At last, a Cool British Film: 24 Hour Party People
Dogme meets the Manchester music scene in this well-wrought biopic British cinema has moved on in the last decade – its heritage dramas now tend to have a modernistic twist,[…]
Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
The Revolution Starts with Glitter! David Weissman and Bill Weber’s Documentary The Cockettes
The legendary campsters of the counterculture take a bow in this diverting documentary The Cockettes – fondly, if sometimes barely remembered as curios in the camp canon – are reborn[…]
Music & Musicals · TV & Streaming
Looking Back at the Fabulous Invalid: TV Broadcasts of June Moon, Awake and Sing!, The Human Voice, and The Journey of the Fifth Horse, now on DVD
There was a time, America, a time when public television consisted of more than Antiques Roadshow, women in pantsuits explaining how to feel good about yourself, and reruns of inane[…]
Titanic Lovers, or How a Good Girl Pleased Her Man
(Which in this case may be better than getting him) The Titanic did not sink; it only seemed that way at the time. She has proven as unsinkable as one[…]
Bleeding Realism Dry, or How to Turn One’s Back on a Tyrant
The cripplingly small-minded art of verisimilitude becomes crippled by its own technology Are Human Beings Real, or Do They Only Act That Way? When we contemplate all the sinister, spirit-truncheoning[…]
Keeping It Real: Documentaries in the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, 2002
Dykes and trannies get more than their usual screen time this year, thank goddess Documentaries are the heart of the Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, not only because they’re often[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Silents
“Why Are They All Ugly Little Men?” Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, and Langdon: The Great Silent Clowns Reformatted
“Why are they all ugly little men?” asked Cindy, after I’d dragged her to three solid weeks of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, and Harold Lloyd at a silent[…]
Book review: Walking with the Wind, Trans. by Ahmad Karimi-Hakkad and Michael Beard
Walking with the Wind: Poems by Abbas Kiarostami, Trans. by Ahmad Karimi-Hakkad and Michael Beard. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. Trade paper: $19.95. 240pp. ISBN 0-67400-844-8. It is April 2000.[…]
Book review: Framing the South, by Allison Graham
Framing the South: Hollywood, Television, and Race During the Civil Rights Struggle, by Allison Graham. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Cloth, $39.95, 224pp. ISBN 0-80186-615-4. If you watch Hollywood[…]
Book review: The Money Shot, by Jane Mills
The Money Shot: Cinema, Sin, and Censorship, by Jane Mills. Annandale, New South Wales, Australia. Pluto Press, 2001. Cloth, $32.95 (U.S.D./AUD), 255pp. ISBN 1-86403-142-5. It is perhaps significant to Jane[…]
Book review: Addicted, ed. by Jack Stevenson
Addicted: The Myth and Menace of Drugs in Film, ed. by Jack Stevenson. London: Creation Books, 2000. Trade paper, $19.95, 272pp, ISBN 1-84068-023-7 America’s War on Drugs has been raging[…]
Book reviews: Jacques Tourneur, George Cukor, John Ford, White Zombie, Warner Sisters, and More
Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall, by Chris Fujiwara. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Trade paper, $18.95, 328pp, ISBN 0-8018-6561-1. Jacques Tourneur has long been a favorite of horror fans, French[…]
Robert Altman’s Gosford Park: Not Renoir, but Not Bad
Robert Altman gets all warm and fuzzy on your ass Say what you like about Robert Altman, the guy doesn’t quit. Altman didn’t hit the big time until 1969, when[…]
The 20th Bergamo Film Meeting: March 9-17, 2002
This fine Italian festival features wide variety, no polemics When Sandro Zambetti initiated this modest festival in 1982, he aimed to “make a difference at a practical level.” Invoking no[…]
The Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival: February 2002
An engaging mix of cinema – two-thirds of it Canadian – visits the Great White North’s “postcard village on steroids” The Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival, now in its[…]
The Belfort International Film Festival: France 2001
Identity politics, urban terror, and Bulle Ogier distinguish this festival from some of its more pretentious peers When you think French film festival, you automatically think Cannes or even Deauville.[…]
The King Steps Out: Goodbye to Billy Wilder (1906-2002)
“A brain full of razor blades and a heart full of chutzpah” In his screenplay for The Fortune Cookie (1966), Billy Wilder, who has died at age 95, described ‘Whiplash[…]
Anti-Heroics: The Superman Films of Richard Lester
“While the first Superman film, directed by Richard Donner (on which Lester served as an uncredited producer), is essentially reverential and respectful towards the subject, Lester’s attitude in his second[…]
Catch Me If You Can: The Tarantino Legacy
Has Tarantino gone underground or is he revving up to zap the box office with another mega hit? Another whole year has gone by and still no new film from[…]
African American · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Reggae Heaven: Rockers (1978) on DVD
It’s the culture, stupid. One of the best sequences found in Theodore Bafaloukos’ meditation on Rastafarian culture known as Rockers comes when the motley crew of world-class musicians that litter[…]
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