FILM
Tastes Good Still? Oscars 2010
Benjamin Strong
03.08.10
We are so bitchy we'll never get any star interviews...oh well. As Ben Strong elucidates: "The Oscars exist for the sole purpose of Hollywood’s identity maintenance." But the Academy didn't need Avatar to win to prove anything to itself. 'Cause The Hurt Locker "more closely resembles Hollywood’s image of itself than do blue people." Alas, it ended with historic precedents. And George Clooney had a hockey haircut, ha....and Ben Strong gives Fanzine's annual second take opinion on the event. (What we are hoping for in the future? I'm not sure…but I wouldn't mind seeing Rob Lowe take another stab at some song and dance, cracked out Disney style. -CM)
From Party Animals to Gilt Queens to a New Hollywood Dame: Oscars 2010
Kevin Killian
03.08.10
Some changes in the Oscars over the years, and especially this year - 2010 sees 10 best picture noms as opposed to 5, a woman winning best director, and no gilded Miramax flick in the bunch, right? Except that “damned Helen Mirren” still got unwanted attention from co-host Steve Martin. Kevin Killian notes what has changed and looks back on a man who maybe got the Oscar show rolling in a new direction long ago, Allan Carr, who once ruled the Hollywood party scene and blew it all on a weird Snow White night. There’s a new book out about him by Robert Hofler called Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll.
Kim Ji-woon's Tale of Two Sisters
Emily Carter
03.03.10
Alfred Hitchcock either popularized or created the term "MacGuffin" to describe any highly valued object that sets the plot in motion: the ticking bomb, top secret microfilm or the stolen necklace. Is it a stretch to say that in a romantic comedy, the completion of the romantic union is a type of MacGuffin? U.S. films often trot out romantic or sexual union as kind of plot device, while several Korean films I've seen seem to use the re-completion of the family unit as one of the central concerns. Director Bong Joon-ho's excellent 2006 swamp monster film, The Host revolves around a family getting their daughter back after she's been eaten by a giant mutant squid and dragged into the sewers. (Fittingly, Bong's latest film which opens next month is titled Mother.) Kim Ji-woon's particularly unpleasant depiction of "blended" family life, oddly helped Emily Carter, author of Glory Goes and Gets Some, to heal the wounds in her own.
Rob Nilsson and Cine Manifest at Anthology Film Archives
Nancy Keefe Rhodes
01.22.10
This week (Jan 21. through the 28th) at New York City's Anthology Film Archive come the films of award winning director Rob Nilsson and Cine Manifest, San Francisco’s 1970s Marxist film collective. Nancy Keefe Rhodes gives an exhaustive yet breathless preview of the films screened at AFA. But even if you aren't in New York, you can get many on Netflix, from your favorite indie movie store, or buy them from the source; so read up, watch, and learn how Nilsson, the octogenarian everyman, demurs his stance over time, favoring art over politics.
The Last Station - Love, Copyright and Anarcho-Christianity
Amy Meyerson
01.14.10
It seems that L. Ron Hubbard wasn't the only writer to create a bizarre and zealous spiritual organization. In the later part of his life, Leo Tolstoy began a radical ascetic pacifist Christian movement. He swapped letters with Gandhi, advocated for anarchist zoologist Peter Kropotkin and extolled the values of Esperanto. Director Michael Hoffman's The Last Station offers a view on the last days of Tolstoy's life and the dispute over the ownership of the literary estate between his wife and his followers. While the film maintains a tight focus on its pair of lovers, Amy Meyerson offers insight into the historical events that loom just outside the frame. Starring Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren and Paul Giamatti, the film is based on a novel by literary critic Jay Parini, who having contemplated the influence of an author after their eventual departure in his writing, has perhaps appropriately been appointed literary executor to Gore Vidal.
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Matty Byloos
11.20.09
It seemed like the type of thing that could only happen in a cinematic equivalent of Fantasy Baseball, that Werner Herzog would direct Nicolas Cage in a sequel to Abel Ferrera's sexually graphic 1992 cult film. It was enough to make you picture Cage shaking off the shackles of too many action movies, opening and closing his hands as if realizing his autonomy for the first time. And yet like so many fans and amateur sports statisticians, who thought they had the perfect starting lineup, Bad Lieutenant finds itself deservedly shut out of the playoffs.
Three Documentaries by Werner Herzog
Tao Lin
11.02.09
Writer Tao Lin and director Werner Herzog share a certain interest in stunts that, rather than a means to an end, begin to seem like an extension of the work itself. Herzog's film Heart of Glass was performed almost entirely by a cast of hypnotized actors and, after daring Errol Morris to complete his first documentary, Herzog famously ate his own shoe. Tao Lin has funded his literary efforts in part by selling shares in his forthcoming novel Richard Yates ($2000 per) and using eBay to sell Gmail chats with him on various substances such as methadone, adderall, green juice and iced coffee. ($31-$61) Lin's recent novella Shoplifting from American Apparel is an engaging and unusual read that packs a lot of twists into its seemingly straightforward sentences. More on Herzog from the Fanzine later this month when Matty Byloos reviews his upcoming Bad Lieutenant 2: Port of Call New Orleans.
The Zombie Monologues
Darius James
10.30.09
Each year at this time the dead rise from their graves but way back in the summer of 1961 Nazis revivified deceased plantation slaves through the powers of voodoo during the midday movie on WNEW's Jungle Jive at Five. A young tyke at the time, Darius James was thirsty for any televisual images of African-Americans even the eye-popping antics of Mantan Moreland and discovered more than he bargained for. James is the author of the novel Negrophobia and That's Blaxploitation!, a book every bit as stylized and opinionated as the films it profiles.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
Amy Meyerson
10.21.09
The adverb 'complexly' crops up repeatedly in the work of David Foster Wallace to describe among other things: 1) the irreverence of a palely freckled marketing focus group facilitator, 2) the patterns of shadow on trees, grass and shrubbery on a still, green day at the height of spring and 3) the series of hook and eye knobs on a blouse which women can undo easily and men cannot. It's a fitting word to recurr in his work, often indicating a point at which his impressive descriptive powers had reached their limit, and emblematic of an aesthetic not easily translated to the screen. Amy Meyerson looks at the difficulties of adaption through John Krasinski's recent film of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.
The Informant! Denunciation vs. Deflation as Rhetorical Strategies
Daniel Hamilton
10.12.09
Hollywood has responded to the economic crash with the lightning quick reflexes of a short-selling day trader: swapping glitz and glamour for a hint of class consciousness with recent films like Public Enemies, The International and Sam Raimi's Drag me to Hell. Stephen Soderbergh, on the other hand, is at least four movies deep in his own immersive and idiosyncratic investigation of the ways economic systems damage both the winners and the losers. Soderbergh refuses to demonize his corporate lackeys and instead de-glamorizes the system in which they participate through his depiction of gold tinted frames, fluorescent lighting and Marvin Hamlisch's brilliantly kitschy soundtrack.
The 2009 New York Film Festival
Benjamin Strong
09.24.09
'When the lineup was announced in August for the 47th New York Film Festival - which opens Friday September 25th at Lincoln Center - some cinephiles expressed concern that the choices were a little too safe, conservative, and predictable.' Nevermind, there are formidable showings from oldies like Alain Resnais, youngins like Corneliu Porumboiu, and we look forward to the new oldies from Harmony Korine (can we put him there in the mid-oldies yet?) - review by clutch Fanzine fim contributor Benjamin Strong.
The Little Prince of Purple Rain
Rayvon Pettis
08.15.09
It’s been a rough season for '80s pop. The summer of 2009 has seen Michael Jackson go down somewhat ingloriously, only to rise again in death, forgiven for our incessant gawking at his late public misadventures and/or overexamined life. Then, close on heels, John Hughes, the period's auteur of adolescence passed. Thank god we still have the indefatigably funky Prince going strong. 25 years after his sorta-biopic's release, it’s time to reflect on a film that captured best perhaps the '80's raison d'être, Purple Rain, released during the apex of Prince's reign (thank god we no longer have to call him “the artist formally known as” even though I just did). Review by Rayvon Pettis, who is, incidentally, just a tad younger than the film itself. Art by Danny Jock.
The Hurt Locker
Scott Bradley
08.03.09
Due to some technical difficulties, I'm a little late getting up Scott Bradley's review of The Hurt Locker, the latest film from director Kathryn Bigelow. It's another war movie, but unlike other war movies, The Hurt Locker is, as Bradley says, the first great Iraq war movie, putting it on par with such classics as Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket and Coppola's Apocalypse Now. It's high praise for Bigelow, whose work showed early promise with Near Dark before later finding an unevenness which apexed with Point Break. The Hurt Locker, which was written by war journalist Mark Boal, appears to have shone a light back on her talents.
The Beaches of Agnes (2008): a documentary by/of Agnes Varda
Nancy Keefe Rhodes
07.08.09
Agnes Varda has been making films since the inception of the French New Wave, a movement that ushered in the varied likes of Jean Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and the hard boiled cinema of Jean-Pierre Melville. In Les Plages d'Agnès (or The Beaches of Agnès) (2008), Varda makes protean shifts with ease, from philosophical reverie to revealing insights into her relationships both to film and her main squeeze, Jacques Demy, a longtime lover and muse. Nancy Keefe Rhodes reviews.
Here Is Tokyo!
Jason Jude Chan
03.06.09
Jason Jude Chan brings us his latest review in record time—it's the editors who got it up slightly late. Chan has a penchant for showing us the better film on a big movie weekend (see his review of Gomorrah which opened the same weekend as the new Friday the 13th). Here he reviews Tokyo!—a triptych by three directors (Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, and Bong Joon-Ho) of the fantastic city. Tokyo! opens this weekend in New York City.
Oscar Lessons
Benjamin Strong
02.24.09
As the recession deepens ever more quickly, Hollywood in 2009 is already prepped for old school depression era glamor (as The New York Times has already pointed out), is claiming the musical is back, and spent a good bit of this past Sunday evening edifying all of us couch cretins about the ins and outs of its business. Ladies and Gents, the 2009 Academy Awards as seen through the lens of Benjamin Strong.
Oscar Party 2009: The Third Way
Kevin Killian
02.23.09
It's another year and another Oscar party with Kevin Killian and friends. Well in posts past there have been a few grumblings about changes in the handling of the In Memorian section (this year you just might have needed some heavy glasses to actually see who had died, but Queen Latifah was great); the issue starting to shine through in 2009 - like the high beams radiating from some Oscar night bling of yore - is that the biopic needs its own category, just too darn unfair to pit an actor playing a real person versus a made up one!
Lights, Camorra, Action
Jason Jude Chan
02.13.09
In case you've decided to make like Grandaddy and take leave of Crystal Lake (ok, they weren't talking about the same Crystal Lake) this Friday the 13th, there are other film options for those seeking a more sophisticated night out on the town. Besides teenage sex and homicidal psychos, the most indelible archetype of film is the gangster (who also usually fit in the "homicidal" category—just not the maniacal, unkillable type)—their roles cross-culturally romanticized and cast as creatures cursed by habit, vengeance, misery, and the insatiable taste for power. We obsess over shadowy hands, and mythologize the organizations behind velvet curtains and behind MAC-10s. Here, Jason Jude Chan reviews Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah, opening today (February 13) in limited theaters.
The Wrestler: The Redemption of Mickey Rourke
Eli S. Evans
02.03.09
The line that keeps circulating about Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler is that, in it, we witness the resurrection of Mickey Rourke. This ain't exactly the truth. Rourke, the once baby faced tough who earned early comparisons to Dean and Brando, never went anywhere, 'cept away from Hollywood for a bit, a circuitous route that saw him back in the boxing rings of his pre-acting youth and on the shit list of most everyone in Tinseltown. But he's crept back with his villainous role in Sin City, and what happens in The Wrestler isn't necessarily Rourke's resurrection, but his redemption. A welcome return to form, however it's put. Review by Eli S. Evans.
Holiday with Preston Sturges
Jason Jude Chan
12.23.08
This holiday season forget about George Seaton and a Miracle on 34th or Frank Capra and his Wonderful Life; for a change of pace, if you happen to be in New York City, come down to Film Forum for an homage to one of Hollywood’s greatest, Preston Sturges, the writer and director of Christmas in July and many other brilliant screwball comedies. The festival “Essential Sturges” runs from Christmas Eve through New Years day. Jason Jude Chan previews.
Frost/Nixon: in review
Adam Underhill
12.21.08
If you are too young to know which came first, Deep Throat or “Deep Throat,” now is a good time to wiki some history on the presidential scandal known as Watergate. These days there will certainly be plenty to read about, as infamous informer Mark “Deep Throat” Felt has passed away just days before Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon sees its nationwide theatrical release on December 25th. There have been other notable films on Richard Nixon, but Howard’s is different as it catches the man post-presidency, trying to secure his legacy against the reportage of David Friost, a rival in some ways as complex as Nixon himself. Adam Underhill reviews.
Real Escapism: Kentucker Audley and Team Picture
Brian Pera
11.03.08
Brian Pera reviews Ketucker Audley's Team Picture, which started gaining attention at last year's Memphis Film Festival. Since then it has been featured in New Talkies: the DIY Generation series at IFC, and film scholar Ray Carney included it as part of Independent's Week: New Independent Cinema 2007 at the Harvard Archives. Team Picture has been embraced by - yet stands apart from - the current laissez-faire Youtube genre trend "mumblecore." Pera argues that Audley wields a unique style that bridges somewhere between the verité of a Cassavettes or Antonioni - the scenes slow and thoughtful, the directing more slight-handed than sleight of hand, and the final product beautiful and with purpose.
2008 New York Film Festival
Benjamin Strong
09.26.08
Benjamin Strong takes us to this year's New York Film Festival. While overall, perhaps not as strong as festivals past (a committee member was quoted saying the equivalent of the old: you go with the army you have, not the one you wish you had, or whatever it was Rumsfeld said about the Iraq war), but Strong does find some gems amidst the bunch. Read his preview before you purchase your tickets.
Jaws Revisited
Masha Tupitsyn
09.15.08
Like a survivor from a good shark gnashing, what we see in a feature film is really the remains of a great deal of cutting and slicing. What happens in the editing room often stays in the editing room. Of course with the advent of DVDs we now get a lot more options in viewing a film, with the outtakes, deleted scenes, etc. Recently a retrospective of Spielberg films aired on TV, and here Masha Tupitsyn revisits with fresh perspective the collector's edition DVD of the director's 70's blockbuster Jaws.
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
Kevin Killian
08.27.08
HBO released a new documentary this summer by Marina Zenovich about director Roman Polanski's long ago scandalous sexual encounter with a young girl - Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. An exile from the States ever since this event and the subsequent bumbling, showy court case, Polanski has weathered more storms in his life than most could handle; yet Zenovich, in Kevin Killian's view here, seems to be letting Polanski a little off the hook (for such a serious charge) in her retrospective cut. Art by Danny Jock.
Jacques Tati's Trafic on Criterion DVD
Jonathan Rosenbaum
06.26.08
Critic and scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum has written definitively about French director Jacques Tati over the years; Fanzine is pleased to have Rosenbaum's take on Tati's Trafic, newly available on DVD from the Criterion Collection.
Antonio Gaudi on Criterion DVD
Andy Beta
05.23.08
Is a work of art the sum of its whole? Or a collaborative event between people and subjects - when is one bestowed the honor of creator? This question gets especially blurry when talking about the arts of film and architecture, with so many coming together to make a final product. Architect Antonio Gaudi believed he answered to one master - God. In Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara's movie about Gaudi, now on Criterion DVD, we're left to ponder questions about the notion of the autuer, as in the end it's one of Teshigahara's collaborators whose brilliance shines over both subject and author. Andy Beta reviews the DVD Antonio Gaudi (1984).
Interview with Director John Gianvito
Benjamin Strong
05.04.08
Benjamin Strong talks with director John Gianvito, whose recent documentary Profit motive and the whispering wind, takes us to the places of memory for some of this country's defining heroes on the flip side of history. The movie recently screened at New York's Tribeca Film Festical.
Curtains for Richard Widmark
Kevin Killian
03.28.08
“Has any star, bar Arthur Kennedy, been so unjustly forgotten?” writes Kevin Killian about screen legend Richard Widmark, who died this week at age 93. If you’re under 40, you probably know Widmark only as a staple of 1970s schlock—a supporting star in everything from Murder on the Orient Express to Rollercoaster to The Swarm and Coma. But as Killian argues, Widmark was a precursor of the Robert DeNiro school, an actor who plumbed the timorous and venal corridors of the American male psyche before it was fashionable to do so.
Yeah Right: A Brief History of Skateploitation Cinema
Benjamin Strong
03.20.08
As a long time fan of Gus Van Sant and a long time (and still active) skateboarder, Benjamin Strong sees the director's latest film, Paranoid Park, as an opportunity to look back at the history of skateploitation films (both Hollywood and "indie") as well as the parallel history of "true" skater-produced film and video.
No Place For Old Men at the Oscars 2008
Benjamin Strong
02.25.08
While last year's ceremonies may have reveled in the past, the 2008 Oscars were all about youth and beauty. The old men got flat out snubbed this year, especially in the supporting role category, Benjamin Strong argues.
Oscar Party 2008: Blood on the Tracks
Kevin Killian
02.25.08
Kevin Killian gets together with friends at his San Francisco apartment to vote on the Oscars (he and Drew, Stephen, Emily, Minette, Maizie, Georgette, etc mentioned in the review). It's the 3rd time for Fanzine that he's sent us their take, and again his scorecard isn't matching up. Seems to be a year in which he might have titled the piece: "No Country for Anyone but Brits and Flukes." This year there is blood indeed! Art by Danny Jock.
The Year the Western Returned?
Mark Asch
01.19.08
Mark Asch takes a look back through 2007 - a year that found filmakers producing perhaps an inordinate amount of neo-Westerns - then decides whether or not they live up to the the standards of the classics. Seems many missed their mark, nevertheless a few have now cleaned house at the Oscars.
Film Poll 2007
The Fanzine
12.31.07
Welcome to the first annual Fanzine year-end Film Poll. Don't expect to find Oscar nominees, sleeper hits, or good taste in this survey. This is strictly about our love of movies. Contributors include Benjamin Strong, Mark Asch, Samantha Culp, Kevin Killian, Michael Louie, and Nancy Keefe Rhodes.
Berlin Alexanderplatz on Criterion DVD
Mark Asch
12.07.07
Long unavailable on these shores, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's monumentous Berlin Alexanderplatz super-sizes the defining obsessions of a prodigious career. Criterion's long-awaited DVD box is your one-stop shop for decaying social structures, sexual opportunism, and righteous, bracing aesthetics; Mark Asch breaks it down.
Interview with Roger Warren Beebe
Nancy Keefe Rhodes
12.06.07
Filmmaker Roger Warren Beebe believes experimental movies are for the masses, and to prove it he led an avant-garde roadshow across the States. Nancy Keefe Rhodes talks with the director about his tour and the varieties of non-commercial filmmaking.
Staring Back at Chris Marker
Andy Beta
11.04.07
"Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future," wrote T.S. Eliot. No filmmaker has absorbed this vertiginous lesson better than cult documentarist Chris Marker. Apropos of the long-awaited DVD release of two Marker classics, and a new book of his photographs, Andy Beta explores intertextual connections that reach across decades.
Save The Receipt: Rethinking Wes Anderson
Zach Baron
10.17.07
Wes Anderson's latest movie, The Darjeeling Limited, has provoked a number of critics to express their exhaustion with his hermetically sealed realm of white bourgeois male privilege. Zach Baron wonders whether these critics aren't missing the point.
Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie comes to Criterion DVD
Mike Powell
10.11.07
Schweeet! (you saw that joke coming, but...) It is sweet that Dušan Makavejev's 1974 cult classic has infiltrated the somewhat taught sieve of great films that is the Criterion Collection of DVDs. It's a sexually unabashed film that no doubt the Swedish national socialists (Swedish national socialists?) who recently smashed an Andres Serrano exhibit would love to get their nasty hands on (but that's another story). Mike Powell reviews.
We've Lost Control (of the Ian Curtis Legend)
Mark Asch
10.10.07
Anton Corbijn’s new black-and-white biopic of Ian Curtis, which opens today, has the approval of the singer’s widow, whose memoir it is based on, and the backing of numerous film critics, many of whom can still remember their first intoxicating spin of Unknown Pleasures. But Mark Asch wonders whether something doesn’t get lost when we demystify our rock icons.
The 2007 New York Film Festival: A Preview
Benjamin Strong
09.27.07
By nature, the New York Film Festival is always slanted towards American filmmakers, despite its first-class international selections. But as Benjamin Strong explains, the 45th annual edition includes uncommonly strong autumnal entries from Hollywood elders Brian De Palma and Sidney Lumet. Fanzine gives you a full report on the festival.
Oscar Agonistes: The 2007 Academy Awards Take 2
Benjamin Strong
02.26.07
Scorsese scored one finally, but give some props to the departed, the deceased (not the film) that is, like Robert Altman, Ben Strong says about this year's politically tame Oscar ceremony. Also be sure to check out Kevin Killian's Oscar coverage.
Oscar Goes Green: The 2007 Academy Awards
Kevin Killian
02.26.07
With no real horse races this year at the Academy Awards, Killian finds quite a bit to be grumpy about. Also be sure to check out Benjamin Strong's Oscar coverage.
That Odd-looking Object of Desire
Jon Frosch
11.04.06
Jon Frosch totally has a thing for Charlotte Gainsbourg, who stars in Michel Gondry's newest film, The Science of Sleep, which may win the award for cutest movie of the year. There's something about her that you can't put your finger on... Jon Frosch happily takes the case.
Video Killed the Film Director
Benjamin Strong
10.08.06
David Lynch's Inland Empire is his most enigmatic movie yet. And it's our first masterpiece of the DV era. It will be screening tonight, Monday October 8th at the New York Film Festival.
Alida Valli, Farewell Valli
Kevin Killian
09.29.06
If nothing else, Fanzine has no shortage of writers with encyclopedic knowledge of the movie industry over the last century. Kevin Killian returns to Fanzine with a piece on Alida Valli, via Glenn Ford. Trademark Killian writing here—fast paced and entertaining with an incredible detail. My favorite line: "It's like she ordered two hams, and here they are."
A Cinema of Poverty: an interview with Caveh Zahedi
Gean Moreno
09.11.06
One of the first things I saw from Caveh Zahedi was a clip of him trying to convince Will Oldham to do mushrooms with him. Later, I saw a video-still of Oldham laughing wildly and driving through the woods in what looks like a fancy go-kart. It wouldn't be the only time Zahedi documented psychedelic indulgences, but there's more to his films than just tripping out. Gean Moreno interviews the no-budget filmmaker about confession, fandom, and divine intervention.
Changing Times: a film by Andre Techine
Jon Frosch
08.03.06
Jon Frosch brings us the work of André Téchiné, a French filmmaker we should all probably know by now, but probably don't. Frosch reviews Téchiné's latest film Changing Times, featuring Gérard Depardieu and the ever timeless Catherine Deneuve.
Modern Life is Rubbish: Antonioni on DVD
Benjamin Strong
06.23.06
Finally...Why does it take so damn long to get the whole oeuvre of the best filmmakers out there on DVD (think David Lynch for instance?). Are they waiting on Blu-Ray? In any case at least The Passenger, one of Michelangelo Antonioni's classics, has finally arrived, and Benjamin Strong has been itching to give the whole bunch a wrap up. With focus on the Italian's gorgeous mise-en-scene, read and enjoy, then hit up Blockbusters, get your Netflix cue in order, or better, support your local independent movie store ... mmmm ... popcorn, deserves the non-microwave kind.
Titles a la Francaise
Jon Frosch
06.20.06
Jon Frosch is a new writer for Fanzine and he explains France's insidious plot to stereotype the children of America by retitling French releases of Hollywood films according to their whims. It might be lost in translation or maybe we were justified in the whole Freedom Fries affair. Either way, something is going on...
High School Musical: a review
Kevin Killian
03.28.06
So you think the movie musical is dead? What about the made-for-TV musical? Kevin Killian takes on Disney's High School Musical.
Oscar's Grouch: Robert Altman Takes His Like A Lamb
Benjamin Strong
03.06.06
Well, everyone was expecting fireworks, the Michael Moore moment of 2006, but the 81 year old lion laid down with the lambs on Oscar night, and just promised more work to come.
Oscar Nosedive
Kevin Killian
03.06.06
Did Jack Nicholson steal an Oscar again (like Jack Palance did in 1992)? Kevin Killian is shocked by Crash's upset over Brokeback Mountain at the Academy Awards Ceremony, and a tad bit perplexed over other happenings.
Review: Who Gets To Call It Art
Paddy Johnson
02.06.06
Peter Rosen's film looks at the New York art world of the 1960's, focussing on art connoisseur and critic Henry Geldzahler...perhaps a tad too much.
Son of Kong
Benjamin Strong
01.15.06
Strong, a film buff reared on late 70's blockbusters, questions Peter Jackson's "purist" remake of the 1933 original. He also posits which one of the 3 Kongs is more relevant to this day and age, coming to his answer through a personal reflection on family, violence and refuge.
Review: Firefly and Serenity
Kevin Killian
11.09.05
Buffy and Angel fan Kevin Killian takes on the last two projects of "the affable megalomaniac" Joss Whedon.
John Wayne Flying High
Kevin Killian
09.15.05
In Killian's 3rd Film World Entry, he is pleased to find more John Wayne being smartly released before The Duke's demographic base dies off.
Profile: Tura Satana
Kevin Killian
08.19.05
Awestruck by Russ Meyer's quick mouthed vixen, Kevin Killian finds that sometimes when it comes to meeting a film goddess, timing is everything
Charlie Chan on Boot DVD
Kevin Killian
07.21.05
Author Kevin Killian begins his column FILM WORLD by trying to watch every pirate Charlie Chan film on DVD (all 42), and in the process comes to some startling Freudian conclusions! Don't miss seeing Kevin see the unseeable.
White Girl Under Asian Neon
Samantha Culp
07.21.05
Rounding out this month's occidental perspectives on Asian film, Samantha Culp finds herself ever more like a koi in a tank, oggled and scrutinized because of the popularity and frustrating legacy of Lost In Translation