Friday, May 18 2012
Sergio Leone: Something to Do with Death
Britain’s pop culture knight, Christopher Frayling, offers the definitive biography and interpretation of the Spaghetti Western maestro, Sergio Leone.
Tuesday, May 15 2012
Like All Movie Stars, Even ‘War Horse’ Joey Needs Make-up
One of the most challenging aspects for Ali Bannister, head of the equine hair and make-up department on the set of War Horse, was keeping artists safe when applying mud to the rear ends of over 80 horses.
Monday, May 14 2012
Systemic and Subjective: The Violence of ‘The International’ and the Global Financial Order
The weapons deals in The International and the back-door negotiations between corporate lobbies and Congress are two sides of the same coin; both use overwhelming systemic violence to further their ends.
Wednesday, May 9 2012
Classical, Lyrical, Circular, Interweaving: Breaking Form In Short Films
Once the calling card for young filmmakers, short films offer a chance to explore concepts of form and structure that Hollywood would not touch—at least not until it proved profitable.
Tuesday, May 8 2012
Jerks Are My Heroes, Thanks to ‘Jerks’ Like Steve Martin
My folks are probably still kicking themselves for taking a seven-year-old to see Steve Martin’s profane and ridiculous first film, The Jerk, because that was the day I gave up on strong, upstanding heroes and decided that I wanted to be like Navin Johnson.
Monday, May 7 2012
International Beats: The Desire for the Foreign in Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’
With the film adaptation of On the Road just a month away, it's important to once again define what characterized the Beat movement: an infatuation with the foreign.
Tuesday, May 1 2012
It Must Feel Good to Be as Bad as Gordon Gekko
Why are bad guys like Gordon Gekko, Tony Montana and Patrick Bateman so beloved? Because we can’t act without guilt, and what’s worse, we can’t even admit that we want to.
Thursday, April 26 2012
‘Lord of the Flies’ Still Reigns
Fear and brutality inherent in the human condition and the drive to survive are themes that have never gone out of fashion. The stakes get even higher when those involved are children, and that's obviously a big seller.
Tuesday, April 24 2012
Comics to Film (and Film to Comics): The Two-Way Street Between Page and Screen
Movies like The Avengers are better thought of as character adaptations than adaptations of specific books. When seen that way, we recognize the characters as transmedia creations.
Monday, April 23 2012
It’s Deja Vu: ‘Network’ Still Has a Finger on the Pulse of Culture, 36 Years Later
If you were to tell women in 1976 that, 36 years later, women who work exclusively in the home and those who also work outside the home would be pitted against each other, they wouldn’t have believed it.
Tuesday, April 17 2012
Monday, April 16 2012
Reluctant Gunslingers and Incorrigible She-Devils
Can classic Hollywood films help us navigate today’s environment of political apathy and cynical media saturation?
Thursday, April 12 2012
In Defense Of… The Year In Film: 2011—That’s Right, the Entire Year
The more films fail to perform at the theater, the easier it becomes to instinctively write off the entire 12 months as a whole. But 2011 wasn't all that bad, right? Right?
Friday, April 6 2012
Not Gonna Lie: ‘The Hunger Games’, Twitter, and Reverse Victimization
Would it matter at all if Katniss Everdeen, a white teenager in the book The Hunger Games, had been portrayed in the film by a suitably teenage and female, black actor? For the young racists who have gone berserk on Twitter about the supporting character Rue being portrayed by an African-American actor, apparently the answer is yes.
Thursday, April 5 2012
Meet the Filmmakers: Promoting Indie Films the Q&A Way
We need to talk: Q&As have become very important to independent filmmakers as a way of raising their profile and gaining new audiences.
Thursday, March 29 2012
Go Play in Traffic: 5 Movies About Kids That Are Better Than ‘Hugo’ and ‘True Grit’
Precocious cherubs and wise-beyond-their-years savants are a Hollywood staple, but they don't really reflect the state of actually being a kid. Here are a five good, great, or interesting films that are far more effective in portraying that being a kid is a really weird thing to be.
Tuesday, March 27 2012
In Defense Of… Adapting Books, Such as ‘The Hunger Games’, to Film
As The Hunger Games phenomenon fills movie theaters, we are reminded of the age-old idea that the book will forever be better than the movie. Or will it?
Monday, March 26 2012
The Cost of Success: When Lives Intersect With Fame
The Swell Season is one of the most intimate fly-on-the-wall peeks at the effects of stardom on two people at two very different points in their lives. It’s arguably the most accomplished music documentary of its kind since D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back.
Tuesday, March 20 2012
Deriding Desire: Dorothy Dandridge and the Raced and Gendered ‘50s
In 1957, Academy Award-nominated actress Dorothy Dandridge found herself at the center of a smear campaign that betrayed the patriarchal and racial politics of Hollywood and the US at large. The '50s were far from calm.
Wednesday, March 14 2012
Get a Leg Up: The Power of Angelina Jolie’s Pose
The impassioned reaction, both negative and positive, to Angelina Jolie and her leg proves the power of the strong and independent woman, and demonstrates the discomfort such female power provokes.
