By Elias Savada. Part I: The Buildup So, how many teenagers have you met who say they want to make movies when they grow up? Fame and fortune is just around the corner, right? Well, I’ve seen too many homegrown filmmaker dreams turn into muddled nightmares on the road to stardom, […]
Maurice Revisited: A Timely Return to Theaters
July 14, 2017
By Anthony Uzarowski. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in the UK. There could be no better time to revisit one of the country’s greatest cinematic gay love stories, filmed thirty years ago, and now returning to the screens in all its digitally restored glory. Based […]
A Feisty Wizard of Cinema: Mickey Rooney, a Show Business Life by James A. MacEachern
A Book Review by Louis J. Wasser. If the glimpses we catch on screen of an actor’s body of work ultimately amount to autobiography, the late Mickey Rooney (1920-2014) told us his life story through a distinguished, albeit frequently checkered, career in film and entertainment. In his recent biography, Mickey […]
Visions of Invasion: An Interview with Mathieu Ratthe on The Gracefield Incident
July 13, 2017
By Jeremy Carr. Before ever beginning his debut feature film, director Mathieu Ratthe had proven himself adept at two critical techniques. First is a keen ability to manipulate and employ the most effective strategies of the horror genre (proper scares, an unsettling atmosphere, startling twists). Second is to do so with […]
Call for Submissions: The Trail of the Zodiac Killer – Essays on Popular Culture (Edited Collection)
This past spring marked the tenth anniversary of the release of David Fincher’s Zodiac, the legacy of which continues to increase. Viewers and scholars continue to analyze the narrative power of Fincher and screenwriter-producer James Vanderbilt’s journalistic rendition – based on Robert Graysmith’s gripping works of journalism – of the […]
The Good Bones of Lady Macbeth
By John Duncan Talbird. Although not well known today, Nikolai Leskov was a famous Russian writer in the 19th century admired by such contemporaries as Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov. A journalist and writer of novels and plays, he is most well-known today for his shorter fictional works: stories and novellas. […]
A Road Movie at “Elephant Speed”: Pop Aye
By Jeremy Carr. The first shot of Pop Aye (2017), Kirsten Tan’s feature film debut, shows the story’s two protagonists – the world-weary architect Thana, played by Thaneth Warakulnukroh, and the lumbering elephant Pop Aye, “played” by Bong – as they hitchhike along a remote stretch of road snaking through […]
Bla(h)sphemy to the Nunth Degree: The Little Hours
By Elias Savada. The hip medieval stew being served up in Jeff Baena’s The Little Hours is overcooked with naughty nuns sexually rampaging through the Tuscan countryside. Their simmering pelvic hunger knows very few bounds in this mid-14th-century romp that aims for a low common denominator of R-rated decency. It […]
Authorship, History, and Reception: The Cinema of Hal Hartley edited by Steven Rybin
July 10, 2017
A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. Ideas, for Deleuze, do not exist above life as ideal forms but come from life as a flow of forces and desires…All of Deleuze’s concepts – including irony itself – are founded upon multiplicity in this way. –Claire Perkins, American Smart Cinema (2012) […]
The Unhappiness of Growing Up: Sami Blood
July 6, 2017
By Elias Savada. The sad fate and cruel savagery hoisted on many indigenous people have been part of an angst-filled sidebar on the world stage for centuries. Explore/invade/plunder/kill/assimilate. In the history of cinema, you’ll find dozens of films that walk and talk among native populations, whether in Australia (Ten Canoes, Walkabout, […]