A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. In Thom Anderson’s documentary, Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), the history and culture of L.A. is narrated over film clips from other movies. For nearly three hours, this captivating documentary shows how Los Angeles, when it hasn’t “played itself” in the history of […]
Always Fearless: An Interview with Karen Allen on Year by the Sea
By Tom Ue. Actress and director Karen Allen may be best known for her performance as the fearless heroine Marion Ravenwood in Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), a role that she reprised in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008); but she has a […]
Life on Hold: Mike Leigh’s Meantime (Criterion Collection)
September 22, 2017
By Jeremy Carr. Based solely on his latest string of features – Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), Another Year (2010), Mr. Turner (2014) – one might reasonably assume all Mike Leigh films are mostly comical snippets of cockney quirkiness and bubbly English pleasantry. It doesn’t take much to see this hasn’t always been the […]
Culture, Style, Voice, Motion: The Sinophone Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien by Christopher Lupke
A Book Review by Yun-hua Chen. Christopher Lupke’s The Sinophone Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien: Culture, Style, Voice, and Motion (Cambria, 2016) is a well-informed book straddling between the disciplines of Chinese Studies and Film Studies and is highly relevant to film buffs, sinophiles, film researchers, and students. By contextualising Hou […]
All That’s Lost: Rebecca from the Criterion Collection
By Tony Williams. Criterion initially offered Rebecca (1940) on a 2-disc DVD edition in 2001 but following loss of copyright a few years later it became an expensive collector’s item, according to my colleague Chris Weedman. Now they have reissued this version in a new format retaining some of the […]
Love Kills: Sid & Nancy from the Criterion Collection
September 18, 2017
By Jeremy Carr. Sid & Nancy, Alex Cox’s 1986 biopic about raucous Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman) and his equally rowdy girlfriend Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb), begins in the aftermath of days, weeks, months, and years spent under a range of influences. Pasty white and dazed, Sid sits limply […]
Stephen King’s IT: Unneeded Horrors
By Christopher Sharrett. I have never much admired the horror fiction of Stephen King, which I’ve called the “hoagie sandwich” approach to the genre, with numerous conventions, images, and devices of horror packed into each novel. Salem’s Lot has the Terrible House with its monstrous history, the serial killer/pedophile, the […]
Adapting to Brevity: Steven McCarthy on We Forgot to Break Up
September 16, 2017
By Tom Ue. We Forgot to Break Up is having its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Directed by Chandler Levak and written by Steven McCarthy and Levack, the 15-minute short film follows Evan Strocker (Jesse Todd) as he returns to see the band that he has managed following […]
The Sublime Beauty of Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on Criterion
September 15, 2017
By Christopher Weedman. When celebrated French film director Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand were experiencing difficulty securing financing for Les parapluies de Cherbourg/The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), Italian producer Carlo Ponti remarked to Demy, “I really like your story. But you should shoot it in black and white, since color’s […]
Cultivating Young Minds: School Life
September 14, 2017
By Elias Savada. In the quaint, historic town of Kells in County Meath, home to Ireland’s only independent documentary film festival, it seems rather fitting that this is also the locale of School Life, a year-in-the-life exploration of Headfort School, a unique, unconventional primary-age boarding school. This 18th-century estate is where […]