Archive for category: Guest Contributor

Review: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

18 April, 2012 (11:45) | Film Reviews, Guest Contributor | By: guest

[Originally published in Movietone News 50, June 1976] by Ken Eisler It just so happens that I was one of that lonely number who actually liked Mel Stuart’s One Is a Lonely Number some five years back. Couple of Sundays ago I caught up with Stuart’s children’s-pic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, made at [...]

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Review: Matatabi

6 December, 2011 (09:28) | Film Reviews, Guest Contributor | By: Movietone News contributor

[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] by Ken Eisler I felt a funny kind of letdown when The Wanderers ended, and it took me awhile to figure out why. There’s certainly nothing wrong with the ending. After a fight, the film’s young protagonist Genta slips and tumbles down a long steep bank: a [...]

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Review: Tenant

15 November, 2011 (14:58) | Film Reviews, Guest Contributor, Roman Polanski | By: Movietone News contributor

By Norman Hale [Originally published in Movietone News 52, October 1976] Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? —Macbeth In The Tenant Roman Polanski explores again the psychic terrain of guilt, dread, paranoia, fears [...]

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Screening Los Angeles: An Interview with Thom Andersen

24 March, 2011 (06:33) | Documentary, Guest Contributor, Interviews | By: guest

By E. Steven Fried One of the great pleasures of SIFF 2004 was the opportunity to see Thom Andersen’s 169- minute video essay, Los Angeles Plays Itself. Utilizing hundreds of unauthorized clips of obscure and well-known films [you will never see this on DVD] Andersen poses the question:why is the most filmed city in the [...]

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Houses, Phones and Cars: Domestic Spaces in Max Ophuls’ “The Reckless Moment”

9 August, 2010 (09:51) | Essays, Film Noir, Guest Contributor, Max Ophuls, Melodrama | By: Movietone News contributor

By Norman Hale [Originally published in Movietone News 58-59, August 1978] Max Ophuls, the great European film director, once observed in conversation with a friend that different love relationships are expressed by different tokens: traditionally a man gives fresh-cut flowers to his mistress, but a potted plant to his wife.* Social rituals with their attendant [...]

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Getting What You Need: Changing Surrealist Vision in Luis Bunuel’s “Un Chien Andalou,” “Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie,” and “That Obscure Object Of Desire”

26 July, 2010 (11:14) | Essays, Guest Contributor | By: Movietone News contributor

[Originally published in Movietone News 58-59, August 1978] by Julie Ahrens Seeing ants crawl from a hole in a man’s hand, we don’t need to ask, “Is it a dream or is it real?” It’s surreal. That one creepy, iconic image is the essence of surrealism. In 1928 Luis Buñuel, the man with the razor, [...]

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Review: Coup pour coup

14 July, 2010 (18:51) | Film Reviews, Guest Contributor | By: Movietone News contributor

[Originally published in Movietone News 58-59, August, 1978] Ken Eisler was a friend of MOVIETONE NEWS from the spring of 1973, when he dropped down from his Vancouver, B.C. home for a few days and happened on some back issues while browsing in a Capitol Hill bookstore. He wrote us a flattering note (MTN 24), [...]

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Aguirre, The Wrath Of God: Extraordinary Images, Extraordinary Resonance

1 September, 2009 (07:34) | Essays, Guest Contributor, Werner Herzog | By: Movietone News contributor

By Ken Eisler [Originally published in Movietone News 29, January-February 1971, reprinted in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] We were looking at a back number of the magazine for quite another reason and happened on this piece by the late Ken Eisler. It was written at a time when most of us had heard little [...]

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Offing the Pig: Even Dwarfs Started Small

30 August, 2009 (22:11) | Essays, Guest Contributor, Werner Herzog | By: Movietone News contributor

By Ken Eisler [Originally published in Movietone News 36, October 1974] It’s easy to see how Werner Herzog’s third feature might have provoked cries of “Reaction!” from students and other militants. The film’s rebellion of dwarfs against a callous but mealy-mouthed reform school administration certainly “starts small”; it barely gets one cubit off the ground, [...]

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Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop: “It’s Alive!”

28 April, 2009 (10:40) | Essays, Film Reviews, Guest Contributor | By: guest

[ed. note: Director Ramin Bahrani arrives in Seattle to conduct a "Master Class" workshop for Northwest Film Forum on Tuesday, April 28. On Wednesday, April 29, Bahrani will introduce a special screening of his new film, Goodbye Solo, with a Q&A to follow, also at NWFF. To mark the occasion, Jim Emerson has allowed us [...]

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What Ever Happened to Arch Oboler? (Part Two – 3D)

4 February, 2009 (19:48) | Directors, Essays, Guest Contributor | By: guest

[Part One of Matthew Rovner's overview of Arch Oboler's films career ran on Parallax View here. Part Two covers Oboler's efforts as a pioneer in 3D cinema.] SYMPATHY FOR BWANA DEVIL While in Kenya, Oboler became fascinated with The Man-Eaters of Tsavo (1907), written by adventurer and Zionist J.H. Patterson. The story was based on [...]

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What Ever Happened to Arch Oboler? (Part One)

30 January, 2009 (00:21) | Directors, Essays, Guest Contributor | By: guest

[Arch Oboler's Five makes its home video debut on Tuesday, February 3. To mark the occasion, Oboler expert Matthew Rovner has contributed a brief history his film career. Part One covers his earliest films. ] Arch Oboler came to Hollywood out of the radio tube, but he never showed the visual flair of Orson Welles. [...]

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