Smart Words About Cinema
Author, critic, film authority and festival programmer Eddie Muller was branded “The Czar of Noir” by James Ellroy for his knowledge of and passion for the subject. Since publishing Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir and programming a film noir festival in Los Angeles in 1998, Muller has become not [...]
The Hurt Locker premiered in the one-two punch of the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival in the fall of 2008 and then made the long march through subsequent film festivals until its theatrical release in June 2009. Director Kathryn Bigelow shepherded the film through each showing, giving [...]
Earlier in 2009, Shout! Factory released one of the greatest TV comedies of all time. It’s Garry Shandling’s Show was created for Showtime in 1986, back before pay cable had established a reputation for original programming. As such, it never really became well known to the general public but it’s reputation [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979]
Peter Weir was interviewed by Judith Kass in New York City on January 8, 1979, in connection with the U.S. opening of his new film The Last Wave. The Last Wave concerns a lawyer, played by Richard Chamberlain, who defends five aborigines accused of killing a [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979]
Judith M. Kass interviewed Phillip Noyce, the director of Newsfront, and David Rowe, the production and marketing consultant for the New South Wales Film Corporation, when they were in New York City in September 1978 for the film’s showing at the Lincoln Center Film Festival. [...]
The films of Lisandro Alonso, one of the most exciting and accomplished directors working to redefine filmmaking on the international stage, are showcased in Northwest Film Forum’s series “At the Edge Of The World: The Cinema of Lisandro Alonso” (November 11-20). The young filmmaker (in his early thirties) has made four [...]
As big-screen horror becomes increasingly focused on remakes and endless sequels, I find that the most interesting horror films on the small screen. Of course there’s a lot of the entrails of horror movie waste to wade through to get to the meaty specimens, but Dave Parker is one name that I’ve [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981]
Introduction by Richard T. Jameson
When it comes to new hope for the American cinema, filmcrit types are always in the market. New hope in 1980 took the form of a low-budget festival film with the misunderstandable title Return of the Secaucus 7. It wasn’t a [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981]
Continued from “Part 1″ here.
Your characters in Secaucus 7 are very natural; it’s as though you knew them like friends. I’d like to know how you developed your characters, how you chose them, and how you made them come alive.
I don’t really remember writing the picture. [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981]
Continued from “Part 2″ here.
How do you feel about writing these low-budget films? Do you see advantages in it, or are you hungry for millions of dollars per budget?
If I had millions of dollars I’d probably make millions of small films. Part of it is what [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981]
Introduction by Richard T. Jameson
Strother Martin thought the folks from the Seattle Film Society wanted to meet him just because he had done some jobs of work for Sam Peckinpah and they had had Sam to tea a year or so earlier. Not that that gave [...]
Humpday, the third feature from local filmmaker Lynn Shelton, made its world premiere in the Dramatic Competition section of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. It was the first film sale of the festival and went on to win a Special Jury Prize “For the Spirit of Independence.” It subsequently played in [...]
David Carradine died Wednesday in Bangkok at the age of 72. I had the pleasure of interviewing him in 2004, while he was promoting Kill Bill Vol. 2. This interview was originally published on GreenCine in April 2004.
The son of John Carradine and elder half-brother to Keith and Robert, David’s career began in the early [...]
I originally met David Russo years ago, after his short film Pan With Us had won an Honorable Mention at the Sundance Film Festival. He was a friend of a friend and had joined us for a night out, where somehow David and I wound up arguing over art and critics. His [...]
French auteur Patrice Leconte made his international reputation with the chilly yet emotionally intense Monsieur Hire (which gave French comic Michel Blanc his first dramatic role) and his subsequent string of rapturous, often tragic romantic dramas (The Hairdresser’s Husband and The Widow Of St. Pierre), tales of friendship (The Man On [...]