poetry of martial arts form.”
Essays · Reviews · Uncategorized
“The Life of Pi is a paean or homage to the imagination and its salvaging power (we were shipwrecked in the Great Recession and in need of salvaging) not in cyberspace but in the real conditions of a troubling offline world inhabited by our own troubled human nature.”
Festivals & Awards · Uncategorized
“At a protest against the demolition of the historic Emek theatre, Nil was beaten and kicked by police offers. My fellow FIPRESCI juror, the excellent critic Berke Göl, was grabbed by the throat, punched, and arrested. Hundreds of other protestors — largely film critics, actors, and directors including festival guest Costa-Gavras — were subject to police force.”
Activist & Political · Uncategorized · War
“Does it all come down to the injustice of 3,000 people dying on 9/11? But at some level everybody went through that. Yet few of us thereafter felt the need to cast off every other human part of ourselves in order to find ‘justice,’ whatever that means in such contexts.”
“The bride is like a child who has found herself in a new body overnight. Different parts of her have been stained red, white, and gold; she bears all the carnal colors and signs — but what to do with them?”
Festivals & Awards · Uncategorized
“Faust’s obsession is his lust for a pale girl who looks underage, referred to as a ‘little doll,’ the only pure thing in a foul society. The desire to corrupt that girl is his version of mastering the world.”
Actors & Personalities · Uncategorized
“Once we are shown that JCVD is, in fact, innocent, we are likely to forget 1) that moments earlier we were calling for his blood and 2) the particular events and sequence of events, or types of evidence shown, that had us jumping the gun in the first place. What El Mechri is showing us is how painfully contingent our conclusions about the world are on the particular type of passage we are afforded, the particular unfolding we are privy to.”
Composers · Essays · Uncategorized
“Palmer’s meticulously composed images hide the fact that this film is, in a sense, underdetermined, open to endless speculation; it is uncontrolled, savage, and thus, indeed, sometimes given to uncensored crudity.”
“Cronenberg’s method, it seems, is perfectly suited for making truly historical dramas, stripping away our tendency to read individuals through their writings in something like the way diseases in his films strip his characters down to their essences.”
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Uncategorized
“Moricz’s work assaults the viewer with a whiplash barrage of familiar plot lines, trite turning points, and cliché characters spouting simultaneously banal and inflated rhetorical dialogue, all infusing narratives propelled by a poignant and urgent anxiety derived from the tensions of everyday life.”
I wrote the description below back in 2009 (full review here) based on a rare screening years before at the Film Forum pre-code festival. It used to be so very[…]
Asian · Essays · Uncategorized
“During the so-called ‘repressive’ ages sex was a joy, because it was practiced in secret and it made a mockery of all of the obligations and duties that the repressive power imposed. Instead, in tolerant societies, as the one we live in is declared to be, sex produces neuroses because the freedom granted is false and above all, it is granted from above and not won from below.” —Pier Paolo Pasolini, Pasolini prossimo nostro (2006) “Have you noticed how fashionable couples are today? But it is a completely false and insincere couple, frighteningly insincere. See these kids under the power of who knows what romantic notion, they walk hand-in-hand, or arm-in-arm, a young man and a girl. ‘What is this sudden romanticism?’, you may ask. Nothing. It is simply the new couple as revived by consumerism because this consumerist couple buys.” —Pier Paolo Pasolini, Pasolini prossimo nostro (2006)
