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?”
Activist & Political · Reviews
Blue Jasmine and the Great Recession: Paean for Our National Nightmares
“Allen delineates the gaudy days of the subprime years and the divided nation in its aftermath — one divided by misfortune, political and economic abuses and a sense of cultural and social malaise. With a central character who complements both aisles of the economic divide with her 1% past and Generation Y career struggles and a narrative that captures a virulent political right from the financial elites of Wall Street to the angry blue collar workers of San Francisco, Allen’s film is a bitter complement to our post Lehman-Brothers era.”
Hope and History: Beyond Violence
By means of horror?
Red Leaves and Evil: Haunted October 2013 Film Guide (TCM, 10/21-10/31)
Man, Turner Classic Movies has gone off the deep end with this erratic last two weeks before the autumnal solstice and sacrifice of the virgin, the spilling of his blood across the fields, the burning of the Barleycorn effigy, the return of Guy Fawkes, the anti-pope in the silver castle, the shambling junkies of Dean Street. and Onwards. As a trained expert in the cinemarcane allow me to steer your DV-R record finger to these off-kilter spook shows:
AMERICAN MARY (2012) and the Female-Centered Horror Film
Watching the season premiere of American Horror Story Coven and the Soska Sisters’ American Mary back-to-back, I couldn’t help but notice certain … recurrences. Both works feature a scene in[…]
Future Recall: 10 Cage-Free Horror Films on the Web (Netflix, AMC, youtube) that span time…
The discriminating October film enthusiast knows that sometimes bad is better… unless there’s something great you still haven’t seen, and sometimes you can see too much, like the dispiriting amount of torture porn titles on Netflix… Well, HEY! Here’s ten films either free on youtube, AMC, or Netflix Streaming that are MIND-bending, not pliers-bending
Haunted October 13 Film Guide (TCM, 10/1-10/19)
And of course, there’s the horror movies. The speeding darkness and chill draws ghosts and candelabras, witches, demons, and monsters to our cinematic desires like a magnet. And TCM is there. As are we at the Bright Lights After Dark, where we turn those bright lights way, way, way down, so you can’t see the thing.
Happy 100 Years of Frances Farmer
When witches lay curses down upon the cowardly townsfolk about to hang or burn them, it’s almost always “I’ll be back to haunt your ancestors in 100 years!” Is it time then for Frances Farmer to return for that long-awaited revenge on Seattle, the patriarchy, the legal system, Hollywood, and the American Medical Association? Let’s hope
DVD & Blu-ray · Exploitation & Erotica
“Rated R for Retro” Scream Factory Loves the 80s
With Scream! it’s now possible to realize that the 80s as the best decade ever for schlock movies; grindhouses and drive-ins still lured us in like evil aunts. And best of all, we could still be genuinely scared.
John Huston’s “No Exit” Ensemble Dramas
For every filmmaker who is considered an auteur, there is a key work – often a first film like Welles’ Citizen Kane – that expresses in essential form most of[…]
Actors & Personalities · Exploitation & Erotica
Soul Diva, John Waters Star Jean Hill Dies
When people die there is usually an element of shock to the news, but when I heard Jean Hill passed away this week (8/21/13) I wasn’t shocked, since her health[…]
Are You Ready for YouTube Paid Channels?
For the discerning cinema and motorcycle repair video connoisseur, youtube has launched over 69 channels, each around $1.99-$2.99 a month.
Book Review: My Lunches with Orson
My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles, Edited by Peter Biskind. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013. Hardcover, $28.00. 306pp. ISBNL 978-0-8050-9725252800 The reader in search of[…]
Book review: The Entertainer, by Margaret Talbot
The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father’s Twentieth Century, by Margaret Talbot. New York: Riverhead/Penguin Group, paperback, 2013, 432pp, $18.00. Margaret Talbot must have known a straight-ahead biography or “a[…]
DVD & Blu-ray · Horror · Noir
A Stranger Arrives in Town: Francis Coppola’s TWIXT (2011)
How do you begin a story? If I told you a story begins with the arrival of a stranger in town, you would probably think I was talking about a[…]
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