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September 8, 2026
September 5, 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:
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
“Avant garde filmmaking has been defined almost entirely in opposition to the Hollywood mainstream.”
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[…]
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,[…]
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[…]
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[…]
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[…]
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[…]
“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[…]
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[…]
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
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[…]
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[…]
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[…]
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[…]
I know Cornelia isn’t necessarily the “younger” sister in Gregory La Cava’s classic screwball comedy, MY MAN GODFREY (1936), but she was born three years earlier (than Lombard) and damn[…]
Speaking of THE VALLEY OF ELAH, what about the Uncanny Valley, hat “misrecognition” which makes us creeped out by CGI animated humans? The proliferation of CGI has always fascinated me[…]
The Alices in flight, those beautiful women alone in their cars on the run – Sylvia Kristel in Alice ou la Dernière Fugue, Candace Hilligoss in Carnival of Souls,[…]
Alice (Sylvia Kristel) has an argument with her husband. She drives off into the pouring rain. There is an accident. When she wakes up, the sun is shining, but something[…]
Preparing to go see Revolutionary Road tomorrow, I’m scoping out the RT and noticing the words “craftsmanship,” “Oscar-bait,” “meticulously crafted but emotionally empty,” and so forth… Oscar bait becomes oscarbate,[…]
