Author Archives: Joe Nolan
Afghanistan and the West
“Increasingly, we live in a world where nothing makes any sense — events come and go like waves of a fever leaving us confused and uncertain. Those in power tell stories to help us make sense of the complexity of reality. But, those stories are increasingly unconvincing and hollow. This is a film about why [...]
Celebrating Ginsberg
Following last month’s release of The Essential Ginsberg and the author’s June 3 birthday, here is the impressionistic biography An Elegy for Allen Ginsberg which tells the story of the Allen Ginsberg’s life from the point of view of his final days… Stay Awake! Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos [...]
V Turns X
This year we celebrate the tenth birthday of the film V for Vendetta, based on the classic graphic novel by Alan Moore. Moore is more than cantankerous when addressing the cinematic adaptations of his work, and movies like Watchmen, From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen explain his ill-temper. That said, for me, V [...]
The James Dean Story
Nashville’s Belcourt Theatre kicks off its massive Robert Altman retrospective this weekend. The series includes 19 features and 3 short films, but completists might notice that one of the director’s earliest projects didn’t make the cut. For me, the most important period in American culture is that window during the 1940′s and 1950′s when European [...]
The Shining at 35
This spring my favorite Stanley Kubrick film is celebrating its 35th birthday. The Shining was beat up pretty badly when it debuted in 1980 — Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall’s performances were panned and Kubrick was held responsible. Of course, years later, the film is considered to be a classic by the master. In celebration, [...]
Breathless 55
Fifty-five years ago this spring, in 1960, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless changed cinema forever. Breathless wasn’t the first film of the French New Wave, but it was the first popular hit that brought the energy of the new filmmaking to a global audience, impacting American cinema and paving the way for our own New American Cinema [...]
The Future Circa 1972
It’s common for folks like myself and the readers of this blog to frequent sites and browse magazines filled with articles about leaps in information processing, advances in artificial intelligence and the future of human/machine interfacing. It’s the 21st century after all, and even though many of our institutions and officials are woefully culture-bound to [...]
Happy Birthday, Mr. T
Celebrating Mr. T’s birthday on May 21, 1952 here’s a bad ass documentary about the janitor turned muscleman/actor. I pity the fool who doesn’t watch this film… Stay Awake! Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Cinema posts.
X90
Celebrating the 90th birthday of Malcolm X who was born on May 19, 1925, here’s the full PBS documentary Malcolm X: Make it Plain… And for good measure, here’s one of my favorite films of all time… Stay Awake! Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here [...]
