Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin Documentary
Pitchfork Classics talks to the Flaming Lips about their 1999 masterpiece, The Soft Bulletin.
Big Data And Why Spielberg Don’t Know Dick
A problem with philosophically charged reviews of sci-fi films is that they often treat technology as either an extension of an ancient question or secondary to the quandary at hand. Upon a recent viewing of Steven Spielberg’s dystopian thriller Minority Report, based on the Philip K. Dick short story, my online hunt for a review venturing beyond [...]
Zero Dark Thirty Waterboards the Facts
Since the dawn of American cinema historical events have been followed with jingoistic white propaganda films. Just to name a few: WWI had Charlie Chaplin’s The Bond. WWII had Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Casablanca, and Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 rightfully belongs on the list. Zero Dark Thirty is the latest such venture. Director Kathryn Bigalow [...]
ANGELA CARTER’S THE PASSION OF NEW EVE
Angela Carter’s anti-mythic The Passion of New Eve (1977) is a novel that, for me, resides in easy company with Jean-Luc Godard’s new wave Weekend (1967) and Derek Jarman’s post-punk Jubilee (1978). Visually, with its hysterical sexually dimorphic revolutionaries, graffiti, machine guns, dystopian landscapes, surgical Sadomasochism and improvised guerrilla skirmishes The Passion of New Eve [...]
Jones the Cat and the Litigation of ‘Alien’ and ‘The Terminator’
Of all the enigmas of Ridley Scott’s magnificent film Alien (1979), one with the capacity to genuinely cause fans and critics to sink into dejected catalepsy or fevered rage is the presence aboard the space vessel Nostromo – and the narrative consequences of – Jones the cat. My purpose here is to close decades of [...]
Treme’s New Character Based on A. C.Thompson and his Invistigative Story: Katrina’s Hidden Race War
Tonight’s season premiere of Treme, written by David Simon and Anthony Bourdain, featured a new character based on Pro Publica journalist A.C. Thompson. In 2009 Thompson published an investigative story in The Nation on police officers who where ordered to shoot looters. In the wake of Katrina officers not only opened fire killing unarmed civilians in [...]
Woody Allen Q & A with William F. Buckley
December 27th, 1967, Woody Allen hosted a televised variety show titled “Kraft Music Hall: Woody Allen looks at 1967″‘ Despite having little creative control over the content of the sketches, hilariousness ensues as conservative intellectual Buckley sits down with Allen to field questions from the audience. Allen’s response to Israel giving back the West Bank [...]
No Sex Please, We’re Nerds: The Gernsback Continuum and the Neutering of Science Fiction
The sexual repression of science fiction began in what is now Tribeca, New York. More precisely: the wormhole, the vortex of this Bermuda Triangle of missing sex was located at 53 Park Place, New York, NY, the editorial address of Hugo Gernsback and Dr. Thomas O’Conor Sloane. It was from this address that Gernsback launched [...]
Ridley Scott’s ‘Prometheus’: A Personal Boycott
Although I appreciate that I will not be missed, and I may live to regret this anticipatory despair, the following states the rationale for my personal boycott of Ridley Scott’s new Alien-derived film Prometheus. According to Scott, interviewed for The Hollywood Reporter: “NASA and the Vatican agree that [it is] almost mathematically impossible that we [...]
P.G. Wodehouse Documentary
Wodehouse’s plots were almost always the same: The nescient Bertie Wooster finds himself tangled in a debacle of his own underpinning, until, through a series of well foreshadowed events, his omnipotent valet Jeeves saves the day. After thirty years of novels neither character undergoes much development. The novels rarely delve into the contemporary issues of [...]
Bill Cunningham New York
(published, Dec. 15 2011, in the North Coast Journal) It’s good to know there are people like Bill Cunningham in the world. He’s happy. He’s kind and sincere. He has built a life doing what he loves and is acknowledged internationally for it. Richard Press’ charming and emotive documentary, Bill Cunningham New York, is a beautiful [...]
Up With Chris Hayes
Washington D.C. editor of the Nation and frequent substitute for Rachael Maddow, Chris Hayes, finally has his own show. UP with Chris Hayes airs Saturday’s at 7 AM ET and Sunday’s at 8 AM (that’s 4 AM and 5 AM here on the west coast). Yes, it’s an insanely early time to get up just [...]
Mobile Motion Pictures Featured at the 2011 Edinburgh Film Festival
The 65th Edinburgh Film Festival, in partnership with Nokia, featured film makers who shot their films entirely on phones. Eight pocket-sized productions shot on the Nokia N8 cell phone got a big screen premiere. The beautiful short film, Splitscreen: A Love Story, featuring a split screen narrative of Paris, London and New York, stunning cinematography [...]
