On and Off, On and Off: Riding Through Roger Rabbit’s World
There’s more trouble in Toontown than even the Toons imagined Cartoons and animated features have never been strictly made for children. But not until the 1960s did the cartoon gain[…]
Gay Pride, Italian Style: Ferzan Ozpetek’s Le Fate Ignoranti (Ignorant Fairies)
Ozpetek’s queer melodrama excites and disappoints in equal measure Italian cinema is finally discovering that films with gay and lesbian characters can do extremely well at the box-office, in spite[…]
Occupied Territory: Sylvie Groulx’s In the Shadow of Hollywood
America’s cultural colonizing is scored in a French-Canadian documentary you’ll probably never see Imagine if you walked into your local Starbucks and could only order caramel lattes. No cappuccinos, no[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Fred and Ginger Miss a Step in Shall We Dance
“Let’s call the whole thing off?” Shall We Dance (1937) is the last and least of the great Fred & Ginger musicals, saved from ignominy by a superb score courtesy[…]
Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · Music & Musicals
Rave On: Five Indie Music Docs on Four DVDs: Dancin’ Barefoot/Blank Generation; Rage: 20 Years of Punk Rock West Coast Style; Songs for Cassavetes; Better Living Through Circuitry
Every social movement needs a soundtrack, and, despite widespread reports of apathetic youth and political stasis, the twilight years of the twentieth century were rife with both. The indie movements[…]
La Vie en Rage: Rampaging Women in Five French-Language Films: Les Voleurs; Regarde la Mer; Dreamlife of Angels; Rosetta; Baise-moi
The searing images of the September 11 attacks initially prompted literal references to action movies, the only place most viewers had ever seen fireballs that size. The planners of these[…]
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
QFilmistan: The First South Asian LGBT Film Festival (September 2001)
A treasure trove of short queer cinema – and one feature – from cultures where creating it can be a criminal act Despite its status as one of the world’s[…]
Cinemayaat 2001: Fifth Annual Arab Film Festival in San Francisco
More relevant now than ever, this solid fest brings some of the complexity of the Arab world to often uncomprehending western eyes In San Francisco’s cornucopia of film festivals, Cinemayaat’s[…]
A Divine Wallow: All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind on Criterion DVD
The Criterion Collection serves up two Sirk beauties With the 2001 release of All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind, two gorgeous DVDs from the elite Criterion Collection,[…]
Buñuel on DVD: Diary of a Chambermaid and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Murder and dinner – almost – among the upper crust Despite his godlike status as one of cinema’s great artists and rebels, Luis Buñuel has not been well served on DVD.[…]
Experimental & Underground · Reviews
Snapshots from Hell: Richard Kern – The Hardcore Collection on DVD
Kern’s trashy teens fight and fuck their way through an incomprehensible world Transgression seems more like concept than reality in these no-boundaries days, but in the ‘80s and early ‘90s[…]
Directors · Horror · Interviews
The Wizard of Gore: Herschell Gordon Lewis Speaks
Wit and wisdom from the man who created one of cinema’s most enduring genres JOHN WISNIEWSKI: Your background in academics was quite different from that of your partner David Friedman.[…]
Experimental & Underground · Horror · Silents
Jean Epstein’s The Fall of the House of Usher
Poe’s favorite story dressed to kill by a legendary surrealist auteur Poe has proven to be one of the more enduring sources for filmmakers, not only because there’s something modern,[…]
Cinematographers · Documentaries
Fear of Darkness: Profiling Sven Nykvist in Light Keeps Me Company
Bergman’s cinematographer found more solace on the set than in real life Cinematographer Sven Nykvist’s work with Ingmar Bergman is considered one of the key collaborations in modern cinema, and[…]
Book review: Actors Talk, by Dennis Brown
Actors Talk: Profiles and Stories from the Acting Trade, by Dennis Brown. New York: Limelight Editions, 1999. 280 pages, $25.00, ISBN 0-87910-287-X. I hate watching actors talk about acting. Humor, intelligence, and[…]
Book review: France on Film, edited by Lucy Mazdon
France on Film: Reflections on Popular French Cinema, edited by Lucy Mazdon. London: Wallflower Press (£13.99)/New York: Columbia University Press ($55.00 cloth, $20.00 trade paper), 2001, 196pp. Since the Lumieres[…]
Historical & Epic · Reviews · Silents
Behind the Brocade: Abel Gance’s Lucrezia Borgia
The Borgias are having an orgy Old master Abel Gance directed this juicy potboiler of family values run amok as a frankly commercial job to put baguettes on the table.[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Reviews
Bob Dylan in D. A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (1967)
The dude with the ‘tude “If Bob Dylan is a poet, so is Cassius Clay.” So sneered Norman Mailer in 1965, before he realized what the sixties were about, and[…]
Powell and Pressburger’s Black Narcissus (1947)
The bad boys of classic Brit cinema pull out all the stops, maybe a couple too many In Craig McCall’s short documentary Painting with Light, included on Criterion’s fabulous DVD[…]
Buried Alive: François Ozon’s Under the Sand (2000)
A French angst-fest mostly redeemed by Charlotte Rampling’s nuanced portrait of a woman unhinged François Ozon’s latest film will come as a bit of a shock to seasoned Ozon watchers,[…]
Links + BSA
