Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. The prolog to Mirror and Missal, Emmett Casey’s beguiling feature film, announces unequivocally that we are in the realm of myth. […]
More Than a “Stutterer”: An Interview with Benjamin Cleary
December 7, 2016
By Tom Ue. Benjamin Cleary is a writer/director from Dublin, Ireland. In 2015 he wrote, directed and edited his first short film “Stutterer” which has played 70 plus festivals and won over 20 awards including an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short in 2015, a London Critic’s Circle Award, an Irish Film and […]
Near Silent Complexities of The Quiet Man on Olive Films
By Tony Williams. The Quiet Man (1952) is another excellent addition to that fine series of DVDs released by Olive Films in its Signature editions. Already acclaimed for its reissue and restoration of classics such as Body and Soul (1925), Force of Evil (1948), and Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977), the company is […]
Girl Asleep: An Interview with Director Rosemary Myers
By Anna Weinstein. Described by Variety as a “strange, savvy, big-hearted teen adventure,” Rosemary Myers’ debut film, Girl Asleep, is the story of a young girl navigating the frightening forest of adolescence. Myers describes this forest as “a place where characters go into the wild,” where they’re forced to confront […]
Compleat Welles, in “Drops of Sorrow”: Macbeth on Olive Films
December 1, 2016
By Tony Williams. Humorously referred to by one academic as “Shakespeare Rides Again” due to Macbeth’s origins in Herbert J. Yates’s Republic Studios and having several familiar locations such as the cave used in the final sequences of Passage West (1951) as well as Macbeth and Banquo on horseback in […]
Fan A(Fic)ionados Unite!: Clay Liford on Slash
By Tom Ue. Clay Liford’s new film Slash (2016) centers on high school freshman Neil (Michael Johnston) and his slightly older fellow student Julia (Hannah Marks), both of whom write fanfic online. The process of writing for a public provides the introverted Neil with an outlet but it also pushes […]
Mifune: The Last Samurai – Overshadowing His Tribute
By Christopher Weedman. Released by Strand Releasing and narrated by actor Keanu Reeves, director Steven Okazaki’s new feature-length documentary Mifune: The Last Samurai (2016) is a well-intentioned yet underdeveloped tribute to the larger-than-life actor Toshiro Mifune. As the documentary boldly proclaims, Mifune possessed an unbridled energy and commanding screen presence […]
I Wake Up Screaming: Far from “Kansas”
By Anthony J. Steinbock. The Maltese Falcon is often considered to be the first film noir of the classical noir period (beginning in 1941 and ending in 1958 with Orson Wells, Touch of Evil).[1] Released only two weeks after The Maltese Falcon (Houston, October 18, 1941) is another noir included […]
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls: Vulgarity as Satire
By Christopher Sharrett. The Criterion Collection’s release on Blu-ray of Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls might bring accusations of slumming. Such accusations won’t come from me. I have long seen Meyer as one of the great American satirists of low-rent cinema, able to rip the nation and […]
The Undersung Heroes of Music: Soundbreaking (A DOC NYC Review)
November 20, 2016
By Jude Warne. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” –Idiom of recording artist indicating the producer What defines a quality music producer? Well-informed and developed artistic taste? Phenomenal technical prowess in the recording studio? Is it someone who stands off to the side of the musicians, supporting and […]