Things Fall Apart: On The Wild Bunch and Contemporary Westerns
“There remain only intimations of squalor and suffering, of rough beasts stumbling across the landscape without any stability or security in sight.”
Activist & Political · Actors & Personalities · Historical & Epic · Writers & Critics
Paging Groucho! Notes on Morrie Ryskind and HUAC
“Being Marxist in the Groucho rather than Karl sense would have required the Ten to not take themselves or their politics so seriously.”
You Can’t Go Home Again: Mad Men and the American Memory
“In Mad Men, as in modern American politics, the past is a pre-lapsarian paradise to which it is imperative to return, and the fantasy is of those exiled from history itself.”
Interviews · SF & Fantasy · Writers & Critics
Back to the Futuristic: An Interview with Bill Warren
In which the author talks about being a lifelong SF movie freak and updating his seminal SF compendium Keep Watching the Skies! for the new millennium
Directors · Interviews · Music & Musicals
Family Remains: An Interview with Lev Anderson and Chris Metzler on Documenting Fishbone in Everyday Sunshine
“Being middle-age rock and rollers, just trying to pay the bills, isn’t an easy lifestyle.”
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
All-American Medea: The Radical Pleasures of Beyond the Forest
“Today’s Rosa Moline would treat her lack of sophistication as a resource and her isolation as a launching pad.”
Love, or Something Close to It: Four Films from the 50th Thessaloniki International Film Festival
“There is always some madness in love; but, there is always some reason in madness.” — Nietzsche
The Sound of Silence: The 2010 San Francisco Silent Film Festival
“Even the most obscure titles drew impressive crowds, and the premiere events boasted sold-out houses.”
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors
Pierre Etaix: Revisiting a Forgotten Master
“The man’s a genius!” —Jerry Lewis
Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
Hitchcock’s Shadow: On Johan Grimonprez’s Double Take
“The doubled Hitchcock mirrors the Hitchcock double, who in turn reflects Hitchcock pretending to play himself.”
Maximum Security: Film Noir, Domesticity, and the Female Captive
“While films about men with dangerous jobs showed them returning home to supportive, contented wives, films that focused on domestic settings showed women caught in oppressive relationships or warped by the narrowness of their emotional lives.”
The Energy of an Era: Revisiting Ken Russell’s The Devils
“How else is one to approach a historical episode involving humpbacked, sexually frustrated nuns; crippled autocrats; hammer-wielding exorcists; doctors armed with holy water enemas?”
What Is Cult Cinema? A Checklist
Will the real cult film please stand up?
Class Dismissed: Laurent Cantet and François Bégaudeau’s The Class (2008)
“While a teen’s emotional landscape can indeed defy reason, the filmmakers insist that a teenager’s need to attack supersedes any moral dilemma, even if their behavior results in the expulsion of one of their peers.”
Atom Egoyan’s Chloe: Sex Cinema High and Low
“It is a protean film, and changes radically depending on how you approach it.”
The Mysteries of Adaptation: Michael Chabon’s Novels Onscreen
Wonder Boys is a wonder; The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, not so much
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Institute Benjamenta, There’s Always Tomorrow, Valley of the Bees, Everlasting Moments, Chicago, The Unpolished
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
“The Story of a Guy Who Wants to Kill a Guy Who Wants to Die”: Claude Chabrol’s Bellamy
“The good news from Bellamy is that Depardieu gives one of his best performances in years.”
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
A Few Steps Shy of a Masterpiece: Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse Apply Themselves in The Band Wagon
“She came at me in sections . . . she was bad . . . she was dangerous . . . she was my kind of woman.”
Counterculture · Essays · SF & Fantasy
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”: Avatar’s Psychedelic Fantasy
“What entertains us may be shaping us.”
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