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African American · Music & Musicals · Reviews
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[…]
Sean, meet Johnny Rebel’s cock. Johnny Rebel’s cock, meet Sean. Fluffing, like that other impolite f-word felching, was once an obscure term, the exclusive province of pornhounds and industry insiders.[…]
Feminist or misogynist? A psychoanalytic reading of this controversial film offers some clues. If Michael Haneke’s new film The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste) ever makes it to the English-speaking world,[…]
Is the film reinforcing or exploding stereotypes about female sexuality, or both? Michael Haneke’s latest film uses Vienna as its backdrop. Amongst its other high-cultural connections, Vienna is closely associated[…]
Experimental & Underground · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
If only “little” Otik had stayed that way! Despite its tortured history, Eastern Europe, but particularly Czechoslovakia, has managed to produce an almost uninterrupted flow of the world’s great animation[…]
More boring than real life, plus you have to pay to get in Perhaps there’s something in the water. Whatever the cause, whenever an American film director takes on a[…]
The rise and fall of two brothers in postwar Italy The winner of Venice’s Golden Lion, The Way We Laughed is the regret-filled story of two Sicilian brothers in Turin[…]
“Colorblind,” and maybe just a little bit tone-deaf Breaking up is hard to do. But getting back together, well, that’s even harder. After the semi-failure of Shall We Dance in[…]
Activist & Political · LGBT & Queer
Don’t ask, don’t tell, but do watch “If they took all the gays and lesbians out of the military there wouldn’t be enough people left to defend Rhode Island!” —[…]
Asian · Essays · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
All jargon and no authenticity? Of the vast numbers of corporate-made genre films that flooded Japanin the 1970s, Donald Richie once remarked that the “West knows nothing of these pictures,[…]
Activist & Political · Reviews
Revisiting the failure of Wag the Dog and other, more troubling failures “And the public, by and large, seems willing to live with the fact that the most powerful man in the[…]
African American · Directors · Producers & Studios
For many black auteurs seeking distribution, working around the system has proven as rewarding – and necessary – as working within it Since the popularity and commercial success of films[…]
Close Up: Iranian Cinema Past Present and Future, by Hamid Dabashi. Trade paper. New York: Verso Books. Cloth: $70.00. Trade paper: $20.00. 2001, 320pp. ISBN 1-85984-332-8 In 1995, introducing one[…]
“It’s Only a Movie!”: Films and Critics in American Culture, by Raymond J. Haberski Jr. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Cloth. $27.50. 2001. 264pp. ISBN 0-8131-2193-0 “It’s Only a Movie!” was[…]
This movie master is still busy after all these years Few artists in the history of the medium have mastered their craft so well as has filmmaker Robert Wise. The[…]
The longest episode of foreplay in cinema history? Pierre Louys’ novel The Woman and the Puppet, first published in 1898, has been a popular source for cinema, with at least[…]
The Criterion Collection offers another scrumptious golden-era DVD Criterion has spruced up the peerless 1936 Universal comedy My Man Godfrey and given it a bright new sheen. The digital transfer[…]
LGBT & Queer · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
Pretty boys in danger: How yummy! Poor Frodo Baggins! He spends almost all his time in The Fellowship of the Ring 1) anticipating penetration; 2) suffering penetration; or 3) recovering[…]
Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkien’s classic soars despite its flaws There’s a very obvious problem when transferring any book to the big screen, namely that some of us may already[…]
Asian · Essays · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Feminism adrift in a sea of ogling orientalism, global capitalism, and fatalist aesthetics INTRODUCTION Chinese Women’s Issues Under the Polar Aesthetics of Female Suffering and Mulan-ism Since the 1919 May[…]
