Review

By Christopher Sharrett. I somehow conflate in my mind’s eye images of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg/The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort/The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) with images of my experiences of the late Sixties. This seems odd, since these masterworks by Jacques Demy, although fully-accomplished […]

By Elias Savada. Thirty-eight years ago this month, the world experienced a horror like no other. Ridley Scott’s Alien intensely attacked worldwide audiences. No one wanted to swim into the ionosphere. Our species has never been the same. We’ve now survived three sequels and one prequel (2012’s Prometheus) as the man […]

By Tony Williams. With one exception, this new release does live up to the second part of the above caption. Long revered by devotees of horror, science fiction, and its post-war Italian exponents this notable film of a disputed canonical tradition has not been generally available in a good copy […]

A Book Review by Tony Williams. Despite appearing in an independent press publication, this study deserves neither to be forgotten nor regarded as ephemeral since it represents a very distinctive and well researched contribution to the area of British Cinema. Although this field has been well documented over the past […]

By Elias Savada. Yeah, a lot of folks have been waiting for this one. Three years ago, the creative and marketing folks behind Guardians of the Galaxy tossed the big budget dice and won big. The visionary sci-fi mashup wowed worldwide audiences and nine out of every ten critics, while also pulling […]

By Alex Ramon. Two new films about iconic Polish artists screened at the Gdynia Film Festival, Poland’s primary showcase for its national cinema, last September. One was The Last Family (Ostatnia Rodzina), the feature debut of Jan P. Matuszyński, which depicted, in an episodic fashion, the last 25 years in the […]

By Elias Savada. This film is for me. I am a genealogist and death is a constant on my family tree. I read obituaries every day. I also peruse death notices, those announcements placed, and paid for, by the deceased’s family. Obituaries are a lot more interesting. My father, Morton, […]

By Elias Savada. Making sense out of urban chaos was more than a dream for Jane Jacobs. It was a battle cry. Jacobs, a writer-journalist turned activist who passed away in 2006, took aim at New York City planning czar Robert Moses, who ruled the Big Apple skyline and parkway system […]

By Elias Savada. The film is brief (76 minutes), but the title isn’t – My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea. Not as long (word wise) as 1991’s mouthful Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror […]

A Book Review by Tony Williams. Although countless books have appeared in past and present featuring stars, many who never achieved enduring fame are often unjustly neglected despite the fact that they survived and delivered professional performances throughout their careers. One example is Ricardo Cortez (1900-1977). Born in New York […]