As part of a broader attempt to understand the world cinema, the H & S Media plans the publication of a book which aims to put in perspective those contemporary American films which offer an alternative to the mainstream Hollywood cinema. These alternative films manifest original personal visions and unique social […]
The 14th Annual Transylvania International Film Festival
June 12, 2014
By Sam Littman. Festival Overview Cluj-Napoca, the second largest city in Romania with approximately 350,00 inhabitants and home of the Transylvania International Film Festival, aspires to become the Youth Capital of Europe by 2015. This might seem outlandishly ambitious for any European city; Paris would have to compete with Barcelona, […]
Double Indemnity (1944)
June 10, 2014
By Jeremy Carr. This year marks the 70th anniversary of one of the greatest film noir ever made, perhaps the quintessential title of that perpetually popular and occasionally fluid cinematic category. To celebrate the occasion, a new restoration of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity premiered at the recent TCM Classic Film […]
Beyond the “Open Sky Jail”: An Interview with Nabil Ayouch on Horses of God
June 9, 2014
By Paul Risker. There are those films that offer a visceral experience – an explosion of sound, image and color. Then there are those that turn the lens of the camera into a window frame for us to gaze upon and experience other cultures. Nabil Ayouch’s Horses of God (2014) […]
A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958)
June 8, 2014
By David Sterritt. Hans Detlef Sierck left Germany in 1937, arrived in the United States four years later, Americanized his name to Douglas Sirk, and directed his first Hollywood picture, Hitler’s Madman, in 1943, when the madman Adolf Hitler was still at large and ravaging the world. During the next […]
The Trouble With Hitchcock
June 7, 2014
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Mark Rutland: “What do you believe in?” Marnie Edgar: “Nothing.” (From Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie) Alfred Hitchcock is routinely regarded as one of the most profound and technically adept directors in the history of cinema, but I would argue that only the latter half of that statement […]
Homegrown Rebel: An Interview with Kirk Marcolina and Matthew Pond on The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne
June 6, 2014
By Matthew Sorrento. Beginning as a rather conventional documentary – at times so familiar we fear it will play like formulaic television – The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne soon finds a matter-of-fact style that nicely reflects its subject. A career jewelry thief, Doris Payne (born 1930) has used […]
Where the Tale Takes Us: An Interview with William Eubank on The Signal
June 5, 2014
By Gary M. Kramer. The Signal is a mind-bending (and genre-bending) film that lures its characters and its audience into a fantastic — as in strange and, perhaps, wonderful — world. Nick (Brenton Thwaites) is a partially paralyzed young man who is driving his girlfriend Haley (Olivia Cooke) across country […]
Hoarders, Doomsday Preppers, and the Culture of Apocalypse
Hoarders, Doomsday Preppers, and the Culture of Apocalypse: A new book by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. The culture of twenty-first century America largely revolves around narcissistic death, violence, and visions of doom. As people are bombarded with amoral metanarratives that display an almost complete lack of empathy for others on television, […]
Throne of Blood: An Ethereal Play of Light and Shadow
June 3, 2014
By William Repass. Wind and mist over hills that turn out to be ruins. A funereal sutra chanted over the soundtrack. Beside a cluster of graves, the rough-hewn marker reads: “Here Stood Spider Web Castle.” These opening shots yield enough story material to piece together not only the outcome of everything […]