A Book Review Essay by Jeremy Carr. A well-researched work of personal scholarship, with an array of sources and citations utilized to substantiate D. Harlan Wilson’s own arguments or to initiate new avenues of thought….” D. Harlan Wilson wastes little time establishing the importance of the science fiction genre to […]
Longing for a Hollywood Ending – Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel
A Book Review Essay by Andrew Kolarik. [Author Pardis Dabashi] makes the case that an understanding of modernist authors’ relationship to cinema might allow their works to be read in a different light….” Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel (The University of Chicago Press) by Pardis […]
Still Underground: Films That Spill – Beyond the Cinema of Transgression
A Book Review Essay by Johannes Schönherr. German scholar Marie Sophie Beckmann discusses inherent contradictions of the ‘spilling’ of the films into other art forms as well as the ‘spilling’ of the films as ‘contained’ entities (films on video) to a worldwide audience in detail.’” When Nick Zedd, the mastermind […]
Hola Frida, or What to Do When Life Deals You a Bad Hand
By Jenny Paola Ortega Castillo. The narrative may seem like a raw and harsh retelling of the artist’s story; however, Frida’s numerous illnesses are handled with the utmost respect throughout the film…. Art allowed her to process pain, reclaim her missing identity outside of what illness turned her into and […]
A Pivotal Point: Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy (2019)
By William Blick. A slow burn that simmers into a boil…[and] a compelling exploration of antisemitism and miscarriage of justice….” Roman Polanski’s 2019 political thriller An Officer and a Spy, which will see its U.S. premiere at New York’s Film Forum on August 8, recreates the “Dreyfus Affair,” a pivotal […]
Indelible Footprints: Joseph Maddrey’s The Soul of Wes Craven
A Book Review by William Blick. Maddrey illuminates the master from behind the scenes and shines a light on exactly what he means to the language of cinema.” Joseph Maddrey, author of Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue (2004) has a new title The Soul of Wes Craven (Harker Press) […]
Irreversible Transformation: Mo Harawe’s The Village Next to Paradise
By Yun-hua Chen. While Cigaal’s coming of age is marked by the loss of his dreams, the surrounding’s seems to be a brutal and irreversible transformation—one driven by machine-led globalization….” “My whole life I try to make things better, but I keep making mistakes,” says Mamargrade (Axmen Cali Faarax), the […]
Her Own Star – Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away
A Book Review by Thomas M. Puhr. Author Christopher McKittrick makes a persuasive case for celebrating the consummate professional Miles became rather than mourning the icon she never was….” It says a lot about the fickleness of celebrity that an actress who has worked with some of the industry’s biggest […]
Practice Makes Progress: Danny Turkiewicz’s Stealing Pulp Fiction
By Jonathan Monovich. Stealing Pulp Fiction leaves Tarantino’s ambitious narrative structure behind. Instead, Turkiewicz embraces a straightforward story without twists, turns, and time warps.” A so-called “thief” of film history, Quentin Tarantino’s style, predicated on the referential, looks to the past for influence. Tarantino has long prided himself for “stealing.” […]
Touching the Past Generation: A Photographic Memory
By Will Comerford. The blurring of perspectives in this personal documentary reinforces how much mother and daughter are truly occupying similar psychological spaces, despite living in different decades and contexts.” Why do we document? Why paint a hunt on a cave wall, or write down what Jesus or Confucius said? […]