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Trunkers on Speed: Death in Small Doses
“The Pill Dragnet! Blasting the Blackest Market of all…the girl peddlers of the deadliest thrill for sale!” – Tagline for DEATH IN SMALL DOSES (1957). In the grand tradition of other B-movie crime...
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Adventures in DVD Publishing
Did you know that releasing a film on DVD is called authoring? Or, that a company or organization that releases films on DVD is a publisher? I used to be an editor for a book publisher, and I always...
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Film Comment Selects 2012
The 12th edition of Film Comment Selects concluded this past week at Lincoln Center, having screened 32 films from all over the cultural map. The stoned dropout to the New York Film Festival’s Ivy...
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I Love That Movie So Much I Don’t Ever Want to See it Again!
In 1990, in a basement apartment in Washington, D.C., I returned home from work with the evening already planned. I remember the night like it was yesterday. My local PBS station was showing the 1985...
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Spy Games: The Prize (1963)
For my third installment of Spy Games I thought I’d take a look at Mark Robson’s THE PRIZE (1963) starring Paul Newman, Elke Sommer, Edward G. Robinson and Diane Baker. Last year The Warner Archives...
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ZZZZAAT: On the Somnambulistic Pleasures of the Atomic Monster Catfish
“Nothing at all like the walking catfish… but beautiful!” RHS: Morlock cousin Paul Gaita steps up this week for a review of the new DVD/Blu-ray combo pack of ZAAT! (aka THE BLOOD WATERS OF DR. Z). I...
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Detour’s Detour
Once upon a time there was a motion picture called Detour (1945). It was a small, wiry thing, gristle and bone. It would have been the runt of any litter, except for the sad fact that it came from a...
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SXSW 2012
SXSW was founded in 1986 as a music forum and later, in 1994, added film and multimedia events to their yearly shindig. Attracting, as it does, artists from all walks of life introduces new elements...
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Working Class Warriors: Down and Out
Years ago I was a student of art history at Ohio State University where I discovered the boxing paintings of Thomas Eakins in a class on American art. Eakins, who broke with academic conventions and...
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The Films of Robert Mulligan, Part 4
This the final post in my series on the films of Robert Mulligan. Click for parts one, two and three. As much as Robert Mulligan is associated with the South, for To Kill a Mockingbird and The Man in...
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Favorite Director? Which Period?
Artists of all stripes (writers, painters, filmmakers, musicians) tend to go through different periods of growth. This can produce smooth transitions or jarring discontinuity depending on the artist...
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The King of Comedy: Jerry Lewis at 86
On Friday, March 16th, Jerry Lewis will be celebrating his 86th birthday. Jerry’s been on my mind a lot lately so I didn’t want to let the occasion pass without making note of it. I love Jerry Lewis...
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Looking after women
All the stuff in the news lately about a woman’s reproductive abilities and responsibilities and the impact these capabilities have on society in general and men in particular have got me thinking...
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The Great Ones: On & Off the Set Photographs
The celebrated photographers Ruth Harriet Louise and George Hurrell are partly responsible for creating the mystique and allure that surrounded the first major stars of the studio system. Their...
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Blake Edwards’ Sunset
The recent success of Hugo and The Artist has sparked interest in the silent era and film history in the press and among the public. This attention has already waned, but, in an era when silent film is...
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Jim Brown, Movie Star
Jim Brown retired from the National Football League in 1965, after nine seasons of transcendent athleticism. “For mercurial speed, airy nimbleness, and explosive violence in one package of undistilled...
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I’m William Holden. Who are You?
Who am I? As a movie actor, I mean. For years it was Robert De Niro but then, slowly, it shifted away. The fit wasn’t right. He’s too quiet and his characters too crazy. No, no, it wasn’t him. I...
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The 2012 San Francisco Fashion Film Festival
San Francisco is home to many notable film festivals but next month the City bay the Bay will play host to a new noteworthy event, The San Francisco Fashion Film Festival. This style-conscious affair...
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Master Class: Jonathan Rigby’s Studies in Terror reviewed!
Jonathan Rigby’s Studies in Terror: Landmarks of Horror Cinema (Signum Books, 2011) follows his genre overviews, English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema (Reynolds & Hearn, 2002) and American...
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa is the Cure
One day, Japanese pulp cinema auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa was watching TV. A killer had been apprehended, and the TV newscasters mobbed the perp’s neighbors to ask all the familiar questions: what was he...
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