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Sunday, January 30, 2011

Along the Scenic Route

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Y'know, I'm not even sure of where to begin with Stagecoach . It's one of those great movies that seems pretty straightforward ...
9 comments:
Saturday, January 29, 2011

“Mister, I was made for it...”

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Film noir and the horror movie are kissing cousins. Both derive from the Gothic novel. Both derive their visual sensibilities from German ex...
3 comments:
Friday, January 28, 2011

Feet of Clay

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I've been looking for a way to write about Mary and Max (2009, directed by Adam Elliot) for a few weeks now. It's a movie that seem...
2 comments:
Thursday, January 27, 2011

Mubi Roulette

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So I was poking around on Mubi--formerly The Auteurs--today, and I was struck by the complete randomness of how it displays my preferences. ...
3 comments:
Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Because a Boy's Best Friend Is His Mother

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1968 was a watershed year for horror movies. Two events occurred that would shape horror movies for decades to come. The first was the rele...
Sunday, January 23, 2011

Götterdämmerung

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Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I recollect that the "look" of contemporary depictions of the middle ages originates with...
7 comments:
Friday, January 21, 2011

A Tale of Two Cities

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The original film version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974, directed by Joseph Sargent) is a pretty good genre piece that benefi...
2 comments:
Thursday, January 20, 2011

The Spice Must Flow

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David Lynch's 1984 version of Dune is a magnificent folly. You can see the vast resources lavished on the screen in the costumes and t...
11 comments:
Monday, January 17, 2011

The Same, Only Different

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I was reading some of the reviews of Different for Girls (1996, directed by Richard Spence) last night after I finished watching the movie,...
5 comments:

The Darkseid of the Street

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I have a bit of a beef with the animated Superman/Batman: Apocalypse (2010, directed by Lauren Montgomery). This can be summarized by the d...
1 comment:
Sunday, January 16, 2011

Food Porn

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One of the things that really bothered me about The Incredibles , Brad Bird's first feature for Pixar, was the muddled Randianism it tak...
4 comments:
Friday, January 14, 2011

If You Can't Stand the Heat...

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It's always a shock for me to see some of Glenn Ford's darker performances. I mean, my image of Ford is as Jonathan Kent, Clark Kent...
2 comments:
Tuesday, January 11, 2011

A Baker Street Irregular

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I have to admit that when I heard about the new BBC version of Sherlock Holmes--helpfully titled Sherlock --I was dubious. I mean, at this p...
4 comments:
Monday, January 10, 2011

Put the Effing Lotion in the Basket!

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I'm in low-content mode until I finish watching the first season of Sherlock (review to come in a day or two). In lieu of an actual pos...
2 comments:
Friday, January 07, 2011

Core Values

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When I was in grade school, the Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations that AIP and Amicus were putting out had a sky-high "gotta see that!...
1 comment:
Thursday, January 06, 2011

Witching Hour

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During my various trips through the horror blogosphere, I always half-expect to stumble across a press release for some new film version of ...
2 comments:
Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Puzzle Box

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I was a drama geek in high school. I'm actually amazed that I didn't follow that into some kind of career in the theater (or film, n...
4 comments:
Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Broken Hearts

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One of my activist friends sat me down this weekend to show me Quanto Dura o Amor? (2009, directed by Roberto Moreira). I like that title b...
4 comments:
Monday, January 03, 2011

Late Capitalism, Revisited

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The wreckage of late capitalism is on display in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's creepy family drama, Tokyo Sonata (2008). One gets the feeling from...
7 comments:
Sunday, January 02, 2011

Through a Glass, Darkly

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"So why do you think this show is so popular?" my long-suffering partner asked while we were watching Dexter . "Is it because...
2 comments:
Friday, December 31, 2010

Zed's Dead, Baby

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The first film I saw in 2010 was Avatar . Somewhere, somehow, I got it in my head that the last movie I should watch in 2010 should be Zardo...
7 comments:
Thursday, December 30, 2010

Generation Gap

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You can see the end of the franchise in the broad outlines of Star Trek: Generations (1994, directed by David Carson). With the original ca...
3 comments:
Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Conflicts of Interest

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If you want to know what a director actually does, and if you want to know what distinguishes a "good" movie from a "bad...
2 comments:
Monday, December 27, 2010

Something like a list...

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I'm not constitutionally a list-maker. Lists usually imply a hierarchy, and like Francois Truffaut, I abhor any kind of hierarchy in cin...
1 comment:

That Evening Redness in the West...

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Tone is everything. The Coen Brothers' new version of True Grit (2010) is largely the same movie as Henry Hathaway's 1970 version....
3 comments:
Sunday, December 26, 2010

Fear of Flying

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Snotty bourgeois college students have the life expectancy of a fruit fly, if you believe horror movies. Nuts with machetes, satanic cults, ...
Thursday, December 23, 2010

Tiger by the Tail

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It's movies like The Ticket of Leave Man (1937, directed by George King again) that suggest why Tod Slaughter is largely forgotten rela...
2 comments:
Tuesday, December 21, 2010

A Poor Man's Moriarty

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I don't know if Tod Slaughter ever played Professor Moriarty on stage, but he should have. The role of a criminal mastermind is exactly ...