By Matthew Sorrento. Review Filmmaker David Shields found an ideal style to document the onscreen (but off the field) career of NFL running back Marshawn Lynch (2007-18). Far from a fan documentary, Lynch: A History uses collage to portray the news media’s possession and the public’s consumption of a star player […]
Father’s Day: Family, Masculinity and Ant Timpson’s Come to Daddy (Fantastic Fest)
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
October 17, 2019
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. There’s a scene in Ant Timpson’s debut feature Come to Daddy where Elijah Wood’s character, Norval Greenwood, is being verbally abused with such an extraordinarily blend of both cruelty and swear words that by the time actual physical violence rears its head, it’s almost a relief. Cringefully […]
Joker: Notes from Underground
Christopher Sharrett
October 16, 2019
By Christopher Sharrett. In what follows I am conscious that Todd Phillips’ Joker is another addition by a corporation to its “DC universe,” although it is spoken of as a “stand alone” film (with no relevance to comic book mythology?). I am also aware that many aren’t interested in this […]
Before Kane – Marching Song: A Play by Orson Welles with Roger Hill, Edited by Todd Tarbox
October 14, 2019
A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. As we move further into the new millennium, we appear to benefit not only from development of new technologies enabling access to visual material previously unavailable, but also the emergence of important documents sometimes referred to but usually inaccessible to the general reader outside […]
The Spiral and the Fugue – This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia by Joan Neuberger
Thomas Puhr
October 7, 2019
A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. Joan Neuberger’s This Thing of Darkness (Cornell University Press, 2019) illustrates, perhaps more than any other cinema studies text I’ve read, the staggering attention to detail some filmmakers bring to their work. Subtitled Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia, it chronicles the inception, troubled […]
An Artist’s Obsession: Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (2018)
Yun-hua Chen.
October 7, 2019
By Yun-hua Chen. Salvodor Simó, the layout artist for Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (2017), The Jungle Book (2016) and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), collaborated with the scriptwriter Eligio R. Montero and adapted Fermín Solís’ graphic novel on the true story of how Luis Buñuel […]
The Clown in the Mirror: Todd Phillips’ Joker
Jake Rutkowski
October 4, 2019
By Jake Rutkowski. There’s an old Simpsons bit that I often turn to in times of ambivalence: Homer, faced with the prospect of buying a cursed Krusty the Clown doll, weighs the pros and cons as outlined by the mysterious shopkeeper (a racist caricature recalling Keye Luke in Gremlins [1984]). […]
Redemption through Chaos: Takashi Miike’s First Love (2019)
Matthew Fullerton
October 4, 2019
By Matthew Fullerton. First Love (Hatsukoi), prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike’s sixtieth film in twenty-four years according to last count, is a wild and fun night-time ride through an urban war between Japanese and Chinese gangsters. Although First Love marks a full-fledged return for Miike to the Asian mafia genre, […]
Versatile Journeyman – Edmond O’Brien: Everyman of Film Noir by Derek Sculthorpe
Tony Williams
October 2, 2019
A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. This book is the latest production of prolific archivist Derek Sculthorpe. If not, “The Man with the Golden Gun”, this independent film researcher is “The Man with the Golden Keyboard” whose busy fingers discover formerly obscure entries in the most obscure newspaper clippings […]
Daredevils of the Red Circle and Other Cliffhangers: Hollywood (1939-1942) and Spy Smasher
September 24, 2019
“Daredevils of the Red Circle and Other Cliffhangers” is a blog on serials by Geoffrey Mayer, the author of Encyclopedia of American Film Serials (McFarland, 2017). The Hollywood studios, except one, studiously ignored Hitler and the fascists throughout the 1930s. The exception was Warner Brothers who, under the leadership of Harry Warner, tirelessly fought […]