Gothic Eurowesterns: A Grotesque Perspective on a Hollywood Myth
On the manifest destiny of Civil War tricksters and gun-slinging corpses
What’s Your Function? How Movies Are Made
You mean you’ve tried panicking?
Festivals & Awards · Writers & Critics
Twenty-One Years in the Midday Sun: Revisiting Roger Ebert’s Cannes
Here’s lookin’ at you, Roger
Directors · Festivals & Awards · Interviews
From a Line of Ancestors: Talking with Doris Dörrie and Natasha Arthy
“We in the West trample on them.”
Directors · Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · Interviews
What’s Up, Docs? Nonstandard Operating Procedures in Recent Documentaries, and Interviews with Patricio Henriquez and Doug Pray
“Why didn’t you just stick to the truth?”
Directors · Interviews · LGBT & Queer · Memoir
Man with a Movie Camera: Visiting Jonathan Caouette
“I could somehow control my own story.”
African American · Directors · Interviews
A Quiet Storm: Charles Burnett on Namibia and His Post-Killer of Sheep Career
“Each film requires for me its own approach.”
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Berlin Alexanderplatz, Harry Langdon, Early Kurosawa, I Am Cuba, The Dragon Painter, Wrath of the Gods, Méliès
Berlin Alexanderplatz (Phil Jutzi, 1931) Franz Biberkopf must be one of the most porous characters in all literature. In Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz, a modernist torrent — dialogue,[…]
Historical & Epic · Writers & Critics
Bowling for America: Robert Warshow, There Will Be Blood, and the Topography of Desire
“The king-times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist. But the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it.”
The Human Monster: On Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood
“There are no good and bad men; there are only damaged men … “
Notes from the Tribeca Film Festival Underground
This Tribeca Film Festival is on, and I live on 12th St. and 2nd Ave, across the street from one and a block away from another theaters at which it[…]
Take this unborn child and shove it!
Is it just me or is there a distinctly pro-life vibe seeping into our once so “liberal” cinema? This JUNO business has all us population control enthusiasts worried sick, and[…]
BLUE CRUSH is my Oyster Cult.
Spring is here, so I took the time recently to reappraise BLUE CRUSH, the 2002 girl power surfing flick starring Kate Bosworth. Man, now more than ever, we need girl[…]
Why Can’t We all just Morally Compromise?
I had to watch this odd romantic-ish comedy last night called SEX AND DEATH 101. Many other critics have been bashing it, calling it uneven and it can’t decide[…]
Happy 100th Birthday Bette
Bette Davis would have been a hundred this past Saturday, and over on her indispensible Sunset Gun, Kim Morgan celebrates via a round-up of some of diva Davis’s most bad-ass[…]
The Epic Actor – Charlton Heston (1923-2008)
To see Charlton Heston in person was to realize that some people are born to be movie stars. He had a larger-than-life presence on-screen. And off-screen as well. In 1980,[…]
The Termites of Plainview
Hey gang, Erich here. Sorry I haven’t written any entries of late, but things have been rough, what with our new baby recently brought home from the hospital (which means[…]
If you don’t like MARGOT AT THE WEDDING, I’ll get you… in your sleep!
Finally got around to seeing MARGOT AT THE WEDDING last night. FOUR STARS! Sorry, but if you’re a critic who badmouthed this movie, you need to find a new line[…]
Actors & Personalities · Pre-Code
Miriam Hopkins & the Pre-Code Menage-a-trois
Imagine Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston deciding to live together and share Brad Pitt! How hot would that be? But no, now we live in a much more (as in[…]
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