Who are Parents? Parents are the ones who are ALWAYS there
I’ve written a lot about the decline of the “Father” in genre film–from tough WW2 vet to tough but loving 70s hedonist to needy, emasculated single dad of the 21st[…]
Some Cameroning, Part 2 – Cameron as Auteur
Can a filmmaker spend most of his or her artistic life recycling other people’s ideas and still be a true auteur? Sure. Why not? Any idea, theme, style, or attitude[…]
Good night, Mr. Tikhonov, wherever you are…
Vyacheslav Tikhonov, who starred as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace (1967), died last Friday (12/4) at the age of 81. Tikhonov is one of a trio[…]
Book review: In My Father’s Shadow, by Chris Welles Feder
In My Father’s Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles, by Chris Welles Feder. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books, 2009. Hardcover. $24.95. 304pp. ISBN 978-1565125995. Orson Welles, as Walter Kerr wrote[…]
Book review: Farber on Film, Ed. by Robert Polito
Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber, Edited by Robert Polito. USA: The Library of America, 2009. Hardcover, $40.00. 1,000pp. ISBN: 978-1598530506. Farber on Film The dizzying creativity[…]
Book review: America’s Film Vault, by Phillip W. Stewart
America’s Film Vault: A Reference Guide to the Motion Pictures Held by the U.S. National Archives, by Phillip W. Stewart. Crestview FL: PMS Press, 2009. Trade paperback, $39.95. 308pp. ISBN: 0-979-32430-0.[…]
Book review: Performing Illusions, by Dan North
Performing Illusions: Cinema, Special Effects and the Virtual Actor,by Dan North. London: Wallflower, 2008. Paperback $28.00, 224pp. ISBN: 978-1-905674-43-4. “Our ability to manufacture fraud now exceeds our ability to detect[…]
Tortured Longing is the new coke
I can feel the Twilight zeitgeist in the air tonight, perhaps it’s because I live across from the cinema and the line around the block and I hear them out[…]
Brothers in Cynicism
Every time a new film by the Coen brothers comes out, I dread having to hear from the same old so-and-so’s who can’t bear to slog through the Coens’ peculiar[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Interviews
Just Say Oui: An Interview with the Yes Men
“I’m shitting bricks, thinking he’s onto me.”
Activist & Political · Reviews
“They Come in Peace”: Andy Fickman’s Race to Witch Mountain
“Only saviors can save polluted planets, yellow cab drivers are losers . . .”
Of Perfect Plans and Acts of Creation: Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing
“His plan mirrors Johnny’s, that is, pieces of the plan are known to one person: Johnny and Stanley; and not until the end do we see most of their pieces come into place.
Activist & Political · Reviews · War
How James Stewart Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb: Anthony Mann’s Strategic Air Command
“Chew popcorn to avoid grinding teeth, comrades.”
Far from Elementary: Debra Chasnoff’s Straightlaced: How Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up
“I told him, ‘I’m not gay. My neck was cold.'”
Playing It Safe with John Dillinger: Michael Mann’s Public Enemies
“Dillinger had recently undergone plastic surgery to alter his face and to try to remove his fingerprints. But Public Enemies does not dare to depict that kind of desperation and that determination to survive under any circumstances.”
Roman Polanski: What’s on Trial?
What is fascinating about the Polanski case is that it is not particularly about Polanski. Looking at the debate raised in France (where I live) and the United States –[…]
Past Sunset: Noir in the West
“I don’t need other people. I don’t need help. I can take care of me.”
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Interviews
Film and Film and Film: An Interview with Jonas Mekas
“One who knows how to, as they say, ‘read’ the images, can tell everything about me.”
Letter from New York (c. 1980)
“The problem is other people crazy people.”
Activist & Political · Drama · Reviews
Critical Distance: What Knowing Knows About 9/11
“Where Cloverfield provocatively blurs the line between being ‘about’ 9/11 and being (mere) entertainment, Knowing lands squarely in the latter camp.”
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