Quickies: Random Short Reviews from Affinity to Cthulhu to War Dance
“Don’t these children deserve the respect of a beautiful film?”
Faust Goes to Hollywood: Revisiting John Frankenheimer’s Seconds
“Think, for Pete’s sake. What have you got now?”
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
What’s Up, QDoc? Portland’s 2008 Queer Documentary Festival
Seeing queer lives from the U.S. and Canada to South Africa and Iran
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Queer Angles: The 2008 Portland Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
Feisty orthodox Jewish dykes, globe-trotting ladyboys, fascistic Armani queens you know, the gang
Norma Shearer: The Primrose Path to MGM Stock
“She hovered somewhere between the realest of realities and the most blatant of impersonations.”
Activist & Political · Essays · Silents
Metropolis, Ezra Pound, Mammon: And the Law of Too-Large Numbers
“The old world is dying away, and the new world struggles to come forth: now is the time of monsters.”
Music in the Making: Highlights from the 2008 Melbourne International Film Festival
“The surprise musical number can represent a facile avoidance of complexity, a moment of true strangeness, or a way of harmonizing existing, underlying themes.”
Film Criticism as a Man’s Job: A Belated Look at the Legacy of Manny Farber
“Farber’s writing is the pure antithesis of academic ornately sophisticated with a vernacular punch, stuffed with contradictory statements and astounding paradoxes.”
Alfred Hitchcock at the Drag Ball: When Being Blonde and Soulless Is Not Enough
“Mother … my mother … um, what’s the phrase? She isn’t quite herself today.”
Out of Oblivion: Chris Marker and Cinematic Memories of Israel in Dan Geva’s Description of a Memory
“It is an opportunity to film people and events that could be recalled at any time to affirm, lament, or challenge a moment in time in this troubled region.”
Composers · Essays · Music & Musicals
Finding Unlikely Ideology in Prokofiev: Polyphonic and Anti-Authoritarian Gestures in The Gambler
“Alexei must be condemned to the pointless, loveless, and finally false freedom of a spinning limbo, as unfinished and unfinishable as the best Bakhtinian polyphony.”
Crime · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Early Jeanne, Early Louis, Early Miles: Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows
“Paris at night in black-and-white with Miles on the soundtrack? It’s a perfect fit.”
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries · Music & Musicals
It Ain’t Me Babe: On Dylan and Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There
I’m not the one you want babe / I’ll only let you down.”
The Volleyball in the Void: Tom Hanks Is Cast Away
Pascal . . . Kierkegaard . . . Nietzsche . . . Zemeckis?
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: The Italian, Traffic in Souls, Privilege, Wings, The Ascent, Tropical Malady, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, J’Accuse
The Italian (Reginald Barker, 1915) and Traffic in Souls (George Loane Tucker, 1913) The Italian of producer Thomas Ince’s 1915 film is Beppo Donnetti, played by George Beban in a performance[…]
The Last Mistress: An Interview with Catherine Breillat
“When I make movies, nothing is limited.”
Books · Experimental & Underground
Books: Art in Cinema: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society
Art in Cinema: Documents Toward a History of the Film Society, Scott MacDonald. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2006. Hardcover, $63.50, 465pp. ISBN: 1-592-134254 Reading the more or less official correspondence of a film[…]
The First-Class Jewels: An American in Paris and Gigi
Two golden-age musicals get the deluxe treatment
Synecdoche, Mon Amour
How to describe the films of Charlie Kaufman . . . Ingmar Bergman with laughs? Close, but that makes Kaufman sound too much like Woody Allen, a useful comparison maybe,[…]
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