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June 4, 2026
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Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXII – gordsellar.com on:
The Esteemed Black Actresses Who Finally Have the Spotlight – The New York Times – Celebrity News on:
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
How can anyone not marvel that two of Gothic Cinema’s greatest performers, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price, were born on the same day? Christopher Lee was born on May 27,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Reviews
Reading Joseph Aisenberg’s excellent piece (below) I’m compelled to offer my understanding of the great Von Sternberg’s stylistic obsessiveness, especially since it’s something I understand and share. (This began as[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Uncategorized
Recently I re-watched Josef Von Sternberg’s The Scarlet Empress (1934) and found myself again surprised by the sickly gushy tasteless humor of the piece; had forgotten most of the film’s[…]
Charlie Kaufman and Hollywood’s Merry Band of Pranksters, Fabulists and Dreamers: An Excursion into the American New Wave, by Derek Hill. London: Kamera Books, 2008. Paperback $16.95/£9.99. 192pp. ISBN: 978-1-84243-253-2. “There[…]
Douglas Fairbanks, by Jeffrey Vance, with Tony Maietta. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press and Los Angeles, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 2008. Cloth, $45.00, 368 p. ISBN: 978-0-520-25667-5.[…]
Fred Astaire, by Joseph Epstein. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2008. Cloth $22, 198pp. ISBN 978-0-300-11695-3. Does it count as a labor of love if you don’t work very[…]
Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard, by Richard Brody. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008. Hardcover $40.00. 720pp. ISBN: 0-805-06886-4. It is 634 pages long, with nearly 100[…]
You’ll Like this Film Because You’re in It: The Be Kind Rewind Protocol, by Michel Gondry. New York: Picturebox, 2008. Paperback $16.95. 80pp. ISBN: 0-979-41538-1. If film is a religion,[…]
Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited, by Molly Haskell. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. Hardcover $24.00. 272pp. ISBN: 0-30011-752-3. In a pique of literary inspiration, Yale[…]
Jack Hill: The Exploitation and Blaxpoitation Master, Film by Film, by Calum Waddell. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009. Paperback $35.00. 224pp. ISBN: 0-78643-609-3. Exploitation filmmaker Jack Hill only directed a small number[…]
Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years, by Cari Beauchamp. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2009. Hardcover $35.00. 528pp. ISBN: 1-400-04000-0. Previous books on Joseph Patrick Kennedy, of which there are many,[…]
Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy Series), ed. Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 2007. Paperback $16.95. 288pp. ISBN: 0-812-69634-4. The aim[…]
Hollywood’s Ancient Worlds, by Jeffrey Richards. New York: Continuum, 2008. Hardcover $29.95. 227pp. ISBN: 1847250076 The “ancient world” epic has been one of cinema’s most curious. For every major auteur and[…]
Maybe this has happened to you: you’re watching a film, dum de dum, suddenly… METHOD! Where did it come from and where does it go when it’s gone? Let’s take[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Once upon a time a strange sassy redhead with a big nose and giant lips cropped up as a pathetic obsessed fan in Martin Scorcese’s heavy-handed satire The King of[…]
The 1970s remains, in my experience at any rate, the pinnacle for mainstream liberal understanding of slavery and the African American experience. As a child I remember being blown completely[…]
Film Criticism 101: Why You Should Recycle the Promo Packet To be sure, there are many distinct methods of film criticism that might be employed with equal, and mutually exclusive,[…]
All stars are subject to fits of madness, and if you date a daytime TV talkshow host for long enough, who knows what kind of depths of self-confessional martyrdom you[…]
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries
“Toback, to his credit, and despite the empathy he feels toward his subject, doesn’t pull his punches.”
Actors & Personalities · Interviews · Sports
“And then he said, ‘It’s like a Greek tragedy. The only problem is, I’m the subject.'”
