A Book Review by Louis J. Wasser. “I’m always lonely when I work…You’re going through a very private inner experience that requires personal strength. I accept this loneliness, but it’s one of the big fears of going back to work.” (158) – Anne Bancroft Moviegoers bore witness to a sea change in […]
Out of a Bleak Past: An Interview with Lynne Ramsay on You Were Never Really Here
January 20, 2018
By Ali Moosavi. In 90 years of Academy Awards, only one woman director, Kathryn Bigelow, has been awarded the Best Director Oscar. The recent stories of women harassment in the American film industry has shown that it has indeed been a man’s world in Tinsletown though this is surely changing […]
Utopia Achieved: Call Me by Your Name
By Christopher Sharrett. I’ve kept in mind Luca Guadagnino since his 2009 film I Am Love, which made such good use of both Visconti and Renoir while creating a work wholly Guadagnino’s own. I was less impressed with A Bigger Splash (2015), which seemed to me a work poorly thought-through […]
Beuys: Fame and the Pithy Statement
January 18, 2018
By John Duncan Talbird. “Everything under the sun is art,” Joseph Beuys famously – or fatuously, depending on your point of view – asserted. He also said “Everyone is an artist.” And: “I nourish myself by wasting energy” and “There’s no such thing as weekends” and “Nothing needs to remain the […]
Far From Complete – Ingrid Pitt, Queen of Horror: The Complete Career by Robert Michael “Bobb” Cotter
January 15, 2018
A Book Review by Tony Williams. Upon reviewing Ingrid Pitt, Queen of Horror: The Complete Career (McFarland, 2018, revised from a 2010 edition), I recalled my one and only meeting with Ingrid Pitt (1937-2001) was for an interview at a theatre in a location more aptly qualifies for the Apocalypse […]
Beyond Wishes: Bronson’s Loose Again!: On the Set with Charles Bronson by Paul Talbot
A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. If Dr. Johnson had James Bosworth as his chronicler in the inimitable The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), so the departed star Charles Bronson is posthumously fortunate enough to have Paul Talbot. On the Set with Charles Bronson (BearManor, 2016) is an enlarged […]
The Enormous Gap Between Dream and Realization: Scenarios by Werner Herzog
January 8, 2018
A Book Review Essay by John Duncan Talbird. There are snowy peaks all around, majestic crests, and the mountains tower like Holy Cathedrals. Very clear, icy, silent air, frost lying on the hoary ground, all in deep, majestic silence. From the mountain crests, glacial tongues lick down into the depths. Clouds […]
Spearheading Arab Cinema in Palestine: An Interview with Annemarie Jacir on Wajib
January 6, 2018
By Ali Moosavi. In recent years, Palestinian cinema has come to the forefront of the Arab cinema and the prominent Palestinian film makers have established a global reputation for themselves. They have all tackled the Palestine issues in their own cinematic way. Elia Suleiman takes a surrealistic, absurdist view of […]
Not Much Fun: Crazy Famous
January 5, 2018
By Elias Savada. Little did Elton John realize that the filmmakers behind Crazy Famous, a lame adventure comedy set in an Upstate New York asylum, might actually try to build a script reversing his quote, “Fame Attracts Lunatics,” into a torpid feature about to hit the VOD, Digital HD, and DVD […]
Re-Animating Day of the Dead: An Interview with Johnathon Schaech
January 1, 2018
By Gary M. Kramer. Johnathon Schaech’s acting career has included such films as Gregg Araki’s cult classic The Doom Generation and Jocelyn Moorehouse’s How to Make an American Quilt. As he got bigger roles, such as Jimmy Mattingly in That Thing You Do, directed by Tom Hanks, Schaech also started […]