Wednesday, July 6 2011
How Intricate Can Marvel’s Storyworld Become on Film?
Marvel producers are attempting to create a film analog to the Marvel Universe that knits together the publisher's mainline titles. Will moviegoing audiences keep coming back for the next story, and the next?
Tuesday, July 5 2011
‘Norwegian Wood’ Is Pretty Onscreen, But Puzzling
Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood has been referred to as the "Japanese Catcher in the Rye", but J. D. Salinger said that his book was not actable and he would never sell the rights to Hollywood. Maybe Murakami should have listened to Salinger.
Friday, July 1 2011
Enmeshed In Modernity: Malcolm Turvey’s ‘The Filming of Modern Life’
Most of these films have been studied to death, then autopsied, buried, exhumed, and autopsied again, but Malcolm Turvey unearths some fresh perspectives and in the process, provides a nice corrective to long-misguided notions.
Monday, June 20 2011
Where’s Woody?
What does an artist the caliber of Woody Allen do when he’s reached the pinnacle of his artistic accomplishment -- while only in his early 40s?
Friday, June 17 2011
Zombies, Like Punks, Have Been Sedated & Sold, Prepackaged As Pitiful Empty Signifiers
Dr. Logan of Day of the Dead says that zombies can be domesticated and conditioned to behave – that’s exactly what some parents of punks believe, too.
Thursday, June 9 2011
Cooking Up Amazing Stories: ‘Third Star’ Director Hattie Dalton
To help ensure the perfect recipe of cinematic ingredients, Third Star director Hattie Dalton goes far beyond shooting beautiful scenery and capturing the actors' performances.
Tuesday, May 31 2011
Trouble in Wonderland, or The Crisis of the Fairytale in Film
Live-action fairytale adaptations are more popular than ever, with Red Riding Hood just out and four others -- including two Snow Whites in the works. But film and the source texts do not effortlessly go together, and children emerge as the losers.
Friday, May 27 2011
They Won’t Stay Dead: The Changing Guises of Horror Film and Censorship
The controversy surrounding A Serbian Film is symptomatic of an ominous development in the horror genre's combative relationship with the censors.
Monday, May 23 2011
Comics Superheroes Leap Across the Great Cultural Divide
Bounding from the pages of comic books onto the screens of films and TV, our superheroes unite formerly divided interests -- comics geeks vs. everyone else.
Friday, May 13 2011
The Wonder Year: Inspiring Soul with 9th Wonder
The RiverRun International Film Festival showcases a moving portrait of a man in his element, standing at the transformative intersection between hip-hop, education, and craft.
Wednesday, May 11 2011
Dy(e)ing to be White: Whiteface Performance in Postracial America
On the surface, whiteface performers often exaggerate widely recognized and aesthetically pleasing aspects of white people and culture from a minority viewpoint: light eyes, light colored hair, swanky clothes, snobbish attitude...
Monday, May 9 2011
Lucky Penny Makes Movies in Michigan
Michigan extras have to run for their lives as giant flying robots tried to kill them and buildings exploded around them. Trying to avoid being trampled by Transformers is easy compared to the bigger threat to Michigan’s film industry.
Wednesday, May 4 2011
The Laughable Charm of Seth Rogen
Seth Rogen's idiosyncratic laugh colors both his film characters and his real-life persona. Like it or not, that laugh has a significant effect on how we watch his movies.
Monday, April 25 2011
Why Do So Many Aliens Look Like Tony Blair?
The unfamiliar will only find acceptance if it is expressed in familiar terms; thus, aliens "...may have bulbous heads and triangular eyes, speak in a chillingly robotic monotone or emit a strong stench of sulphur, but otherwise they look much like Tony Blair."
Wednesday, April 13 2011
Jim Carrey’s Brilliant Dark Side
The Cable Guy and I Love You Phillip Morris show what Jim Carrey is capable of when no one is watching.
Friday, April 8 2011
Passing Me By: African American Women and ‘Passing’ As a Film Genre
Caught between two worlds, standing on a near-literal precipice with one foot in the African American experience, the other firmly in majority white culture, the protagonist of the passing film is confronted with an impossible choice: live in truth as a person of color or risk “passing” for white to gain societal advantage.
Thursday, April 7 2011
The Last Time I Saw Paris
Paris Benjamin is a working actor in Hollywood, a long way from her acting roots in France and the UK. Her recent experiences on the sets of TV series and films shine a spotlight on the US and European entertainment industry.
Tuesday, April 5 2011
‘Cinema’—That’s Italian for Cinema
New DVD provider RaroVideo USA is coming out of the gate with two lavish Criterion-worthy releases: The Clowns and the Fernando Di Leo Crime Collection. One is nominally "arty" and the other "lowdown", but the lines deserve to be blurred.
Thursday, March 31 2011
Betty Boop and Bimbo Get Into a Sexual Tangle in ‘Barnacle Bill’
The Fleischer Studios' Betty Boop cartoon Barnacle Bill embraces the pleasures of the perpetrator far more than the fate of the victim, where a cute cartoon pup gets to be a sexual predator and stoke our prurient interest in the 'joy of punishment'.
Friday, March 25 2011
Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love: The Films of Hal Hartley
Hal Hartley's films bridged the world of art school vibes and workplace routines, elite snottiness and pedestrian punches, suburban angst and critical thinking finesse, and mixed-up politics and prolonged personality crises.
