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Hollywood

Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Drama · Essays · Romance

0

Adios, Compañeros: Living the Dream of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

  • August 10, 2019

QT’s films are commonly hurtling toward darkness, yet Once Upon feels like a repudiation, as much as a culmination, of his oeuvre. There’s a point in the experience where the[…]

Red Badge of Courage

Literature and Film · War

0

John Huston and Stephen Crane: The Texts of Red Badge of Courage

  • August 6, 2019

Huston, unlike Crane and his readers, had the actual experience of combat before him. What he discovered in Italy validated much of what Crane wrote. Huston, too, would attempt in[…]

Bette Davis

Women in Film

0

A Woman’s Freedom: Dark Victory vs. Now, Voyager

  • July 25, 2019

This comparison shows Dark Victory to be conservative, and Now, Voyager to be liberal, on the question of how women can achieve lasting satisfaction. Of course, in Dark Victory one[…]

Exploitation & Erotica

0

Trash and Masochism: The Transcendent Aesthetics of Dungeon of Harrow

  • July 20, 2019

“. . . a jewel with facets of disease running all through it.” – Lester Bangs * * * It was once said that the real heroes of 18th-century writer[…]

Roger Corman

Directors · Women in Film

0

She-Gods, Gangsters, and Gunslingers: The “New Woman” in the Early Films of Roger Corman

  • July 12, 2019

As part of their liberation from convention, Corman empowers female characters with choices both real and metaphorical. Even a common love triangle can represent female empowerment, with the choice between[…]

Avengers Endgame

Franchises & Series · Superheroes

0

Avengers: Endgame; or Looking Ahead to 2016, the Liberal Fantasy Redo

  • July 8, 2019

This is all to say that Endgame is more interested in fantasy outcomes than solving the problems it gives itself. It promises us a future more bearable than our present[…]

Jean Harlow

Actors & Personalities · Hollywood

0

“Newest Ideas about Brain Power”: Hair Color and Jean Harlow, Hollywood’s Platinum Blonde

  • July 3, 2019

INTRODUCTION Jean Harlow (1911-1937), born Harlean Carpenter, rose to screen fame in the early 1930s playing characters with an unaffected, uninhibited, spontaneous sexuality. [See Figure 1.] Dubbed the “Platinum Blonde”[…]

Activist & Political · Essays

0

Donald Trump: Lynchian Monster

  • June 25, 2019

“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” – The Mystery Man in Lost Highway * * * David Lynch is not a horror director. With the possible exception of Eraserhead, his films[…]

News

0

FOLLOW-UP 6/19/19: The Lillian Gish/Bowling Green State University Controversy

  • June 19, 2019

Note: We don’t normally run press releases, but we’ve been close to the issue of Bowling Green State University’s removal of the names of Dorothy and Lillian Gish from the[…]

Essays · Music & Musicals

0

A Fine Romance: When Love Neither Leaves nor Stays

  • June 16, 2019

But goes on being itself * * * True Love in cinema is more than fine acting, well-written scripts, or even directorial tone. Not that IMDb cast and crew should[…]

Non-Fiction

Drama · New Media

0

Sexual Politics: On Olivier Assayas’s Non-Fiction

  • June 12, 2019

What interests me (and I suspect, Assayas) is not so much the substance of these dinner table debates, which tend to move in predictable repeating circles, as their texture. People[…]

Night Moves

Neo-Noir

2

The Birth of Night Moves: Alan Sharp on the Edge of America

  • June 7, 2019

The movie’s reviews were mixed, and it failed to make a profit in the summer of 1975. . . .  but Night Moves has gone on to be recognised as[…]

Drama · Music & Musicals · War

0

Singing in the Rubble: A Musical Map of the Cold War in Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War

  • June 3, 2019

Suddenly jazz became a major taboo in Soviet society until Stalin’s death. In Western Europe, by contrast, mainly in Paris, jazz took off after the Nazis’ defeat in the hues[…]

Birth of a Nation

Actors & Personalities · Commentary · Silents

0

Political Correctness Run Amok: Life and Lillian Gish at Bowling Green State University, Ohio

  • May 21, 2019

Those who affect a superior attitude toward a great artist such as Lillian Gish are not only ignorant of our cultural heritage but stubbornly unaware that art usually comes from[…]

DeLorean

Documentaries

0

Dispatch from Tribeca #6: Framing John DeLorean

  • May 18, 2019

Why hasn’t there been a biopic of John DeLorean, whose life, as his son Zachary says in the documentary Framing John DeLorean, has all the elements for a rip-snorter: “It’s[…]

Lucky Grandma

Asian · Comedy · Drama

0

Dispatch from Tribeca #5: Lucky Grandma

  • May 15, 2019

“Lucky Grandma,” says Claire Baiz in her fifth Tribeca dispatch, “features richly layered characters in director Sasie Sealy’s homage to Chinatown that make this universal tale both reassuring and groundbreaking.”[…]

Drama · Festivals & Awards

0

Dispatch from Tribeca #4: Standing Up, Falling Down

  • May 9, 2019

In her fourth report from the Tribeca Film Festival, Claire Baiz looks at first-time feature director Matt Ratner’s intriguing family drama Standing Up, Falling Down, which, as a thoughtful film[…]

Muhammad Ali

African American · Documentaries · Sports

0

Dispatch from Tribeca #3: What’s My Name (on Muhammad Ali)

  • May 5, 2019

Muhammad Ali was one of the great cultural figures of the 20th century, and of course, one of its most brilliant and inspiring sports figures, equally adept in the ring[…]

Recorder

Activist & Political · Documentaries

0

Dispatch from Tribeca 2019 #2: Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project

  • May 2, 2019

Herewith (we love that word) is our second dispatch from the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, brought to you by our correspondent Claire Baiz, who will be filing dispatches on some[…]

Tribeca

Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · Sound & Language

0

Dispatch from Tribeca 2019 #1: Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound

  • April 29, 2019

Herewith we begin our coverage of the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, courtesy of our intrepid reporter Claire Baiz, who will be filing dispatches on some of the more worthy entries[…]

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