The Felliniesque Century
Consistently regarded as one of the world’s very greatest filmmakers, Federico Fellini is a daunting subject. Developing a bombastic and playful style, he is one of the few who can […]
Category Archives: Film
“He Doesn’t Need You; He’s Got His Memories” — Selznick’s and Hitchcock’s Rebecca
David O. Selznick brought Alfred Hitchcock to Hollywood in 1939 and promptly got the British master his first and only Best Picture win at the Academy Awards. That film, Rebecca (1940) […]
Double Feature: Zora Neale Hurston’s Ethnographic Films and Daughters of the Dust
Zora Neale Hurston, a prominent novelist of the Harlem Renaissance, was also something of an amateur filmmaker, documenting everyday life and work in the American South as part of anthropological […]
The Class of 2020: My Favorite Movies
The Distracted Boyfriend meme is nowhere more applicable than in the life of a cinephile. Whatever movie I plan on seeing next, the thought will always occur to me before […]
Double Feature: The Devil Is a Woman and That Obscure Object of Desire
In addition to a pair of silent film adaptations and a 1959 Julien Duvivier film starring Brigitte Bardot, the two most notable cinematic takes on the 1898 Pierre Louÿs novel La […]
Double Feature: The Big Lebowski and The Beach Bum
“Sometimes there’s a man — well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.” Thus the voiceover narration in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski […]
Toy Story: “The Boy Is Mine”
I’m still not entirely sure if editing videos will become a second avocation for me, much less replace this first one. But a few days ago, this idea came to […]
Dawn by Electrician: The Constructed World of Guys and Dolls
In times like these, it may sound redundant — to say nothing of that old bugbear, “escapist” — to retreat to the heightened artifice of the studio-bound Hollywood musical. Globetrotting […]
Double Feature: The Terminator and RoboCop
There are several interesting ways of contrasting these two landmark films about cybernetic organisms, or cyborgs. One could play up the dystopian angle, thinking of RoboCop as the Brazil (or […]
Tracing the Influence of Grand Illusion
Earlier this month, the Oscars happened, at which, to my great surprise and delight, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite took home Best Picture in addition to three other awards. It bested eight competitors, […]
