“The Jazz Baroness goes beyond the barrel of stereotypes the screeching monkeys of society use against the intricate gusts of life swirling about us.” Really!
Actors & Personalities · Interviews
Confessions of a Hollywood Tough Guy: An Interview with Rod Steiger
“The only thing that is absolutely important for me is quality.”
Counterculture · Directors · Documentaries · Interviews
Drawing from Life: Talking with Director George Hickenlooper
On Art, Identity, Families, Fragmentation, Medication . . . and Fulfillment
Writing (and Filming) the Memories: An Interview with Guillermo Arriaga on The Burning Plain
“Arriaga’s use of eroticism and semi-incest between respective children of the two illicit lovers is more than a pastiche; it’s an organic outgrowth from an idea.”
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Interviews · Visual Artists
“Myself as Queen”: A Profile and Interview with Anna Biller
“My interest in creating visual worlds is what led me to both painting and film.”
Pinned on Both Sides: No Escape for Paul Muni’s Fugitive
“The film suggests the denial of the common worker, whose service to industry is only as worthy as his social status.”
The New French New Wave? Sex and Horror in the Modern Arthouse
“The explicit nature of this wave of filmmaking can be interpreted as a riposte to modern cultural sensibilities.”
Inimitable Charm: Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox
“Anderson, like Dahl, seems to have told a story to appeal to a child’s inner adult.”
Actors & Personalities · Photo Essays
Don’t It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue? What Really Separates Ben and Matt
Hand me those contacts!
Crime · Silents · Thrillers & Action
The Power of Pulp: Madness, Mayhem, and Relevance from Dr. Mabuse to Miss Mend
“The shadow of Mabuse falls over the 1926 Soviet adventure serial Miss Mend, too, but without the angst and gloom of Lang’s Der Spieler.”
Actors & Personalities · Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer
Monster Queen: The Transgressive Body of Divine in Pink Flamingos
“Divine is as unstoppable as nature, destined to repeatedly transgress, destroy, and create.”
David Niven: “P. G. Wodehouse with Tears”
“What you got was what you saw, a man with a soldier’s training speaking ever so nicely and trying not to stretch himself beyond his abilities as an actor.” ~ David Niven
Serious Joke: The Coen Brothers’ Emergence as Jewish Humorists
“The films of the Coen brothers seem to take place in a postmodern Chelm, displaced chronologically and geographically.”
Towards a New Cinema of Castration: I Spit on Your Grave and Only Angels Have Wings
“Peer pressure is either a boon or a bitch with the power to destroy the world, or save it.”
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Blood, Monsoon Wedding, The Exiles, The General, Sunrise, 8-1/2, Death in the Garden
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Fred Astaire, Two Steps Forward and One Step Back: Fred and Vera-Ellen, Not Quite Walking on Air in The Belle of New York
Can quantity trump quality? Not so much
Old Cameron’s Avatar: America’s Favorite Asshole Makes Another Kick-ass Thriller
Vampires? Yeah, we’ve got that. Oh, and Michelangelo too
The Greenest Green World: James Cameron’s Avatar
“Cameron is Hollywood’s dream boy: a superficial auteur with impeccable brand recognition.”
Tina Fey’s 30 Rock: At Last! A Cult TV Sitcom for the Tragically Self-Involved
You’ll come for the irony, you’ll stay for the tits
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