The Dark House
The Dark House (Dom ZÅ‚y) Dir. Wojcieh Smarzowski, Poland 2009 What the Inuit language is to snow, Polish is to varieties of squalor and mess. Take melina, an alcoholic’s den,[…]
Festivals & Awards · TV & Streaming
MTV 2010: You’ll Believe a Big Fat “Bleeep” Can Fly
And how can you not love that Tom Cruise has made the foul-mouthed coked-up Jewish producer-type into a stock comic expression of nothing less than the highest level of Nietzschean ubermenschood in the form of his TROPIC THUNDER role, Les Grossman?
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards
Warsaw Doc Festival
The Miscreants of Taliwood, dir. George Gittoes Nénette, dir. Nicolas Philibert I recently spent a week at the Warsaw Documentary Film Festival. The two films that made the deepest impression[…]
Hitchcock meets Hitchcock in DOUBLE TAKE
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UIonNH-rz8] So this filmmaker, Johan Grimonprez, who teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York, gets the idea of creating a fictional film about Alfred Hitchcock constructed largely[…]
Bluebeard: Breillat on Myth
There’s a strange defamiliarization going on in Catherine Breillat’s films. It could result from her frequent use of a stable camera, or what must be a controlled directing style. Through[…]
Book review: America’s Film Legacy, by Daniel Eagan
America’s Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, by Daniel Eagan. Trade paperback $39.95. New York: Continuum Pub. Group. ISBN 0-826-42977-7. The National[…]
Book review: Robert Altman, by Mitchell Zuckoff
Robert Altman: The Oral Biography, by Mitchell Zuckoff. New York: Knopf, 2009. Hardcover, $35.00. 576pp. ISBN 0-30726-768-7. Mitchell Zuckoff did a clever thing in Robert Altman The Oral Biography. He captured[…]
Book review: A Short History of Cahiers du Cinéma, by Emilie Bickerton
A Short History of Cahiers du Cinéma, by Emilie Bickerton. London: Verso, 2009. Hardcover , $22.95. 156 pp. ISBN 978-1-84467-232-5. The sober, aptly descriptive title that Emilie Bickerton has given[…]
Book review: Hollywood Under Siege, by Thomas R. Lindlof
Hollywood Under Siege: Martin Scorsese, the Religious Right, and the Culture Wars, by Thomas R. Lindlof. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. 2008. Hardcover $32.50, 394pp. ISBN 78-0-8131-2517-6. No one can[…]
Tivo Alert: FACE BEHIND THE MASK (1941) 8 AM Monday Morning on TCM (5/24)
The pathos is never maudlin or icky, but rather soothing (thanks to Lorre’s velvety vocal delivery), creepy and a little post-modern – with Lorre’s own weird real life looks keeping him from ever ‘getting the girl’ no matter how many movies he’s in.
Two in the Wave: Fathers of a Revolution
If any movement made cinema history into a reactionary narrative, it would be the French New Wave. A batch of cinephiles, most working as critics for Cahiers du Cinema (established[…]
Godard Abides
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhqOFWdtDdY] Remember when Jean-Luc Godard made films that were avant-garde but still, somehow, comprehensible? That was a long time ago, the 1960s to be precise. Yet, like The Big Lebowski’s[…]
Frazetta and the Mothman
Another masterpiece by the late Frank Frazetta (1928-2010), and a classic example of how Hollywood studio thinking — a misguided attempt to reach the widest demographic possible — destroyed the potential[…]
Babies: A Nature Doc Starring Humans
From the outset, it seems to be a bold-faced cash-in culled from little investment. In Babies, a French-produced doc which got a surprisingly wide release this past weekend, we have[…]
Directors · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
William Cameron Menzies and the Totalitarian Menace
Can a film’s designer be its effective auteur? He can, if his name is William Cameron Menzies. Menzies is best known for directing and designing two classics of the science[…]
Memoir · SF & Fantasy · Writers & Critics
Wild Love: Spike Jonze Meets Maurice Sendak in Where the Wild Things Are
“I’ll eat you up. I love you so.”
The Children Are Watching You: Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon
“Like any old-style modernist, Haneke likes to make the audience work.”
Reconceptualizing the Uncanny Vampire: Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day
“We are no longer in an era of vampire stories.” — Jean-Luc Nancy
Valentine’s Day: It Sucks Being a Woman
“Traditional gender roles seem to be in no danger of evolving.”
Essays · Exploitation & Erotica · Horror
Someone to Fight Over Me: Feminism, S&M, and the Daemonic in Twilight
“The pain is my only reminder that he [Edward] was real.” — Bella (Kristen Stewart)
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