By Elias Savada. It’s interesting that novelist-screenwriter-producer Nick Hornby and director John Crowley previously have been best known in the world of cinema for their boyish works. Hornby wrote the charming novel About a Boy (1998), which became an award-winning comedy film in 2002 that introduced us to rising star […]
A Master and a Masterpiece: Hitchcock/Truffaut
December 11, 2015
By Robert K. Lightning. The historic 1962 interview of Alfred Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut (ironically tape recorded and photographed, but apparently unfilmed) that led to the publication of Truffaut’s landmark Hitchcock in 1966, is examined in Kent Jones’s fine new documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut. That the interview was a singular moment in […]
“A Process of Thinking”: Radu Jude on Aferim!
December 10, 2015
By Paul Risker. Ask the Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude how he views the place of his most recent feature AFERIM! within his body of work, and his response will be a modest one. “Well you know, when you say this important expression ‘body of work’, it makes me feel somehow like […]
“Cause You’d Rather Live for the Thrill of it All” – A Wealthy Woman with a Hell of an Art Collection: Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict (2015)
December 9, 2015
By Jude Warne. “Her voice is full of money,” Jay Gatsby says of his love Daisy Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 masterwork. There is something in the aural quality of socialite speak that suggests the speaker holds a vague indifference toward whatever matter may be at hand, because its […]
A Comeback and a New Beginning: Jackie Earle Haley on Criminal Activities
December 9, 2015
By Matthew Sorrento. Like many child actors, Jackie Earle Haley faded from the spotlight as he reached maturity. He was relaxed on camera, which helped him exude cool as a lost youth finding a talent in The Bad News Bears (1976) and a teen making steps to adulthood in Breaking Away (1979). Curtis Hanson’s Losin’ It (1983) offered Haley the […]
Larry Cohen: The Stuff of Gods and Monsters (2015)
December 7, 2015
A Book Review by Tony Williams. Those fortunate enough to have met or interviewed Larry Cohen are always amazed by his detailed answers to questions as well as his unique knowledge of American cinema and history. Michael Doyle’s Bear Manor Press publication is the most detailed compilation of interview material […]
Room: Woman and the Domestic Household
December 7, 2015
By Christopher Sharrett. Lenny Abrahamson’s Room, adapted from a recent novel by Emma Donoghue, is a “true crime” thriller of important resonance. Its story concerns a now-common and atrocious crime: a woman is kidnapped by a rapist and kept prisoner, a permanent sex slave. Joy Newsome (Brie Larson) is locked […]
Pasolini Revisited, in the Context of Contemporary Turkey: An Interview with Deniz Gamze Erguven
December 7, 2015
By Amir Ganjavie. In her first feature film, Mustang, director Deniz Gamze Erguven beautifully demonstrates how living in a closed totalitarian society impacts young Turkish women since everything is reduced to their sexuality and every act is defined through that filter. Taking place in a remote village in Turkey, the […]
The Perils of Perfume: Stink! (2015)
By Jude Warne. Jon Whelan acted solely as a concerned parent when he chose to investigate why his daughter’s new pajamas, which he himself had purchased for her from the Tween clothing brand Justice, were the source of an unsettlingly foul order. The path that this three-year-long investigation led him […]
An Artistic “Journey”: Filmmaker Matthew Leutwyler on Uncanny
By Paul Risker. Cinema, or more specifically science fiction, has a long established fascination with the future of human civilisation: the quest as well as the hypothesis of a potential future reality. Director Matthew Leutwyler and writer Shahin Chandrasoma’s passion project Uncanny (2015) continues the storyteller’s and as an extension […]