La Pianiste: Michael Haneke’s Aesthetic of Disavowal
“At no point are Erika’s fantasies visualized, and so the spectator’s reference points are the same as Erika’s — the extremes of hardcore pornography and the austerity of bourgeois Vienna.”
Pseudo-Innocence and Encased Fantasies: Inside the Unconscious of the National Rifle Association
“I like this exhibit . . . it’s very familiar.”
On Dangerous Ground: Some Noteworthy “Moving Camera Movies” of 2010
Whether neo-noir or horror, underexposed or ignored, several films of 2010 employed devilishly motivated moving camera to disturbing effect.
Between the Idea and the Reality the Shadow Falls
So please mind the gap
The Perverse Privilege of Degradation: American Politics in the Age of Assimilation
A Final Statement of the Obvious
Actors & Personalities · Comedy
Ernie Kovacs: An American Secret
“Ernie’s contract is reported to contain a clause forbidding him ever to consult a psychiatrist. The network is afraid if he ever became normal he’d be ruined.” — Dorothy Kilgallen
Activist & Political · Essays · SF & Fantasy
When We Dream, Do We Accumulate Capital? On Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)
“Nolan is making evident, both through form and narrative, his criticism of the sweeping radicalization of cinematic work that has privileged the technological wonder of the movies over formulations of innovative and complex narratives that deal with human existence.”
Burning the Candle at Both Ends: Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies (2010)
“There are truths that can only be revealed on condition of having been discovered.”– Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies (2003)
Actors & Personalities · Directors
Meet the Devil: Remembering John Huston
“Huston once described his job to John Milius like this: ‘You will confer with generals, you will dine at the table with kings, and you will sleep with titled women. All of this you will do while being dead broke. That’s what being a director is.’ Should we even feign surprise that when it came time to make The Bible he cast himself as the voice of the Almighty?
Religious Allegory and Cultural Discomfort in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky: And Why Larry Crowne Is One of the Best Films of 2011
“You can laugh while Rome is burning, but believe you me, Poppy, it is burning, and if you don’t wake up, then you will be burnt to a cinder . . . I mean, look around you. What do you see? Do you see a policy of bringing happiness to people?” — Scott in Happy-Go-Lucky
Exit Through the Gift Shop: Cavemen to the Right
“Are we watching a faux-documentary within an entertainment vehicle? One suspects only Banksy knows. And he’s too busy painting to tell us.”
The Biggest and Smallest: Melbourne International Film Festival 2011
“Eve is like a cat, attracted by textures — stroking a violinist’s hands with chiffon and becoming entranced by a piece of fruit. She spends most of her time in ecstatic graceless dancing; even though anger and jealousy are present, they are rendered painless.”
Dispatch from the Desert: The Fifth Abu Dhabi Film Festival (2011)
“The cinema exists to record the moment when souls become visible.” –Jean-Michel Frodon
Who Blinks First? Isabelle Huppert and the Pope at Busan International Film Festival 2011
“Moretti’s aim in We Have a Pope is to unleash as many dissenting voices on the airwaves as possible — to create space within the tightness and enclosure of historical memories.”
“Filled with Ritual”: Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited
“[B]ecause the story is filled with ritual and religion, we were always going into temples. I was particularly obsessed with participating in any religious ceremonies I could get involved with.” — Wes Anderson, on the making of The Darjeeling Limited
The Way That You Use It: Reassessing The Color of Money in the Scorsese Canon
“This film is about process, about transitory states, about the journey in between the grimy Chicago pool halls that serve as Vince and Eddie’s intellectual and physical training grounds.”
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Strike, Red Psalm, The Phantom Carriage, Meek’s Cutoff, Go West, Battling Butler
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Uncategorized
Fractured Synthesis: The Blender Aesthetic of Outsider filmmaker Bob Moricz
“Moricz’s work assaults the viewer with a whiplash barrage of familiar plot lines, trite turning points, and cliché characters spouting simultaneously banal and inflated rhetorical dialogue, all infusing narratives propelled by a poignant and urgent anxiety derived from the tensions of everyday life.”
Bergman’s Women: The Representation of Patriarchy and Class in Persona (1967) and Cries and Whispers (1972)
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Rich Boy”
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