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August 3, 2026
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Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXII – gordsellar.com on:
The Esteemed Black Actresses Who Finally Have the Spotlight – The New York Times – Celebrity News on:
Marxism · Philosophy · Politics · Sports · Theory
Bennett Miller’s 2008 film Moneyball depicts the unfolding on-screen of a contradiction. Moneyball as an idea is a theoretical understanding of how the game of baseball works (based on a[…]
Animation · Artificial Intelligence (AI) · Colonialism · Essays · Horror · SF & Fantasy
Ultimately, the comparison of human–ecology relationships in both The Martian and Scavengers Reign reveals two contrasting modes of becoming alien: The former envisions human survival as contingent on an anthropocentric[…]
Class System · Crime · Essays · Race
The ethical contrast between due process and vigilantism is not the deepest fault line between these movies. A sharper divide concerns who counts as fully human within the moral universe[…]
Directors · Film Culture · Film History · Film Studies · Memoir · Writers & Critics
Joseph McBride, filmed in 1970, is taking notes on his wrist, a habit he picked up while reviewing films, in his role as the critic and historian Mister Pister in[…]
Body Horror · Eco-horror · Essays · Horror · Myth and Archetype · Splatter & Gore
This article argues that the history of global horror is not a linear progression of influence from a dominant West to the passive rest of the world but a dynamic,[…]
Courtroom Drama · Drama · Exile and Displacement · Myth and Archetype
“They’re not monsters. They’re just tired.” – Ada, Atlantics (2019) “I placed her in the sea so that the sea. . . .” – Laurence, Saint Omer (2022) * *[…]
Depicted as perfect boyfriends, they model an ideal set of standards for a desirable heterosexual male romantic partner while using those standards not to pursue their own self-interests but rather[…]
Artificial Intelligence (AI) · Experimental & Underground
Director/author’s statement: My film Recorded as Stated by Me (V. Shashkov, 2024), released on Amazon Prime at the end of April 2025, is set in post-mobilization Russia and traces cultural[…]
African American · Asian · Drama · Essays
Both films will give the critic searching for a standard class-focused reading a headache. We have to admit that the kidnapper exerts an imposition on the success of “the other.”[…]
Activist & Political · Brazilian Cinema · Communism and Socialism · Drama · Politics
Retornarán los libros, las canciones que quemaron las manos asesinas. Renacerá mi pueblo de su ruina y pagarán su culpa los traidores. The books will return, the songs burned by[…]
Class System · Crime · Hollywood · Noir · Pre-Code
When the Production Code loosened and America lurched through assassinations, riots, and televised body bags, the gangster stopped functioning as a moral lesson and started reading as a symptom –[…]
Drama · Drugs · Melodrama · Men & Masculinity
Due to cortisone overdose, Ed turns into a radical enforcer of outdated values at school. His expectations, rather than aligning with the conventional disciplinary regime of the time, deviate into[…]
These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World, by Grady Hendrix and Chris Poggiali. Revised and expanded paperback edition, Running Press, 2025, 384 pages,[…]
In Tár, Field fashions an improbable representation of power (Hernández, “Top Orchestras”) to advance the idea that power is faceless. But the idea is only to be believed if the[…]
Drama · Restorations · Satire
Who is this minx with the thirty-kilowatt smile? Christie is phenomenal here, creating an archetype of the modern neurotic. The extraordinary geometry of her face, depending on angle and lights,[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Italian Cinema · LGBT & Queer
Pasolini is in the canon – but only as a statue, not a voice. His name appears in film textbooks, his films screen at retrospectives, and Salò gets trotted out[…]
Absurdism · Body Horror · Disease and Epidemics · Family · Horror · Politics
When taken as a whole, it’s apparent that Hooper was just as politically minded in the creation of this film as he was with the first, his sights set firmly[…]
Class System · Drama · Exile and Displacement · French Cinema · Road Movies · Women in Film
For the Dardenne brothers, “social conditions” come down to the common denominator of cold cash – having it, lacking it, getting it, some disposing of it more than others. It’s[…]
Drama · Essays · Feminism · French Cinema · Men & Masculinity · Sex & Relationships · Women in Film
Last Tango in Paris is a case study in how a culture processes shame – who bears it, who survives it, who escapes it entirely. Maria Schneider, long ignored, is[…]
