Smart Words About Cinema
The only links page that matters… except for all the others. “But I want you to do more than just watch a race. I want you to take part in it.” Press Play celebrates the Oscars by looking back at the five best picture nominees from…1981, chosen at random so far as I can determine. [...]
The only links page that matters… except for all the others. “I’ve seen some creepy things in the movie business.” Accompanying their Cronenberg retrospective, the Museum of the Moving Image’s websiteis hosting some fine writing on the director’s career, including Tom McCormack’s look at how Videodrome‘s prophecies have played out, and a salute to his [...]
The only links page that matters… except for all the others. “Are you being honest?” “In this precise moment I am. I hope to be honest.” Pasolini’s final interview, a roundtable conducted for Salò’s Swedish premiere just three days before his death, is presented in English for the first time at Mubi. “All [Henry Fonda] had [...]
The only links page that matters… except for all the others. Kent Jones and Jonathan Rosenbaum, concisely shepherded by Erik Kohn, conduct a pair of dense, thought-provoking discussions on Robert Bresson and Godard’s Film Socialisme. And if you must have Hollywood anecdotes, there’s the detail that Bresson sought Cukor’s help in trying to lure Burt [...]
The only links page that matters… except for all the others. Vulgar Modernism has reared its other, less charmingly transgressive head with the firing of J. Hoberman. His own brief public thoughts are admirably restrained and humble; so let Glenn Kenny provide a selection of quotes showing what the Voice has lost. And at Moving [...]
From her first moments on-screen, Meryl Streep commanded the camera’s — and our — rapt gaze. It wasn’t just her luminous beauty. Even in early supporting roles, Streep’s acting radiated such remarkable passion and intelligence the Golden Girl stole center stage from anointed stars like Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. Delivering stellar performances that [...]
The only links page that matters… except for all the others. We’re on vacation (’tis the season, dontcha know) so let us share our favorite web visit of the past year. Doug Dibbern’s ode to cinephilia (with its lovely fantasy of digging up The Magnificent Ambersons from beneath a Florida police station). Tim Smith’s guest [...]
The only links page that matters… except for all the others. “We’re suffering from suffocation, from rhetorical intoxication: we have to go back to another cinema—transcription onto celluloid, simple ‘writing’, the establishment of a universe and its concrete realities, without personally interfering with the machinery….” The new Senses of Cinema is up, and one of [...]
The only links page that matters… except for all the others. Continuing her examination of pre-Code actors moving into noir, Imogen Smith explores the social rigidity and simultaneous demand for fashionable mutability that made the transition not just easier but almost mandatory for women rather than men, focusing on two remarkable Joans: Crawford (“She has [...]
The only links page that matters… except for all the others. “Don’t you believe in Hell?” “Not since I was seven.” “I do.” A retrospective at MOMA has David Cairns examining the “strange compassion for truly horrible characters” that ran throughout Henri-Georges Clouzot’s career; while Micheal Atkinson admits his admiration for The Wages of Fear‘s [...]
The only links page that matters… except for all the others. At Alt Screen Imogen Smith employs the excuse of a Film Forum series to sharply delineate four legendary silent actors: Garbo (“[j]ust twenty-three, she is infinitely weary and worldly”), Keaton (“never emotionless, he was merely able to hold his feelings at bay”), Chaney (“he [...]
The only links page that matters… except for all the others. A new feminist film quarterly, Joan’s Digest, makes its welcome debut with several fine entries. Imogen Smith’s survey of film noir rooms, and the sly suggestions that the genre most obsessed with memory and loss was telling ghost stories all along, is a highlight. [...]
The only links page that matters… except for all the others. What’s life like now for Martin Scorsese? The photo accompanying Jay A. Fernandez’s profile says it all, really: Posters for The Bad and the Beautiful and Sunset Boulevard (“A Hollywood Story”) dominating the wall, family portraits—including perhaps a shot of his youngest daughter?—kept close [...]
The only links page that matters… except for all the others. Bill Simmons’s breakdown of Eddie Murphy’s career offers a fan’s perspective, not a critic’s; but Simmons provides several intriguing quotes from Murphy’s recent, still paywalled Rolling Stone interview, and he nails why Murphy’s career highs are still barely appreciated as the unprecedented achievement they [...]
The only links page that matters… except for all the others. Updated Saturday, November 5 Regardless of how Dau turns out, Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s second feature has ensured he’ll be a story film buffs never stop telling. Its massive, five-story set—mimicking a 1952 Soviet city, which no one enters without dressing up in period or utters [...]