Beyond Borders: Talking with Filmmaker Eyas Salman
“Salman says he identifies as a Palestinian, but does not feel a sense of nationalism. His is not the generation that still holds onto house keys and deeds to property[…]
Bridging the Popular/Arthouse Divide: The Kinotavr Film Festival (2013)
“This year’s Kinotavr didn’t suggest a Russian film industry in meltdown even though some of the expected highlights were to prove deeply disappointing. On the other hand, there were pleasant[…]
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Foolish Wives (von Stroheim), Here, Then (Mao Mao), Red River (Hawks), The Big Parade (Vidor)
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim, 1922) Reading that the initial cut of Foolish Wives ran[…]
Crime · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
The Di Blasio Grime Revival: Ms. 45 (1981), Little Nicky (2000)
This is a film from the era of Bernhard Goetz, Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels, and of course, Charles Bronson finding himself facing muggers wherever he may go.
The Horror of Origins: In Ron Honthaner’s The House on Skull Mountain
“This emergent form — the death’s head — is not a part of the scene, but rather a reflection upon it, potentially a visualization of the character’s thoughts — evoked[…]
Children of Violence: Studies show PG-13 more violent than R
“Studies like this misunderstand the basic use of cinematic myth (which includes action films) as a ceremonial exercise in psychic catharsis, meant to appease the angry darkness of the masculine unconscious.
La Notte (1961) on Criterion Blu-ray (review), scattered like coffin lid coasters on a golf course coffee table
“a La Notte blu-ray. And now it all makes sense, the rust is a poem, the vast stretches of party space and elaborate mirror reflections are so haunting and perfectly evoked you can smell the cigarette smoke, the grass, the chlorine, and cologne, all fusing into one empty gaze of a breeze. “
Abnormal Intelligence: Sam Fell and Chris Butler’s ParaNorman
“The zombies, horrified by the overwhelming stimuli of television and set upon by hordes of trigger-happy rednecks and torch-wielding schoolteachers, are one of the film’s many desperate victims of bullying[…]
Roadside Wastrels: Notes on Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop
“What is this anyway? Some kind of masculine power trip? I’m shoved in the back with all the goddamn tools. Screwdrivers and wrenches don’t really do it for me, you[…]
Enfeebling Fables: Weak Allegory in Les Carabiniers and The Silence
“If Godard reveals what Benjamin calls ‘the beauty’ of recognizing that twentieth-century art has to become more than a parable, Bergman offers a vision of ‘the misery’: the desperate, impossible effort to find some kind of truth in a text that offers only transmissibility.”
Structural/Sexual Transgression: Todd Haynes’ Poison as a Critique of Homonormativity
“In the Washington Times I was called ‘the Fellini of Fellatio’ — a proud moment!” —Todd Haynes, “From Underground to Multiplex”
The Wanking Widow and Other Indecorous Dames: Three Films about Maternal Transgression and the “Fortunate Fall”
“Popular culture feels compelled to interrogate the ‘barren’ years, in some cases expressed as a contradiction between competing life goals: the other-oriented value of maternal self-sacrifice and the inner-oriented value of following one’s bliss. The aging mother should, in theory, be free to indulge her desires. When desire runs afoul of ‘age appropriate’ codes of conduct, however, the positive goal of self-actualization can take a nasty detour.”
Existential Lethargy: Hong Sang-soo’s Nobody’s Daughter Haewon (2013)
“Jung Eun-chae is a graceful, beautiful Haewon, but her daydreams seem facile, and the backpack she wears for most of the movie — which seems to be empty — tempers this statuesque gracefulness, rendering Haewon an awkward sightseer or a precocious child on a first-time school trip.”
Comedy · Directors · Essays · Writers & Critics
Team Apatow and the Tropes of Geek-Centered Romantic Comedy
“Nowadays, schlubs play schlubs and audiences are expected to accept that geeky males can win over classically beautiful women. What does it tell us about the state of gender relations, sexual fantasy, and desire that a physically average geek like Seth Rogen can trump an iconically attractive and glamorous star like Cary Grant?”
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
It’s Always Fair Weather? I’m Afraid Not: Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse Say Good-bye to Broadway
What’s black and white and destroys Western Civilization?
Buried Alive in Space: The Non-Story of Gravity
“As the camera constantly spins with the characters, as one might get motion sickness, we may realize that the film really is about nothing. And it does not matter.”
Asian · Reviews · Uncategorized
Poetry as Motion: Taking a Closer Look at Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster
“Now the fight becomes something more than a contest of wills, it becomes a careful discovery of kindred spirits as seen through a reciprocal poetry of martial arts form.”
Activist & Political · Reviews
David Ayer’s End of Watch (2012) and the Militarization of U.S. Law Enforcement
“End of Watch incorporates the visual and narrative codes of Iraq War films, inviting the viewer to draw a comparison between the battlegrounds of the “war on terror” and the mean streets of Los Angeles.”
Between Artless Passions and Anal Hells: On the Edinburgh Festival’s Production of Marlowe’s Edward II
“Why should you love him who the world hates so?”
Experimental & Underground · Reviews
The Church of Holy Motors: A Transformation in Metafilm
“What is fantasy when scripted shows that dominate popular culture are labeled ‘reality’ and social media allows everyone to be their own celebrity and put on their own performance of their best self?”
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