Aftersun: The Skin of Filmic Memory
We all wait for everything to come into focus, and if we are lucky, we might eventually get access to one snapshot that tells an incomplete story. So naturally, while[…]
Animation · Animators · Designers · Experimental & Underground
Vicious Circle: John Whitney and the Military Origins of Early CGI
John Whitney himself envisioned nothing more and nothing less for the future of CGI than a union of space and time: “Time has become visual.” But all film deals in[…]
Actors & Personalities · Interviews
The Ballad of Stella Stevens: An Interview
In which Stella tells all or at least most
Philosophy · Theory · Thrillers & Action · Uncategorized
The Unconscious with Bond and Lacan: Definition by Deviation
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[…]
Comedy · Drama · French Cinema
Amélie, or, Only the Beginning
Amélie brings life to the unseen. * * * Talk with someone about a piece of art, and they’ll tell you about themselves. Let me share my thoughts on Amélie,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Feminism · Indies · Interviews · SF & Fantasy
The Secret of Her Success: An Interview with Helen Slater
For me, on Supergirl, I was 100% in. It was the biggest opportunity that ever happened to me, and the process of making the film was very nourishing. I think[…]
Colonialism · Historical & Epic · Music & Musicals · Myth and Archetype · Native Americans · Westerns
Horse Operas and Real Operas: Melodramatic Reflections and Refutations of the Turner Thesis
The handful of “frontier operas” we’ll consider therefore propose an unusual dialectic of both aesthetics and ideology. What might occur when male Western heroes – traditionally stoic and pragmatic –[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Drama · Women in Film
Ida Lupino: Demon Mother Night
“[H]er favorite expression of strained intensity would be less quickly relieved by a merciful death than by Ex-Lax.”
DIY · Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Film Culture · Impresarios · Outsiders · Programmers
Unsinkable Natural-Born Showman Dennis Nyback Dies at 69: A Testimonial by an Irritating Friend
He told me about when his piano player canceled out of a silent movie performance. “I walked outside during the kiddie matinee and saw some young people loading musical instruments[…]
Body Horror · Horror · Mumblecore · Romance
Lucky McKee’s May and the Retelling of Frankenstein for the Indie Rom-Com Era
Not only does May challenge the tropes of mumblecore and indie-rom com movies, but it also retells elements of Frankenstein, offering a female protagonist who is both monster and monster-maker.[…]
Biopic · Directors · Experimental & Underground · War · Writers & Critics
Memory, Trauma, and Visualising Poetry in Terence Davies’s Benediction
I’m not interested in what happened next; I’m interested in what happens emotionally next. It’s like memory. Memory isn’t linear. It’s cyclical. A tiny thing can be the thing that’s[…]
Rate Your Hunch: Women and Intuition in Barbarian
Hinting at women’s complicity in a film plotted around men’s violent treatment of women is, well, ballsy. That Cregger’s script doesn’t delve into the larger cultural conditioning and structures that[…]
Comedy · Communism and Socialism · Directors · Drama · Eastern European · Russia · War · Writers & Critics
Hungarian Plays into American Movies: Billy Wilder’s Five Graves to Cairo and One, Two, Three
Billy Wilder turned to these two plays because they offered the situations, structure, and characters that would allow his imagination to flower and create contemporary stories – a patriotic military[…]
Crime · Drama · Women in Film
Bitches Brew: On Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar (2002)
Ramsay uses the distinct qualities of cinema, images and sound, to immerse you in the psychic space of her characters – and what an uncommonly beautiful space it is. It’s[…]
African American · Comedy · Drama · Eco · Race · Urban Conflict
Can’t Stand the Heat: Weather and Climate Change in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing
The fundamental question of who will suffer the most from extreme heat, and on a broader scale climate change, is bound to systemic issues of race and class. Through Lee’s[…]
The Fabelmans: Spielberg and the Cinema of Re-Empowerment
“Movies are dreams, doll, that you never forget,” says Mrs. Fabelman (Michelle Williams). She’s circling the nature of them, which the critic Andre Bazin described when he called cinema “an[…]
Actors & Personalities · Artists
Extinguishing Features: The Last Years of Richard Pryor
Editor’s Note: Richard Pryor died on this date, December 10, 2005, ten days after his sixty-fifth birthday. We salute this comic genius and cultural game-changer by reposting Julian Upton’s powerful[…]
Dance · Drama · Exile and Displacement · Poverty · Theory
Dancing Diagonals: Movement and Far-Away-Ness in Fernando Frías de la Parra’s Ya No Estoy Aquí (2019)
One of Frías de la Parra’s masterstrokes is to highlight the similar ways in which Monterrey and New York (otherwise such radically distinct cities) are brimming with diagonal lines: in[…]
Drama · Eco · Eco-horror · Essays
Scars and Their Stories: Exploring a Scene from Jaws
What does a scar tell us about a person? Where they’ve been, what they’ve been through, the style in which they conduct their lives. A scar is a reminder, an[…]
Human Sacrifice in Brigadoon: The Fate of Harry Beaton
Brigadoon is a quasi-origin story that is closely associated with the way stories transform the reality of the recent past. Communities, societies, and nations survive by means of having sacrificial[…]
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