Monk After Five Years: Still funny, still no queers
“Well, you know, we only go round once in this life.” “If only I could be sure of that.” And so it goes with Adrian Monk, some-time detective and full-time[…]
The Birds Remake – Too Obvious Casting
Hey, I love Naomi Watts as much as anyone, but you couldn’t find an actress who looks more like Tippi Hedren (The Birds‘ original star) if you tried. Will she[…]
“Eastern” Lives Up to its “Promises” – Mortensen and Mueller-Stahl Knock it out of the Park
I had just about given up on gangster films as a genre. To me, a gangster film is only as interesting as the subculture(s) it reflects, and what can one[…]
Goliath in Repose
There’s a luxury civilian cinema goers have over most critics in formulating opinions on film, namely- the sweet cozy mechanics of memory, which can patch up loose ends in a[…]
Catherine Corman, Joseph Cornell, and Rose Hobart
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUpUKcCrBP8] When I first saw Rose Hobart (excerpted above) back in the 1970s, it was a revelation to me. Its maker, Joseph Cornell (1903-1972), was an American surrealist who specialized[…]
Mickey Kaus, He’s a louse
An imperfect rhyme for an imperfect schmuck. Mickey Kaus joins with Bill “Whore told me I had a big penis” O’Reilly in castigating The Bourne Ultimatum as un-American because, among[…]
Superbad: Too gay, or not gay enough?
Personally, I think it’s just wonderful if two young men want to hold hands and shout out their love for each other from the rooftops. I mean, it’s just wonderful[…]
The Invasion – Metaphor for Everything or Nothing
STOP THE PRESSES! The Invasion sends out (gasp) mixed messages! Well, most Hollywood films send out mixed messages, don’t they? Mixed messages are far more the Hollywood rule than the[…]
America Loves its Big Dumb War
I just saw BOURNE ULTIMATUM but I don’t want to write about that. I want to write about the previews. There were about 10 of them. Here’s the ones I[…]
Commies, Commies, Everywhere – Tourneur’s The Fearmakers
Commie on a plane – Oliver Blake and Dana Andrews in The Fearmakers Under the credits of Jacques Tourneur’s The Fearmakers (1958) we see a bearded Dana Andrews being tortured[…]
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Romeo, Juliet and Darkness (Romeo, Julia a tma) (Jiri Weiss, 1960) & The Party and the Guests (O slavnosti a hostech) (Jan Nemec, 1966) Jiri Weiss’ Holocaust drama,Romeo, Juliet and[…]
Actors & Personalities · Artists
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: The Elusive Pleasures of Irene Dunne
“You’d never get tired of having her around, because she’d always be someone else for you.” The reasons for Irene Dunne’s continuing, undeserved obscurity are fairly well known. Nearly all[…]
Ronald Reagan’s Shoot from Hell! Cattle Queen of Montana
Up shit creek without a Pichon Longueville ’47 The recent release of Ronald Reagan’s White House Diaries has produced the usual snickers from the usual suspects — the self-appointed, self-anointed[…]
What a Waste The Apocalyptic Prophecies of T. S. Eliot and Alfonso Cuarón
“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow / Out of this stony rubbish?” The leader of a pro-immigrant political group and sometime terrorist organization called The Fishes, Julian[…]
Amazing Scenes: Pretending to Be Normal
Pause. N-o-o-o-o-t! “Variety reports that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have teamed to produce a trilogy of Tintin feature films, with each director helming at least one of the features.”[…]
Historical & Epic · Movies · Reviews
300 Lies? Give Poetics a Chance
What’s Greek history without distortions, inaccuracies, and falsehoods? In the western Aegean, in a narrow pass by the Gulf of Malis, 300 Spartans and their Hellenic allies, led by King[…]
Genres · Horror · Movies · Reviews
Return of the Return of the Repressed: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 Weeks Later
Look familiar? When considering any contemporary zombie film, it is virtually impossible to resist comparison to the work of George A. Romero. Although many directors within the genre attempt to[…]
Secret Window: The Erotic Gaze of Tom Lazarus
“Lazarus doesn’t pathologize the locked-in gaze, he lets us feel it.” In a pornographic film, what’s gratuitous is not sex but complexity and involvement. An erotic film can confuse us[…]
Back to Basics: Talking to Paul Verhoeven
On Black Book and his recent Hollywood defection Known for big-budget Hollywood vehicles like RoboCop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven had his greatest success with the white-hot erotic[…]
Movin’ On Up: The 2007 Tribeca Film Festival
From neighborhood festival to NYC player There’s no denying the buzz of New York’s Tribeca Film Festival, a 12-day extravaganza spread out among 13 venues. Out in force at the[…]
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