Clik here to view.
Plus One
Mickey One (Arthur Penn, 1965) - Narratively elliptical American New Wave stuff; overwrought in this regard but otherwise produces some pretty interesting images and textures.
View Article"I'm Your Shusher-man"
In recent weeks, think pieces and blog posts have spurred each other on in the debate about the cinema as public space. Is it too distracting to have people talking, texting, websurfing, taking phone...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clik here to view.
"Bigger Than Yours"
Across the Pacific (John Huston, 1942) - Functional. Several actors reunited from The Maltese Falcon. In general I think Huston got better later in his career, rather than early in it ...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Timeframe
(on James Benning's Nightfall, 2012)I appreciated the chance to see this, as digital Benning is a blind spot of mine. At first I was unsure about the efficacy of the project: a single 97-minute take...
View ArticleClik here to view.
"Good Honest Riff-Raff Like You"
Malaya (Richard Thorpe, 1949) - actually a pretty decent, atmospheric bit of orientalist adventure. Doesn't push quite too heavily on cringe-inducing exotica, relative to other films of its time and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Taking Over
Torre Bela (Thomas Harlan, 1975) - Engrossing, engaged documentary of political protests, deliberations, and actions among a group of disenfranchised workers and farmers who take over a landowner's...
View ArticleTests of Time
One of my pet peeves when talking about different audiovisual media is when a critic - often, though not always, a skeptic of the medium in question - assumes that a particular, hegemonic mode of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Bad, Good, Old Ireland
Captain Lightfoot (Douglas Sirk, 1955) - What if, instead of melodramas, Sirk had made his name in Hollywood with period pieces? The last screengrab above: 'figures in a landscape.'
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Battleground
"There’s a literal inscription of the semiotics of global capitalism on the bodies of people who cannot appear otherwise. There’s a very interesting film that I’ve written a lot about by the Filipino...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Landscapes
La cicatrice intérieure (Philippe Garrel, 1972) - This classic is, of course, not only one of major films about pictorial scale and duration, but it also seems really resonant on a mythic level. Its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Spanish Vanguard
Acariño galaico (José Val del Omar, 1961) - One of the absolute great cinematic discoveries for me this year, albeit only on digital format, has been the work of Val del Omar. Techniques and subjects...
View ArticleTechnocracy
"If the "revolution of the government" is to start at each single individual, then this also requires a media technical infrastructure that anticipates, with the means of 1970, what is in great demand...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Akashic Record, Again
The Stone Tape (Peter Sasdy, 1972) - Intriguing major-minor telefilm from the UK, written by Nigel Kneale, with fascinating suggestive ideas.
View ArticleClik here to view.
Someday a Real Rain Will Come
The Beast of the City (Charles Brabin, 1932) - Some of those camera moves ...
View ArticleDo You Know That Feel, Bro?
On social media I saw someone share a post about a political topic (broadly defined). Someone else replied with a comment that - apparently - exhibited insufficient indignation, although the responding...
View Article