Bodies Politic/Body Politics: The Political and the Personal in Contemporary Film Essays
“Your body is a microcosm of all existence.” — Death: A Love Story
Boris Barnet: The Lyric Voice in Soviet Cinema
“If the silent period showed the flashes of brilliance as well as the unevenness of Barnet’s talent, the next few years would see him produce two worldwide masterpieces that place him as a precursor of French Poetic Realism and the work of Jean Renoir, as well as an influence on the French New Wave through the works of Truffaut, Godard, and Rivette.”
Activist & Political · SF & Fantasy
Cylons, Avatars, and Barack Obama: Science Fiction and Hybridity After 9/11
“Veering away from jingoistic portrayals of ‘us’ and the ‘Other,’ these films advocate instead a complex and globally entwined future of hybrid identities along with critical consideration of the political and cultural consequences of advanced technology.”
Deconstructing Sucker Punch
Like Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., Christopher Nolan’s Inception, or Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch invites the viewer to deconstruct a narrative puzzle – nested realities, stories embedded[…]
Notes on The Exile (Max Ophuls, 1947)
Producer as Auteur – The Exile is a swashbuckler, written by, produced by, and starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. It was the first American film to be completed by the German-Jewish director,[…]
Mind over Matrimony: Gay or Any Marriage Vs. Cary Grant
Proud as I am of New York for approving gay marriage (see my dissection of THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT, here) I can’t help but see marriage itself as some[…]
Notes on a Slow Zoom: Robert Altman’s 3 WOMEN (1977)
Standing in an aquarium with his arms outstretched, the Creature from the Black Lagoon makes a cameo appearance in Robert Altman’s 3 Women, but his presence is anything but gratuitous. Like everything else in[…]
The Hotel Maid who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
Anyone who’s seen any of the GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO movies must surely notice the similarities between Strauss-Kahn and the unsavory sex addicted pervs in high places that are the targets of our avenging heroine, Lisbeth Salander.
Book review: Swedish Sensationsfilms, by Daniel Ekeroth
Swedish Sensationsfilms, by Daniel Ekeroth. Brooklyn: Bazillion Points Press, 2011. Trade paperback. $19.99. Thanks to the lurid popularity of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Sweden has perhaps become in the popular American[…]
Book review: Lost Horizons Beneath the Hollywood Sign, by David Del Valle
Lost Horizons Beneath the Hollywood Sign, by David Del Valle. Albany, GA: BearManor Media, 2010. Paperback. $27.95. 458 pp. David Del Valle collects. Among other things, he collects movie people. Lost Horizons[…]
Book review: Male Bisexuality in Current Cinema, by Justin Vicari
Male Bisexuality in Current Cinema: Images of Growth, Rebellion and Survival, by Justin Vicari. Jefferson and London: McFarland, 2011. Paperback. $45.00 In analyzing the 1970s cinematic Eurodecadence, the Italian-originated school[…]
Book review: Back to the Future, by Andrew Shail and Robin Stoate
Back to the Future, by Andrew Shail and Robin Stoate. London: BFI Film Classics, Palgrave Macmillan. 2010. Paperback, $15.00 In his State of the Union address of February 4, 1986, Ronald[…]
Dispatches from Cannes 2011 #3: Le Gamin au Velo (The Kid with a Bike)
DATELINE CANNES, May 18, 2011. The films of Belgian brothers Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne give new meaning to the term motion picture. Their protagonists are continually on the move,[…]
Dispatches from Cannes 2011 #2: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life
DATELINE CANNES, May 13, 2011. On approaching a Terrence Malick film, it has seemed impossible to avoid mentioning the long gaps between the films (20 years between Days of Heaven[…]
Dispatches from Cannes 2011: #1: Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris
DATELINE CANNES, May 13, 2011: When watching Woody Allen movies in the past, I was always reminded of a remark John Updike makes of one of his characters: “He thought[…]
Mapping the Mind Between Movies: Intertextuality in the Work of Wong Kar-wai
“Frustrated by their unrequited love, their inability to capture their objet petit a, Wong’s characters search desperately for appropriate supplements onto which they can displace their yearnings and desires.”
Short Takes: Mise-en-Scène: Dorothy’s Pigtails, or Integrating Imperfection into Meaning
“George Lucas, engaged in an endless quest for perfect, seamless fantasy, hopes to erase any trace of the tricks necessary to build it. Oz instead understands that the evidence of artifice can itself bear meaning: in this case, that our wildest, most wish-fulfilling fantasies will still reflect our limitations.”
The Film Criticism of Alexis De Tocqueville: Or, When Heroes Yearn as Clouds Drift
“These characters, alone or twinned, slumber in the blanket of the Natural Cliché and sit and wait, just as we long for a tinge of disgust, hysteria, or irreverence to dismantle stoic facades inherited from some icy cinematic factory.”
Documentaries · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Who Took the Folk Out of Music? Everybody, It Seems
“How does Tibet’s cultural destruction differ, in essence, from Time-Warner’s choreographed glamorization of bitches and ho’s in inner-city America, or death metal’s hold over disenfranchised Midwestern youth?”
The Tomb of Thingness and Self-Doubt: Against the Cult of Infinity
“One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics. I am speaking of the infinite.” — Jorge Luis Borges
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