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Mädchen in Uniform

Drama · LGBT & Queer

0

Positive Freedoms in a Negative Space: Revisiting Mädchen in Uniform

  • August 9, 2020

From these socio-erotic negotiations sprung cinema’s first expressly lesbian-themed feature, Mädchen in Uniform (1931), not simply a tale of forbidden love but a historically particular challenge to Weimar Germany’s separation[…]

Florida Project

Drama · Essays · Urban Conflict

0

Fighting for a Place to Be: Urban Space in Tangerine and The Florida Project

  • August 6, 2020

This conditional access to space is also there in Tangerine, but it is never tested to the breaking point. The conflicts that occur between the characters and the managers of[…]

Melina León

Directors · Indigenous · Interviews · Women in Film

0

On Canción sin nombre (Song Without a Name): Talking with Director Melina León

  • August 3, 2020

It’s the kind of film I wanted to make where you see social implications growing from a personal story. What made it very hard was the sadness of it and[…]

#MeToo

#MeToo · Activist & Political · Drama · Women in Film · Workplace

0

#MeToo in Three Recent Films: The Assistant, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, and On the Record

  • July 31, 2020

#MeToo has been an unequivocal success in terms of calling out the rampant sexual abuse that exists in the veins of Hollywood, but has been less successful in allowing room[…]

Bacurau

Activist & Political · Brazilian Cinema · Indigenous · SF & Fantasy · Westerns

0

Bacurau: Sheltering in Place

  • July 28, 2020

When I watched Bacurau again this summer online, so much felt different: the open-air communal life of the villagers seemed even more distant and utopian; after months of Brazil’s president[…]

Sid Grauman

Exhibition · Film Technology & History · Impresarios & Moguls · Movie Theatres · Silents

0

Prologue to Hollywood: Sid Grauman and the San Francisco Origins of Tinseltown Spectacle

  • July 25, 2020

While Grauman is mostly known for spectacular venues reflecting Hollywood’s film fantasies, his early San Francisco period indicates that throughout his career he showed remarkable consistency in referring to the[…]

Driveways

Directors · Drama · Interviews

0

On Driveways and Spa Night: Talking with Director Andrew Ahn

  • July 22, 2020

“I try very hard to give the characters in my films a sense of humanity. I want this feeling for the audience that these characters exist outside of the frame.[…]

Mrs. Soffel

Drama · Interior Monologue · Letters

0

Just a Violet: On Gillian Armstrong’s Mrs. Soffel

  • July 19, 2020

(interpolating material by Paul Simon, John Sebastian, Johnny Jewel, Johnny Mercer, Emily Jane Meluch, Conor Oberst, Jaret Ray Reddick, and Eddie Argos)  * * * The weight of the world[…]

Benny's Video

Absurdism · Crime · Digital · Directors · Food

0

“Will You Be Able to Stomach It?” Haneke’s Food Motif and the Violence of Creation and Consumption in Benny’s Video

  • July 15, 2020

Rage … Rage, O world and quake Here I stand and sing In perfect calm – “Jesu, mon Freude” by J. S. Bach * * * Consider the pig. Benny[…]

Suture

African American · Horror · Race

0

Color-Blind in Black and White: How Suture Wants Us to Ignore Race

  • July 13, 2020

As it stands, Suture’s bold attempt at cultural effacement never drives home any type of allegory, just as Clay is only a passenger in a narrative with barely any causal[…]

Gauntlet

Essays · Thrillers & Action · Urban Conflict · Women in Film

0

Welcome to the Ranks of the Disenchanted: Feminism and Pacifist Spectacle in The Gauntlet

  • July 9, 2020

This essay is a revised version of a book chapter that originally appeared in the anthology Clint Eastwood’s Cinema of Trauma: Essays on PTSD in the Director’s Films, eds., Charles[…]

Game of Thrones

Drama · Historical & Epic · SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming

0

A Song of Ire: Game of Thrones, A Year Later

  • July 5, 2020

It is a fascinating exercise to consume this show according to the twenty-first-century rules of binge-watching. As the hours pass and the on-screen death count rises, the sustained passivity of[…]

Cremator

Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · Eastern European · Horror

0

The Cremator (1969): In Love with Death

  • July 2, 2020

The Cremator, only Juraj Herz’s second film, was adapted from a novel by Ladislav Fuks. It was well received, won a few awards, and was promptly banned for two decades[…]

Rita Hayworth

Drama · Fashion · Noir · Women in Film

0

“Put the Blame on Mame”: Fragmentation and Commodification in Gilda

  • June 29, 2020

The fact that even if that zipper did come down it would simply reveal more dress, a never-ending vortex of clasps and corsets leading to nowhere, seems precisely what the[…]

Thing Hateful Eight

Horror · Mystery · SF & Fantasy · Westerns

0

The Self as Other: Unknown Identities in John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (2015)

  • June 25, 2020

The Thing and The Hateful Eight’s analogous narratives speak to broader philosophical notions of selfhood and knowledge of others. Their thematic undercurrents explore the forever-complicated terrain of what it means[…]

Beguiled

Drama · Historical & Epic · Women in Film

0

The Natural Deconstruction of Entrapment: The Beguiled

  • June 22, 2020

Where Siegel goes sleazy and conflictual, Coppola goes subtle and sympathetic. Her direction (which won her the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival, making her only the second[…]

Coen brothers

Directors · Music & Musicals

0

Weird American Odysseys: Music, Authenticity, and the Coen Brothers

  • June 17, 2020

“When somebody’s wearing a mask, he’s going to tell the truth. When he’s not wearing a mask, it’s highly unlikely.” – Bob Dylan (while not wearing a mask), Rolling Thunder[…]

Dorothy Malone and Humphrey Bogart in the Acme Bookshop

Noir · Reviews

7

A Tale of Two Bookshops: Sex and Books and The Big Sleep

  • June 15, 2020

We missed World Book Day (March 5) this year, but what the heck. In these challenging times, we celebrate all things literary anyway by re-presenting Paroma Chatterjee’s brilliant take on[…]

Model Shop

Cityscapes · Counterculture · Directors · Drama · Sex & Relationships

0

Jacques Demy’s Model Shop (1969): The “Baroque Geometry” of Los Angeles in the 1960s

  • June 9, 2020

“I reckon LA as the noisiest, the smelliest, the most uncomfortable and most uncivilized major city in the United States. In short, a stinking sewer. . . .”1 – Adam[…]

Sixth Generation

Activist & Political · Asian · Drama · Societal Trends

0

Melting into Air: The Late Hu Bo and the (Enduring) Sixth Generation

  • June 4, 2020

Hu Bo leaves us suspended over this bleak interregnum – where the old has gone but the new is not yet born. His death too, leaves a similar blank spot.[…]

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