Sweet Music: The Boys in the Band (1970)
“Seven tired screaming fairy queens and one anxious queer” — our beloved boys are all dressed up and back on screen. If William Friedkin’s grim gay thriller Cruising (1980) continues[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Mike Hoolboom’s Panic Bodies (1997)
The tragedy of the temporal dominates the work of this gifted Canadian experimental filmmaker In the opening segment of Panic Bodies (1998), Canadian filmmaker Mike Hoolboom talks poetically about the[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Hallelujah and Pass the Steak Knife: Cutting Up with Ron Athey (1998)
Flashing needles and literal crowns of thorn mark the work — and the body — of performance artist Ron Athey Modern primitives don’t get quite the respect they used to.[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
“My Penis! Where Is My Penis?” John Greyson’s Uncut (1997)
The man who gave us Urinal and Lillies now turns his playful eye on circumcision, copyright, and Pierre Trudeau. In his early short film, The Making of Monsters (1991), Canadian[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer
Edgeplay, Anyone? Everett Lewis’s Skin and Bone (1996)
Writer-director Everett Lewis takes us, ready or not, into a particularly nasty demimonde. With the increasing mainstreaming of cinematic homosexuality, there’s a distinct allure to movies that insist on showing[…]
Actors & Personalities · Interviews
“I’m Not the Statue of Liberty”: An Interview with Sylvia Miles
The dragon-voiced diva chats us up Sylvia Miles’ reputation in the 1970s was based on three things: her 6-minute bit as a New York hooker in Midnight Cowboy, her peerless[…]
All Is Grace: The films of Robert Bresson
Poetry in motion: Bresson resurrected and renewed There aren’t many art forms where commercial success is relentlessly equated with aesthetic worth. In painting, the idea that Walter Keane is a[…]
Dark Truths: Notes on William Friedkin
Presenting the impresario of the deviant demimonde: William Friedkin William Friedkin’s career is a study in contradictions. A liberal intellectual by nature who made two of the most notorious works[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Uncategorized
Sadie Benning’s Pixel Pleasures
What mysterious force lay behind the teenage grrrl’s crudely drawn but strangely evocative masks? Sadie Benning has been a cause celebre in the queer community for almost a decade. Born[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Two Early Warhols: Screen Test #2 and Restaurant
Ronald Tavel, Mario Montez, and Edie Sedgwick strut their superstardom in these early works by the master of pop kitsch camp For most people, the quintessential “Andy Warhol film” is[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
“Sorry! It Had to Be Done!” Radical Actioner Kurt Kren
Presenting Kurt Kren — humble bank teller by day, radical action naked performance artist by night! The exigencies of living and working miles from the mainstream can prevent even the[…]
Directors · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Paul Morrissey on DVD: Four Camp Classics
Sluts, stoners, and screeching drag queens decorate Morrissey’s curdled campfests Gerri Miller: “You used to be dynamite, Joe. Don’t you miss it?” Joe Dallesandro: “Uh … yeah.” – Trash It’s[…]
Documentaries · LGBT & Queer · Reviews · Visual Artists
Love Stories: Pierre et Gilles (1997)
The love in this film about the two lost boys of Eurotrash art is mostly self-love. The art of Pierre and Gilles, affectionately known as P&G, has always been a[…]
Book review: Harvey Keitel, by Marshall Fine
Harvey Keitel: The Art of Darkness. The Unauthorized Biography, by Marshall Fine. New York: Fromm International, 1998. ISBN 0-88064-191-6, Cloth, 272pp, $25.00. Harvey Keitel, as rendered by film critic Marshall[…]
Book review: That’s Enough, Folks, by Henry T. Sampson
That’s Enough, Folks: Black Images in Animated Cartoons, 1900-1960, by Henry T. Sampson. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8108-3250-X, Hardcover library binding (no dust jacket), 249pp, $60.00. Scarecrow Press[…]
Book review: The Vampire Gallery by J. Gordon Melton
The Vampire Gallery: A Who’s Who of the Undead, by J. Gordon Melton. Farmington Hills, MI: Visible Ink Press (a division of Gale Research), 1998. ISBN 1-57859-053-1, Trade paper, 500pp, $19.95. J.[…]
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Cultural Makeovers: Tranny Fest 1998
When gender gets in the way, as it so often does, these gender pioneers say “Change it!” Trannies of every stripe — drag queens and kings, transsexuals, intersexuals, etc. —[…]
Frank Capra’s American Dream (Kenneth Bowser, 1997)
This beloved film artist was driven as much by self-doubt as by his belief in the power of the “little man” The rise of Frank Capra from sickly, abused, impoverished[…]
Unmade Beds (Nicholas Barker, 1997)
An arresting look at the limited lives of four New York singles, playing themselves British director Nicholas Barker’s New York cult hit Unmade Beds has an unintended effect that will[…]
Mother and Son (Alexander Sokurov, 1997)
Even the cinematic frame isn’t safe from Sokurov’s grim sleight-of-hand Painterliness in cinema has its pitfalls. Filmmakers like Peter Greenaway and Derek Jarman built careers on bringing visual imagery familiar[…]
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