Frederic March and Carole Lombard Find Nothing Sacred in the Big Apple
“There she is, in all her beads and ribbons!” How Manhattan is Nothing Sacred? To be more Manhattan, it would have to be Manhattan. Because once more we’re on that[…]
Book review: Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness, ed. by Daniel J. Bernardi
Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness, ed. and with an introduction by Daniel J. Bernardi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Trade paper. 516pp. ISBN 0-8166-3239-1. Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness continues the project[…]
Book reviews: Keeping the British End Up, by Simon Sheridan & Hollywood’s Film Wars with France, by Jens Ulff-Møller
Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema, by Simon Sheridan. London: Reynolds and Hearn, 2002. Trade paper. $24.95, 208pp. ISBN 1-90311-121-8. For those not in the know,[…]
“Fascinating. Horrible, but Fascinating”: 20 Million Miles to Earth on DVD
In which Harryhausen’s most poignant monster mixes it up After pioneering French filmmaker Georges Mêlies, there are few special effects icons left to trip over on your way to current[…]
Documentaries · Noir · Reviews
DVD Sampler: Cuban Story, The Vanishing, The Joke, Salesman, and Strange Illusion
In DVD land, the world’s your oyster – pearls included (sometimes) Cuban Story (Victor Pahlen, 1959) By the mid-1950s, Errol Flynn was enjoying the low high life of a bloated[…]
1966 CBS Version of Death of a Salesman: Now on DVD
Sure Arthur Miller’s masterpiece is flawed, but so’s your mother On paper, Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s 1949 Pulitzer Prize winner, shouldn’t work. Miller intended the play as another[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Astaire & Rogers Fade to Black in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
Fred dies, Ginger cries The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle is the not very graceful swan song of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals of the thirties.1 Carefree,[…]
Rare Docs on French Filmmakers: Bresson and Akerman on VHS
Two of the most elusive auteurs tell all, or at least some. ROBERT BRESSON: WITHOUT A TRACE A documentary about Robert Bresson (1901?-1999), with the director cooperating – indeed, appearing[…]
Actors & Personalities · Interviews
“Redefine What It Means to You”: Talking with Margaret Cho
The “All American Girl” on her new movie, her influences, and the joy of high colonics As the quote implies, Margaret Cho is no stranger to redefinition, mostly because she’s[…]
South of the Chocolate Mountains: Scattered Impressions of The Hitch-Hiker
Ida Lupino: Mother of Us All! “Any rocks up there to give you a problem, darlin’? Now, Walter baby, while we’re here we might as well take the posse through.[…]
I’m Taking the Kids! Larry Clark’s Teenage Caveman on DVD
Girlflesh ‘n boyflesh ‘n apocalypse [Warning: Spoilers!] It’s hard to keep your thinking cap on when you’re watching Teenage Caveman, directed by the notorious Larry Clark, the famed photographer/director whose[…]
Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002): There’s No “There” There
Why Tobey Maguire has us by the testicles and why he isn’t going to let go Whence Spider-Man? Whence, indeed, and whither? It has come to pass in these United[…]
Recalling the Dream of Parenthood in Raising Arizona
Of babynappings and bodily fluids, Coens and Kubricks In Raising Arizona (1987), a blatantly obscure graffiti can be seen in the lavatory wall behind escaped convicts, Hale and Evelle (John[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Diamonds in the Toilet: Andy Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls
Warhol’s timeless, trashy “girls” come a-callin’ More talked about than seen since its debut, The Chelsea Girls, Andy Warhol’s infamous double-projected dive into a demimonde he created, is getting a[…]
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[…]
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