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September 5, 2026
September 2, 2026
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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:
“How do you get a “Headstart” program going that isn’t about implanting early entrepreneurial ambitions in toddlers but one that gets a head start on that sort of brain ownership? More difficult: How do you develop a resistance to such ownership by the surround we are born into without falling into the illusions of an individual will-to-power?”
“Kim decided to retreat into an interior world where he does not need to confront or take but where his time can be sucked up by shitting in fields, smoking fish, getting drunk, and singing.”
“But we can imagine infinite other, less stodgy flavors: a Saragossa Manuscript of Neapolitan layers within layers within layers; a Cannibal Holocaust of pure cherry surrounding a chunky mystery surprise; a Seventh Seal of precious white vanilla lost in an ominous ocean of midnight chocolate.”
“There is no excuse for what others have called the “bro-magnon” film The Hangover, which unapologetically and even aggressively defends the model of masculinity that poo-poos date rape as some feminazi invention to further harass those poor, horny, entitled men.”
“Almost everything about Greer, her graceful figure, little mannerisms, the way she walks, talks, and smiles, reminds us of the Nineties, when Papa sat at the head of the table, airing his arrogant opinions, and never dreaming that his demure little wife, resourceful as a dozen U.S. Army engineers, was twisting him around her little finger, really running him and everything else in the house.” — Charles Samuels in Motion Picture magazine (1945)
Activist & Political · Essays · SF & Fantasy
“Facing fear and not concoctions of fear serving the needs of our own resident guardians of wealth and power is a far different enterprise than joining the enthusiasts of self-empowerments’ call “to just wish it.”
“Britt looks like the top as he bends Kato over and as he barks orders at his employee, but as every physical confrontation in the film demonstrates, Kato is the stronger man in both mind and body.”
Genres · Production History · War
“With flags fluttering, the cast stoically stands at attention, with tears streaming down their stiff upper lips. Even with their country’s destruction, the boys reflect a military mentality, still in service to their country.”
“Being beautiful fights trivializing and ironization by the camera; it saves the women from being regarded as cheap or inscrutable. Elegance and glamour paradoxically grant these subjects an inner life.”
Directors · Experimental & Underground
“For him, film was not only a profession but a mean of investigating cinema as a language, an investigation in which theory and film practice went hand in hand.”
Activist & Political · Reviews
“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other.” — Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (73)
“Attempts to create interesting projects of any sort despite our limitations can sometimes touch us more deeply than slick illusions that — literally by design — hide a lot of skill and effort, yet, in so doing, also hide something of the crazy courage it takes just to be human.”
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
“Your body is a microcosm of all existence.” — Death: A Love Story
“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
“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.”
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[…]
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,[…]
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[…]
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[…]
