By Matthew Sorrento. In his essay “A Spanner in the Works?: Genre, Narrative and the Hollywood Comedian,” Frank Krutnik details how classical Hollywood comedies were built around a star comedian. Designed to showcase the talents of the star, these vehicles present him/her as a fish-out-water, to provide comic bits, and then […]
A Future for Indigenous Media Studies: The Fourth Eye: Māori Media in Aotearoa New Zealand, Ed. Brendan Hokowhitu and Vijay Devadas (2013)
February 25, 2015
A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. With a fascinating lineage spanning from the Treaty of Waitangi to the inception of the first ever state-funded Indigenous television station, New Zealand has proven itself a veritable incubator of the growing intersection between Indigeneity and media. It is therefore appropriate that editors Brendan […]
Girlhood: A Sundance Review
February 17, 2015
By Jacob Mertens. In an early sequence in Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood, a group of girls walk home at night after a football game, weaving through featureless concrete high rises. One by one, each girl peels off from group as they reach their home until only Marieme (Karidja Touré) remains. In […]
Waiting Around for Something to Happen: Don Carpenter and The Hollywood Trilogy
February 15, 2015
A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. Don Carpenter killed himself in 1995. He was a writer’s writer, never famous for the ten or so novels, dozens of stories, or screenplays he wrote and published from the sixties to the late eighties. In the 1960s, when he was first publishing and […]
Sundays and Cybèle: Serge Bourguignon’s Oscar Winner Now on Criterion
February 13, 2015
By Jude Warne. On April 8th 1963, at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, it was announced that Serge Bourguignon’s film Sundays and Cybèle had won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Fifty-one years later, Criterion has re-released Bourguignon’s Oscar winner in a remarkably satisfying Blu-ray package that showcases […]
99 Homes: A Sundance Review
February 8, 2015
By Jacob Mertens. Ramin Bahrani—known in the indie festival circuit for his subtle, observational features Man Push Cart (2005), Chop Shop (2007), and Goodbye Solo (2008)—enters the current festival year with a film that pushes past the scope of the individual and toward grand meaning. Specifically, he seizes on the […]
The Duke of Burgundy: Sex Film, No Nudity
By John Duncan Talbird. Peter Strickland’s new film, The Duke of Burgundy, is a cleverly beautiful and beautifully crafted exploration of the humiliation of servitude and the power struggles that take place in a relationship. It’s about the compromises and the banality of routine that comes with love. And it’s […]
Two Days, One Night: Woman at Work
By Christopher Sharrett. I have been meaning for some time to applaud the work of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Their new film Two Days, One Night seems the appropriate occasion for recognition, but all of their films merit regular revisiting and, in my view, celebration. But Two Days may be […]
Hans Helmut Prinzler’s Sirens & Sinners: A Visual History of Weimar Film 1918-1933 (2013)
January 31, 2015
A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. Having reviewed books on cinema, one of its main pleasures is discovering unexplored clefts in the art’s brief history. There’s always something new. Did you know, for instance, that in the early days of cinema, studios employed photographers to capture onset moments rather than […]
The Tedious Body Horror of Wetlands (2013)
By James Teitelbaum. “The vagina reeks of life and love and the infinite et cetera. O vagina! Your salty incense, your mushroom moon musk, your deep waves of clam honey breaking against the cold steel of civilization; vagina, draw our noses to the grindstone of ecstasy, and let us die […]