Busby Berkeley’s Hollywood Hotel: Bring on the dancing girls! Oh, wait! There aren’t any!
Thank God for the Benny Goodman Quartet
The Child Is Father to the Child: On the Friday the 13th Series
“You can depend on Jason.”
The View from Here: Middle Eastern Cinema at the 49th Thessaloniki International Film Festival
“What happens when the gaze is returned?”
Screening Hong Kong: The 33rd Hong Kong International Film Festival
One of the world’s largest cinema events is also one of the most ambitious
Actors & Personalities · Exploitation & Erotica · Pre-Code
Desperation and Divinity: “Help us, Mae!”
Hazy thoughts on the transition from real sex to digital hallucinations
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Hobson’s Choice, Murnau Silents, Divorce Iranian Style, Runaway, Poil de Carotte, Celia
Hobson’s Choice (David Lean, 1954) Approaching this film — one of two comedies Lean made in his career, the other being Blithe Spirit (1945) — you expect it to be[…]
DVD & Blu-ray · Experimental & Underground
Opposition Compositions: Treasures IV: American Avant Garde Film 1947-1986 on DVD
“Avant garde filmmaking has been defined almost entirely in opposition to the Hollywood mainstream.”
The Branding of THE CHEAT
Kicking off the second pre-code set to come out this year, we’ve got THE CHEAT (1931, another in the “rich ne’er do well offers to ‘help’ married woman” genre. This[…]
Shock of the New
This weekend, it being lovely and all, why not go to the movies and see OBSERVE AND REPORT? The film needs money. Writer-director Jody Hill is getting a drubbing apparently,[…]
The Code and its Perfect Specimens
There’s TWO pre-code sets out for spring: Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 3 and this week comes the Pre-Code Hollywood set from Universal. None of the films quite measure up to the[…]
The Tale of 3 Pauls: Coincidence, Confusion & Sex
1. PAUL THOMAS (dir. Bad Housewives, The Masseuse, The New Devil in Mrs. Jones) – A real actor (he played Peter in the film version of Jesus Christ Superstar), Paul[…]
Against Interpretation: Synecdoche
Having recently bid a fond adieu to the post-DVD-release critical interest resurgence for Synecdoche, New York, it seems a ripe enough time for us to forget this dauntingly nebulous film[…]
Women in Wonderland, Part 5 – Coraline (Henry Selick 2009)
Every one of Henry Selick’s four feature films to date has dealt with alternate realities. In the Tim Burton-produced The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), the ghoulish Jack Skellington finds a[…]
Book review: “Have You Seen . . .?”, by David Thomson
“Have You Seen . . .?”: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Film, by David Thomson. New York: Knopf, 2008. Hardcover, $39.95, 1,024 pages. ISBN: 0-307-26461-0. One entertains the vague possibility that our dismal[…]
Book review: Encyclopedia Shatnerica, by Robert Schnakenberg
Encyclopedia Shatnerica: An A to Z Guide to the Man and His Universe, by Robert Schnakenberg. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2008. Paper $16.95, 290pp. ISBN: 1-594-74230-8. William Shatner, it may be[…]
Book review: Hollywood Dreams Made Real, by Mark Vieira
Hollywood Dreams Made Real: Irving Thalberg and the Rise of M‑G‑M, by Mark Vieira. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2008. Cloth $50.00. 240pp. ISBN: 978-0-8109-7234-6. Not a conventional biography, though all[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Bride of the Joker: Thoughts on Jolie
As we prepare for Oscar once again, we see Angelina Jolie nominated for being in Clint’s “craftsmanship” film, CHANGELING. I heartily admire Jolie but, for my money, she’s never found[…]
OMF Godard There’s a Hitch in my stitch
Over time it becomes more and more obvious that as a species humans really aren’t much more than a bunch of monkeys. And our monkey brains, motivated with banana dreams[…]
Women in Wonderland, Part 4 – MirrorMask, Pan’s Labyrinth, and the “Strangeness” Factor
Dave McKean’s MirrorMask (above) and Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth were released within a year of each other. Both are women-in-wonderland tales. Pan’s Labyrinth is about a little girl who[…]
Is Cheeta an Imposter?
As reported in the Los Angeles Times – In Hollywood, “even the animals lie about their age.” Cheeta may not be 75 years old. He may not even be[…]
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