Actors & Personalities · Silents
Beautiful Betty
Anyone infatuated with silent film, like me, is always on the lookout for that one pre-talkie film that will win over the unconverted, and I think I’ve found a mighty[…]
AIMEZ-VOUS BERNAL?
Not since Amélie stuck raspberries on all ten fingers has such whimsy wafted off the screen, though Michel Gondry’s hero in the wistful yet delightfully goofy The Science of[…]
BLUE FLOWERS AND BLACK
A while back, I talked about the re-emergence of Romantic “blue flower” imagery in films like Batman Begins and A Scanner Darkly. Add one more film to the list –[…]
This is The Town and These Are the People
[dailymotion id=23yvenWOLheom26Si]The Town(Josef von Sternberg; 1945) Produced under the imprimatur of the U.S. Office of War Information, The Town was the only film directed in its entirety by Josef von[…]
The Ant Bully: 3-D to the IMAX
I have seen the future, and it works, pretty well. The Ant Bully is pitched younger than just about any cartoon I’ve seen. There are no “over the kids’ heads”[…]
SF & Fantasy · Writers & Critics
Joseph Stefano Obituary, Part 2: THE OUTER LIMITS
The classic ’60s sci-fi anthology series, The Outer Limits, was conceived by eccentric writer/producer Leslie Stevens. How eccentric?? It was Stevens who later wrote and directed Incubus (1965), starring William[…]
The New York Times: Protecting the gorgeous for over 100 years
When the Gray Lady interviews someone as cute as Jude Law, she doesn’t take off the kid gloves. If anything, she puts on an extra pair. In a recent article[…]
THANK YOU FOR SMIRKING
Hollywoodland is hardly the first film to feature a brace of matinee idols who smirk with all the confidence of the well-paid (consult most buddy movies starting with Butch Cassidy[…]
SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming · Writers & Critics
JOSEPH STEFANO (1922 – 2006)
Playwright. Screenwriter. Producer. Known primarily for two major achievments: (1) He wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). (2) He was the producer and chief writer for the first[…]
Chimp versus film critic: which is smarter?
You know the old gag: set a dozen chimpanzees in front of a set of typewriters, and sooner or later they would type out every sentence in the English language,[…]
Success Breeds Confidence: Korean Movies at the NYAFF
A quartet of recent Korean films shows a reassuringly robust national cinema Over the last six years, the New York Asian Film Festival has done a great service to Asian[…]
Quickies: Random Short Reviews from Cycles of Porn to Small Faces
“Turn towards me. I’ll make do with your heart beating next to mine.” Cycles of Porn: Sex/Life in L.A. Part 2 (Jochen Hick, 2005) Fans of the gay porn documentary[…]
“How My Brain Works”: An Interview with Michel Gondry
“I didn’t want to live under the shadow of other films. I want to exist on my own.” Introduction Like a mashup of cinematic countrymen Georges Melies and Jacques Tati,[…]
Acts of Revenge: Director Park Chan-wook Discusses Lady Vengeance and More
Grand Guignol, Korean style Introduction One of Korea’s most commercially successful young directors, Park Chan-wook is a polarizing figure in the disputatious world of international film circles. Though most acknowledge[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
Abstract Film Palimpsests: On the Work of Rey Parla
pa·limp·sest: n., Writing material (as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased; something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the[…]
Actors & Personalities · Interviews
A Frontline Guy: An Interview with Burt Young
“Get Burt!” Introduction For too many people, Burt Young is simply “That Guy from Rocky,” but to a cult that’s included the likes of Actor’s Studio founder Lee Strasberg, Sergio[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Mish-Mash Planet: The Cult of Rita Hayworth in You Were Never Lovelier
“Speaking of impurity: what was Rita Hayworth’s image supposed to be in the ’40s?” What did we use to think of other countries? The question occurred to me while watching[…]
Clouds and Scattered Sun: Kelly and Donen’s It’s Always Fair Weather
“Shot in earthbound Eastman color, It’s Always Fair Weather doesn’t look or feel like the Technicolor froth that preceded it.” There’s a scene in the 1949 musical On the Town when Frank[…]
Young Vampires in Love: Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark
Not the usual suspects Way back in 1987, two vampire movies were released within a few months of each other. The first was Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys, a big[…]
Better Living Through Chemistry? On Fassbinder’s Forgotten Masterpiece, Fear of Fear
“Fassbinder’s probing camera shows us what the doctors fail to see . . .” Rainer Werner Fassbinder accurately predicted the rise of the “medicated society” in his 1975 film Angst[…]
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