Documentaries · Festivals & Awards
Illuminating the Interior: The DOC NYC Festival Debut
Boasting Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, fest sets a high standard
Freedom from the Pedomorphic Ideal: A Speculation on the Tragically Cute
“Beyond religion, we have resorted to a more modern neurosis to calm our terrors and complement our pretended ennui: cuteness.”
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, Adelheid, The War Lord, The Exploding Girl, The Law, L’Enfance Nue, Chaplin at Keystone
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
“Unique (and Just a Little Queer)”: Camping with James Bond
“We want to be Bond; we want to fuck Bond; we want to be Bond fucking.”
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica
“He’s Dreaming My Dream!” Beryl Sokoloff’s Web of Artists
Of insular wonderlands and open cityscapes
Activist & Political · Festivals & Awards
Cinema, Virginity, and Swans: The Abu Dhabi International Film Festival 2010
“For a brief week or two, adventurous filmgoers can capture elusive truths found in works of complexity, moral ambiguity, and seriousness of purpose, all uncensored.”
Activist & Political · Drama · Essays
The Illusionist: Film Art and Political Power
“He tries to trick you. I try to enlighten you. Which is the more noble pursuit?” The Illusionist was released in 2006 to generally good reviews (the consensus seemed to[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
UCLA Archive revisits “Cotton Comes to Harlem” and “Shaft”
The UCLA Film & Television Archive’s current series on black cinema of the 1970s has featured guest appearances by a number of actors and other people associated with films on[…]
Janet MacLachlan dies at 77; prominent African-American actress in film, TV since 1960s
Janet MacLachlan, who played the compassionate schoolteacher in Martin Ritt’s Oscar-nominated “Sounder” (1972), has died at age 77. A highly respected stage, film and television actress, Maclachlan was known for a serious,[…]
Katherine Heigl: Infantilization’s Poster Girl
Third wave feminism was bad enough with its “I’m a princess who should be spoiled rotten and pampered AND treated with full equality to men” cake and eating it[…]
Lost – On the Wave
This is apropos the DVD release of Lost Season 6: A lot of people were disappointed with the series finale of Lost, disappointed to the point they felt it betrayed[…]
Comic Side Duo Steps Up in The Social Network
There’s certainly various elements uniting in this confident film. Individually, they don’t seem like much, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Just when Oliver Stone[…]
Dishonored
Dishonored Dir. Josef von Sternberg, 1931 Marlene Dietrich and Mata Hari: it sounds so obvious once you say it. It didn’t take long for Josef von Sternberg, to put the[…]
Stanley Kubrick’s Fear and Desire (1953)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKZhzpBl5g4] For years, Stanley Kubrick’s independently financed first feature, Fear and Desire, was a suppressed film, next-to-impossible to see. The man responsible for suppressing it was Kubrick himself, because he[…]
Catfish: A New Medium for a Motif
Note: this review discusses major plot points but doesn’t reveal the surprising turn. Much of what is discussed below can be found in the promotional material. Catfish opens in Philadelphia[…]
“In Northwest China, You’re on Your Own”: A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop
Cora: Yeah, but where are we headed? Frank: What’s the difference? Anywhere. –The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946 The key to the shifty enterprise of adapting a work like the[…]
The Late Claude Chabrol – Some Personal Favorites
There was something so damned likeable about Claude Chabrol (June 24,1930 – September 12, 2010). He had a remarkable enthusiasm for films and the process of filmmaking which translated into[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
“Machete doesn’t text.”
by RUTH STARKMAN This definitive statement comes from Machete, an ex-Federale played by veteran tough guy, Danny Trejo in the deliciously extreme action gore-fest Machete, which opens nationwide Friday, September[…]
Five Shameless Sci-Fi Oscar Robberies, Spearheaded By Avatar
Riding on the back of nine minutes of unseen footage, the special edition of James Cameron’s pioneering 3-D masterpiece Avatar returns to theaters today (Friday August 27). But billions of[…]
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