By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. The Blair Witch Project – Josh’s Blair Witch Mix (1999) can be found online in full at Archive.org here. The essence of The Blair Witch Project that has made it so compulsively alluring for me has largely remained as elusive to me as ever. And then I […]
“Why Did Fate Make You a Sinner?”: Victims of Sin (1951, Criterion Collection)
By Jeremy Carr. Its pulp façade encases a genuine, sincere examination of sundry motivations, dilemmas, and outcomes, routinely begging the question stated in one its many songs: ‘Why did fate make you a sinner?’” Victims of Sin, or Víctimas del Pecado, is an aptly titled Mexican melodrama where the concept […]
Danse Macabre: Filmmaker Karen Arthur on The Mafu Cage (1978)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. I find that there is an emotional energy in a theater piece [the basis for The Mafu Cage] and that the relationships are so much stronger and more connected. I always use the concept that you have to see in film and so therefore I took the […]
Self-Taught Genius – Tim Mackenzie-Smith’s Getting it Back: The Story of Cymande
By Phoebe Hart. This documentary on the neglected 70s funk band consisting of West Indian Londoners is beautifully shot and edited, with an infectious energy….” Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande charts the comeback of influential funksters, Cymande. The band were a seminal influence on generations of musical artists […]
When Radiohead Met Nosferatu: Josh Frank on Silents Synched Event Cinema
August 1, 2024
In running a tiny drive-in, I found over time that people were not coming for new releases or even often caring that it was an old movie, they wanted a special movie experience. This got me thinking about how to customize the experience of going to the cinema, horror and […]
Peoples’ Heroes: David Webb Peoples on The Blood of Heroes (1989)
By Danny Stewart. While Rollerball was an inspiration [when writing the film in the 1970s], another major one was Rocky, [which] focused more on endurance, courage, and the punishment the main character endured rather than his skill.” –David Webb Peoples The interview below was excerpted from Saluting The Blood of Heroes: Behind The […]
Connecting to the Illusions – The Flesh of Animation: Bodily Sensations in Film and Digital Media
A Book Review by William Blick. Despite its jargon-laden density, Sandra Annett offers some new insights and perspective into what is usually a misunderstood genre.” In The Flesh of Animation: Bodily Sensations in Film and Digital Media (University of Minnesota Press, 2024), Sandra Annett argues that digital media and animation […]
Notes on Anatole Litvak’s City for Conquest (1940) and the Tough Vulnerability of James Cagney
By Theresa Rodewald. City for Conquest revitalizes the sports drama formula: losing does not break Danny.” Danny is a truck driver, a boxer, a brother to Eddie (Arthur Kennedy) and a boyfriend to Peggy (Ann Sheridan). He drives a truck to earn money, to pay the rent and put food […]
Sometimes They Come Back: Bob Clark’s Deathdream (Blue Underground)
By Thomas M. Puhr. Much more than an interesting time capsule…it’s also a minor horror classic in its own right, one well-deserving of a spot alongside Clark’s superior genre work.” Movies like Bob Clark’s Deathdream (aka Dead of Night, aka The Night Andy Came Home, 1974) operate by blunt-force symbolism. […]
Interdisciplinary “Others”: The Monster Theory Reader
A Book Review by Caroline Joan S. Picart. The edited collection aspires to supply a set of ‘tools’ for researchers and students – that is, common approaches and vocabularies for theorizing monstrosity – and then provides an interdisciplinary selection of important readings theorizing monsters and monstrosity….” The Monster Theory Reader […]