By Christopher Sharrett. Many years ago I moved into a small house not far from the university where I took my first tenure-track position. It was a cozy little place on a pleasant street where ancient trees formed a protective, shady bower. It was a lower-middle-class neighborhood that seemed friendly. […]
First Annual VIDI SPACE Film Festival (February 22, 2020, Reston, Virginia)
February 20, 2020
VIDI SPACE’s First Annual Film Festival is being held Saturday, February 22nd, 2020 at the Bow Tie Cinema in the Reston Town Center, Reston, Virginia. Headed by Co-founder/CEO Elizabeth Saint, the festival features work of VIDI SPACE’s streaming platform, launched in 2018 to feature genre works but now spanning shorts and […]
Sound and Vision: Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole
Thomas Puhr
February 20, 2020
By Thomas Puhr. You hear before you see anything: a muffled gurgling noise accompanies the black screen over which the opening credits play. This disorienting audio elicits several questions (Who, or what, is making these noises? Are they sounds of pleasure, discomfort, pain?), all before a single image appears. With […]
Interweaving Korean Film and Performance: A Conversation with Korean Filmmaker and Performance Director Kim Tae-yong
Areum Jeong
February 19, 2020
By Areum Jeong. Korean filmmaker Kim Tae-yong made his directorial debut in 1999 with Memento Mori (directed with Min Kyu-dong), the second installment of the girls’ high school horror film series. The film was hailed as one of the most beautiful horror films in Korean cinema and received Best New Director at […]
Danton Revisited – Ray Danton: The Epitome of Cool (a Career Retrospective) by Joseph Fusco
Tony Williams
February 18, 2020
By Tony Williams. I previously reviewed an earlier version of this book from BearManor Media where I commented that another edition was necessary in view of the lack of listing of the actor’s television achievements. Fusco has not only supplied this in his expanded 516 page new edition but also […]
“The Man with the Million Dollar Smile”: The Douglas MacLean Collection
Jeremy Carr
February 17, 2020
By Jeremy Carr. Douglas MacLean is hardly a household name, even among those who consider themselves ardent enthusiasts of silent cinema. It’s little wonder, then, that prior to One a Minute (1921) and Bell Boy 13 (1923), the two films included in the Undercrank Productions DVD release of The Douglas […]
Chile, a Rough Beast Emerging: Patricio Guzman’s The Cordillera of Dreams
Michael Sandlin
February 12, 2020
By Michael Sandlin. In this, the third and final entry of Chilean exile filmmaker Patricio Guzman’s documentary trilogy poetically examining his native country, he uses the famous Cordillera mountains as his geographical and philosophical centerpiece. From the initial lavish overhead shots of this majestic mountain range we eventually get to […]
The Decline and Fall of an Innovative Series – The Outer Limits: Season Two (Kino Lorber)
Tony Williams
February 11, 2020
By Tony Williams. The Outer Limits now has a justifiable reputation as one of the great achievements of American science fiction television. However, while this reputation derives from the first season, the second season, apart from a few exceptions, failed to continue the promise of the first and this led […]
The “Kids” are Back: Rene Eller’s WE
February 11, 2020
By Gary M. Kramer. We (aka Wij), now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Artsploitation Films, is being billed as a shocking story of reckless, amoral youth. The film features pornography and explicit sexuality (involving teens), death, (teenage) prostitution, blackmail, more sex, more death, violence, rape, and more bad behavior. […]
What Do You See? Alien in the Mirror: Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Glazer and Under the Skin by Maureen Foster
Thomas Puhr
February 4, 2020
A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. Recently appearing on both Cahiers du Cinéma’s top 10 of 2010-2019 and Variety’s list of the decade’s most overrated films, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013) remains deeply divisive. Though Maureen Foster acknowledges and embraces its polarizing effect in her superb Alien in the […]