Doug McGrath’s Infamous: The Best Truman Capote Movie I’ve Seen All Year!
If you must see only one Truman Capote movie in your life, let it be this one Do I really want to see a movie about Truman Capote leaving Manhattan[…]
The Departed: Crime All the Time
Scorsese gets all Irish on our asses, and it works I admit it. I thought Marty had lost it. I thought he had gone all lazy and cute and Hollywood,[…]
Artists · Interviews · Stars · Writers & Critics
Cruising with Camille: An Interview with Camille Paglia
“Please note that even Margo Channing, threatening a ‘bumpy night’ for her hapless guests, merely fumingly forecasts. It’s a gesture of mind, not body.” Introduction Camille Paglia, the scholar and[…]
Trailer Trash: Dumpster Diving with Jenni Olson
High camp in three minutes or less The idea that bigger is better may play better in the lexicon of size queens than in le cinema contemporaire. Hollywood’s insistence on[…]
Documentaries · Genres · Movies · Reviews
Cultural Equity: On the Documentary Lomax the Songhunter
“Every smallest branch of the human family at one time or another has carved its dreams out of the rock on which it has lived.” – Alan Lomax It was a remarkable[…]
Chicago, je t’aime: The 42nd Chicago International Film Festival
“There are things you shouldn’t sell” For the festival’s 42nd annual opening night, the 3,000-seat Chicago Theatre threw open its doors and watched the convergence on the red carpet as[…]
From Aaron Spelling’s Vault of Horror: Charlie’s Angels on DVD!
“I expect to be erect any time now.” “An eighth-grader’s mind trapped in an eighth-grader’s body.” That’s how one critic summed up Aaron Spelling. Aaron had him killed, of course.[…]
Attack (1956)
When Jack Palance’s Lieutenant Joe Costa suddenly returns from what seemed a certain death in Robert Aldrich’s Attack (1956) – his left arm hanging lifeless, rendered to ground beef by[…]
One night on the Sleazoid Express
Tom Sutpen’s classy review of Sleazoid Express, by Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford, certainly brought back the memories, to wit: After I came back from Vietnam in December 1969 I[…]
Great Blog Topic – Monologues
Edward Copeland at The House Next Door has written a great post concerning film monologues. After considering what makes a great film monologue, he describes in detail 5 stellar examples.[…]
The Noir Portraiture of Stacy Lande
Painting influences film. Film influences painting. The portraits of Los Angeles painter and performance artist Stacy Lande (pronounced, “lan-dee”) appear equally influenced by 19th Century Symbolism, 20th Century Expressionism, and[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Writers & Critics
Sleazoid Express (2002)
Here in America we have something that, with the straightest of faces, we call our Film Heritage. What people usually mean when they invoke this solemn, unconscionably sentimental honorific is[…]
Let’s Hear It For Phoenix!
While the rest of the blogosphere is celebrating director Robert Aldrich, I thought I’d put in a word for one of my favorite – and least discussed – Aldrich films,[…]
Shanghai Notes
Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai (1948) is one of the most anti-noir of classic noirs. “Shanghai” in The Lady From Shanghai means the same thing as “Chinatown” in[…]
The Departed: Scorsese gets all Irish on our asses, and it works
I admit it. I thought Marty had lost it. I thought he had gone all lazy and cute and Hollywood, with no fire in the belly. And for the first[…]
What’s So “Existential” About Noir? (Some Overgeneralized Notes)
C. Jerry Kutner’s proposition on noir-as-genre versus noir-as-style, “We shouldn’t be asking, “Is it noir or not-noir?,” but rather, “How noir is it?,” has prompted me to revisit my own[…]
Julie! Julie! Julie!
The incredibly beautiful Julie Adams, paramour of The Creature From the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold, 1953), and object of many adolescent fantasies including, obviously, my own. What a pleasure it[…]
Miike’s IMPRINT
Takashi Miike’s Imprint is being advertised on its DVD box cover as “Banned From Cable Broadcast.” Although other episodes (notably, Dario Argento’s Jenifer) were partly censored, of the 13 one-hour[…]
Another Day, Another List
RECOMMENDED READING: In the September/October 2006 issue of Film Comment, writer/director Paul Schrader’s article on, “The Film Canon – What Constitutes a Cinematic Masterpiece.” This lengthy, absorbing essay has something[…]
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