A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. Paul Douglas Grant’s new book Cinéma Militant: Political Filmmaking & May 1968 (Wallflower Press, 2016) is a history of leftist French film – mostly Marxist-Leninist or Maoist – arising out of the student-worker protests of May ’68 and stretching to the late seventies when […]
Hello, Daleks – Good to Have You Back: Dr. Who The Power of the Daleks Animated Restoration on DVD
By Tony Williams. 50 years ago I watched the one and only BBC TV transmission of The Power of the Daleks (November to December, 1966) one of the now missing serials of the early Dr. Who series (premiering in 1963). The opening episode introduced Patrick Troughton (1920-1987) as the replacement for […]
The New Southern Gothic: Loving, Jeff Nichols, and the Southern Artist in the 21st Century
By Will Tomford. As I watched Loving come to an end, I thought to myself, please don’t have an epilogue text. An artistic director like Jeff Nichols wouldn’t need to end a film with anyting but an ambiguous shot. But to my dissapointment, there it was: the what-happened-next. Maybe this […]
DVD as Reference Library: His Girl Friday on Criterion
By Tony Williams. Since companies have decided to issue features accompanying DVD reissues of films available on VHS and Laserdisc in the past, the value of these additions vary with each product. For some distributors, they are extras of little value except to add padding to sell product that many […]
Cat People: Horror, Necessity, and Creative Collaboration
January 13, 2017
By Jeremy Carr. Who gets the credit for Cat People (1942)? Is it first-time producer Val Lewton, who though generally overlooked in his day has since received considerable reappraisal for his innovative, low-budget ingenuity? Or is it director Jacques Tourneur, the French emigre who would bring a shadowy visual flair […]
It’s Complicated: Joss Whedon and Race by Mary Ellen Iatropoulos and Lowery A. Woodall III
January 11, 2017
A Book Review by Jessica Baxter. Let’s face it. White liberals are having a “woke” moment that is shamefully long overdue. Growing up in the 1980s and early 90s as a white middle class kid from a moderately open-minded family (albeit residing in the conservative American south east), I was […]
Equality with a Discursive, Televisual Face: TV Socialism by Aniko Imre
A Book Review by Tony Williams. In Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) the enigmatic voice of Dr. Soberin delivers one of his voice-of-God traditional thespian pronouncements over the prone, semi-crucified body of savior/destroyer Mike Hammer, whose actor (Ralph Meeker) belongs to a very different performance acting style. “How civilized […]
Jackie: Alone in Oblivion
By Christopher Sharrett. The title to Pablo Larrain’s film Jackie might be more sensibly called The Last Days of Kennedy; the title is misleading if one is prepared to see a Jacqueline Kennedy biography. I say this especially because the film’s unremitting gloom seems to flow from its chronicle of […]
Exploring Cracks in the Tarmac: John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle on Criterion
By Tony Williams. For the new set of John Huston’s bleak 1950 film noir The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Criterion includes a cover that reproduces a still from the film, rather than the company’s recent fascination with bad artwork design. This suitable choice of coverart reflects how this two-disc DVD edition […]
Authenticity in Many Forms: 20th Century Women
January 4, 2017
By Jude Warne. Perhaps there are no two greater examples of cinematic contrast during this year’s Oscar season than Damien Chazelle’s La La Land and Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women. Both films will most likely land some number of Oscar nominations when they’re announced in Hollywood later this month. Both films are […]