When it comes to unappealing couples that have been featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, Arch Hall Jr. and Marilyn Manning are near the top of the heap. Their appearance in
Eegah provided rich fodder for Joel and the bots. And yet, only one year after the release of
Eegah, Hall and Manning would find themselves together again in radically different roles.
[more inside]
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI
on Jun 17, 2013 -
15 comments
The Vampires, a secret federation of thieves and killers, rule the Paris underworld through intimidation, murder, and a certain diabolic je ne sais quoi. After the headless body of the police inspector in charge of the Vampire investigation turns up in a swamp, dauntless reporter Philipe Guérande steps up his efforts to bring the gang to justice. But is he equal to the schemes of the protean Grand Vampire and his lieutenant, the cat burglar, assassin, and sometime torch singer called Irma Vep? And can anyone hope to prevail against the rogue criminal Moréno and the unearthly power of his gaze?
Les Vampires (1915-1916),
Louis Feuillade's six and a half hour film serial, still communicates the nerve, pace, and delirium that inspired Lang, Hitchcock, Assayas and Maddin. Here are
all ten episodes of this
"supreme delight of cinema." Three more of Feuillade's best serials wait below the cut.
[more inside]
posted by Iridic
on May 31, 2013 -
12 comments
Do you turn off Old Yeller before the end so you can pretend that he lived a long and happy life? Did a cute pet on a movie poster make you think it would be a fun comedy but it turned out to be a pet-with-a-terminal-illness tearjerker instead? Are you unable to enjoy the human body count in a horror movie because you're wondering whether the dog's going to kick the bucket? Have you ever Googled "Does the [dog/cat/horse/Klingon targ] die in [movie title]?"
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then welcome -
DoestheDogDie.com is here for you!
[more inside]
posted by jedicus
on May 29, 2013 -
142 comments
Donald Richie , American author, journalist, critic and expert on Japan, dies at 88.
Smilingly excluded here in Japan, politely stigmatised, I can from my angle attempt only objectivity, since my subjective self will not fit the space I am allotted . . . how fortunate I am to occupy this niche with its lateral view. In America I would be denied this place. I would live on the flat surface of a plain. In Japan, from where I am sitting, the light falls just right – I can see the peaks and valleys, the crags and crevasses.
-- from The Japan Journals, 1947-2004
[more inside]
posted by Ice Cream Socialist
on Feb 19, 2013 -
23 comments
The Q&A With Jeff Goldsmith is an irregularly released podcast where Mr. Goldsmith interviews, at length (each episode runs an hour or more), working Hollywood and foreign screenwriters. The most recent episode is a panel conversation with the year's Oscar-nominated screenwriters. You can listen to the podcasts on his site or subscribe in iTunes or on Android.
Goldsmith is also the publisher of the terrific screenwriting magazine
Backstory--currently only available for the iPad but coming (eventually) to the web and Android. You can download the first issue (which is wonderful, and contains full length scripts along with the interviews and stories) for free.
posted by dobbs
on Feb 7, 2013 -
5 comments
At a time when the Lord of the Rings didn't exist as a film
or a book trilogy, Fritz Lang created the 5-hour-long film
Die Nibelungen (The Nibelungs, 1924), based on the 13th-century poem Die Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs). A short clip of
Siegfried slaying the dragon was used as a trailer for the restored edition of the film.
[more inside]
posted by ersatz
on Feb 3, 2013 -
28 comments
"There are reasons why this film is obscure. It is, in the most charitable possible evaluation, a mess: Bowie has described it as "my 32 Elvis films rolled into one." And yet life on that ever-dwindling island of not-on-region-one DVD films is a harsh fate for any film and particularly for this one, which is at least as interesting as its cast suggests and a good deal more. You don't need to dig out the VHS player to watch Mick Jagger run an agency of gigolos in The Man From Elysian Fields—you shouldn't have to do so to watch Bowie play one. "
David Bowie's Lost 70s-era Weimar Berlin Movie: Just a Gigalo.
posted by The Whelk
on Feb 2, 2013 -
17 comments
Between Peter Jackson’s penchant for cartoonish unserious gore and Bob McCarron’s off-screen makeup effects manipulations, Braindead
achieves something that approaches inspired genius in the heretofore unknown artform of human carnage. The film is filled with moments of joyous slapstick tableaux... And then there is that moment where Braindead
finally breaks through to achieve a transcendentally surreal glory of excess where Tim Balme wades into battle against the zombies armed with a lawnmower, drenching an entire room in showers of blood. (Braindead
holds the record for the greatest amount of artificial blood ever used in a film). The film is a work of perverse genius. -
Richard Scheib
posted by Egg Shen
on Dec 8, 2012 -
41 comments
The Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's Film Review YouTube channel has a lot of videos of film reviews from the livestream of their
BBC radio show and podcast, going back about five years. They are sorted by
genre, film rating, geographic origin and one special category,
Classic Kermodean Rants, which includes his reviews of
Transformers: Dark of the Moon,
Sex and the City 2, in which he ends up sing-shouting The Internationale, and
Angels and Demons, which woke a
man from a coma (mp3, story starts at 5:10, and it is followed up
here, beginning at 5:30).
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 10, 2012 -
32 comments
During the Golden Age of Hollywood and until 1967, mainstream movie studios were
banned by the Production Code from depicting taboo topics like drug addiction, explicit murder and venereal disease, or even showing explicit nudity. But in the 1930's and 1940's, films marketed as "educational" could and did fly under the radar, and three of the best known 'educational' propaganda exploitation films are:
Sex Madness (1935),
Reefer Madness (1936) and
The Cocaine Fiends (1938).
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Oct 15, 2012 -
30 comments
His official title is continuity database administrator for the Lucas Licensing arm of Lucasfilm — which means Chee keeps meticulous track of not just the six live-action [Star Wars] movies but also cartoons, TV specials, scores of videogames and reference books, and hundreds of novels and comics.
posted by Egg Shen
on Sep 27, 2012 -
65 comments
[all links may contain SPOILERS] Antonioni's unique style works beautifully in The Passenger
. The dream-like long takes, especially the final seven minute one where the dusty town square is seen through the barred window of Locke's hotel room—evokes a world that he is barred from. There is nothing romantic or sentimental about the space that we see, but it conveys a sense of an ongoing life that Locke has chosen to retreat from. There is also Antonioni's eye for aesthetic detail-for whitewashed walls of buildings, and vividly colored backgrounds like yellow doors and red car seats. He is a director of great formal rigor and beauty, whose style effortlessly suits his vision. The slow rhythm of the film may put off some viewers, but it forces them to be more observant, and understand there is nothing accidental in the images that Antonioni constructs. -
Leonard Quart [more inside]
posted by Egg Shen
on Sep 9, 2012 -
8 comments
Once Upon A Time In America [auto-play audio] is the last of a string of films about the past and future of a country [Sergio Leone] knew first and best from the B-movies and yellowing paperbacks America sent abroad. For this 1984 swan song, Leone broke a directing hiatus that stretched back a decade, and turned away from Westerns toward another quintessentially American genre. His fantasia of gangland themes and images barely works by the standards of a gangster film, but succeeds brilliantly by those of epic poetry. -
Keith Phipps [all links may contain spoilers] [more inside]
posted by Egg Shen
on Aug 25, 2012 -
19 comments
