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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:
“Cronenberg’s method, it seems, is perfectly suited for making truly historical dramas, stripping away our tendency to read individuals through their writings in something like the way diseases in his films strip his characters down to their essences.”
Actors & Personalities · Experimental & Underground
“Bob and the new people he introduced us to were very inspiring because it meant to me, by seeing them, that you can get older and still run around in a world of uncharted horizons.” – George Kuchar
Activist & Political · Reviews
“The original industrial accidents as, for instance, the derailment of a train or the crash of an airplane, were all specific, localized, and particular accidents. They were taking place at a certain place and at a certain moment in time. Now, however, the revolution of instantaneous transmissions brought about by telecommunications makes the accident global.” — Paul Virilio
“One reason for [Carrie’s] success in both print and film, I think, lies in this: Carrie’s revenge is something that any student who ever had his gym shorts pulled down in Phys Ed or his glasses thumb-rubbed in study hall could approve of. In Carrie’s destruction of the gym . . . we see a dream revolution of the socially downtrodden.”2
“That what we now call ‘the media’ could be a threat to society was not necessarily an unknown topic before television. From the 1930s, movies had recognized the manipulative side of the press.”
You can go home again; it’s just not a lot of fun when you get there
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Hippies and radicals, back of the (cultural) bus
More like the Big Wang Theory
There’s nothing wrong with these films per se, they stir deep emotions; they move us, en masse; they spark enraptured conversation on the drive home from the mall-tiplex, are superb examples of craftsmanship, and most importantly, they make bourgeois Oscar voters feel good about themselves, and their profession; these films rub the voters’ shoulders and whisper in their wrinkly ears – “you, my darling Academy member, are the makers of our dreams.”
Now playing at the local Arthouse — Can’t you just see it on the marquee?
We recently heard, and verified, the shocking news that some of Bright Lights’ contributors actually have lives and activities outside their work on the once-humming BL assembly line. Apparently some[…]
In darker shadowy lairs, Myrna Loy meets with her devoted astrologer, Swami Yogadaci (the ever villainous C. Henry Gordon) to figure out how and when the constellations want her to assassinate her former sorority snubbers. Loy’s the villain, ostensibly, but you’ll be rooting for her all the way (unless you’ve never felt the sting of a snubbing yourself).
DVD & Blu-ray · Pre-Code · Reviews
Unseen for years thanks to its “dangerously progressive” attitudes towards sexual relationships outside wedlock, tomorrow, Tuesday 12/6/12! Criterion has released it in the stand-alone glory it deserves, replete with extras and an essay by the great Kim Morgan.
William is one of the great re-discovered icons of the pre-code era, exhumed by TCM like a King Tut of badass Satanic bravado and good humor, a cross between the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood and Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes.
Death Wish by Christopher Sorrentino. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2010. Paperback. $13.95. 98 pp. Among the movies I consider guilty pleasures, Death Wish has an appeal that has survived its inherent deficiencies[…]
The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael, ed. by Sanford Schwartz. New York: Library of America, 2011. Hardcover, 750pp, $40.00.. As perhaps the most well-known name in film criticism,[…]
“The thumb isn’t good enough for you. You have to use your whole body.” Naked underneath her trenchcoat, frightened hitchhiker Christina Bailey (Cloris Leachman) gets private eye Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) to[…]
Murders are talked over via close-ups of cat statues, and a very dirty fella named Blackie gets offed by Guy Kibee (as you’ve never seen him before!).
Actors & Personalities · TV & Streaming
After three decades of searching in vain for another Wonder Woman, it’s time to reiterate the importance of Lynda Carter’s iconic portrayal and its meaning to popular culture feminism.Pop[ular] culture n. Culture based on popular taste rather than that of an educated elite, usually commercialized and made widely available by the mass media. Feminism n. Advocacy of the rights of women (based on the theory of equality of the sexes). — Oxford English Dictionary
