Blog Archives
Nashville Film Festival Part I
I’ve been spending the last few days checking out various selections at the Nashville film festival. My assistant, Antonia Oakes, came up with a preliminary itinerary of films to which I’ve added a few of my own choices. The flicks I’ve seen so far highlight various countercultures and outsider aesthetics in one way or another. [...]
Going, Going, Gonzo!
Fear and Loathing On the Road to Hollywood is a documentary featuring writer Hunter S. Thompson and artist Ralph Steadman on a road trip to Tinsel Town. Also known as Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision, the Documentary Heaven site has the skinny… A fascinating, 30 year old BBC documentary on the Good Doctor and Ralph [...]
War on Whistleblowers
I enjoyed watching the Oscars the other night — it’s silly and stilted, the jokes bomb and the music sucks. That said, I love movies and there are always at least a few flicks in the mix that are brilliant or moving or both. The best film I saw last year was Birdman, and while [...]
Addressing the Academy…
OK, so back in the day I did some live blogging during the Oscars. Tonight I’m going to watch the broadcast while listening to the commentary from On Cinema at the Cinema. I’m at my girlfriend’s house helping her get some dinner together and editing some photos and notes I took tonight at a community [...]
Jodorowsky’s Poetic Money
Alejandro Jodorowsky is one of my favorite filmmakers, but that won’t come as a surprise to anyone who follows my posts. I’ve seen all of the master’s films and was particularly excited by last year’s release of both The Dance of Reality and the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune. The former was Jodo’s most recent feature film [...]
Wild at Heart at 25
This year we celebrate the 25th anniversary of my favorite David Lynch film, Wild at Heart. Released in 1990, Wild tells the tale of Sailor and Lula, a red-hot couple who are reunited when Sailor is released from prison. The pair take off on a cross-country road trip that turns into a journey that resembles [...]
Amerikan Apocalypse
Religion is all fun and games until someone takes their mythology too literally and then takes it to the squad car, the pulpit or the White House. It’s fun to make fun of fundamentalism, but when it comes to The Apocalypse, these playas ain’t playin’. The Daily Beast has the bad news… It’s the end [...]
Pretty Pictures: Lynch and Burroughs
In 1963, William S. Burroughs wrote down his photographic manifesto: “Take. Rearrange. Take.” For Burroughs, photography wasn’t an art form so much as it was a weapon he employed to disrupt time. Ideas about the interactions between time, space, words and images will be familiar to any reader of Burroughs’ works, but it’s less likely [...]
Tesla’s Secret
While David Bowie’s portrayal of Nikola Tesla in The Prestige is still my favorite on-screen depiction of the famous mad scientist, this 1980 production from Yugoslavia is an ambitious attempt at bringing Tesla’s tale to the cinema, and Orson Welles’ turn as J.P. Morgan is worth the price of admission. Here’s the Wiki… The Secret [...]
Santa VS Satan
Released in 1959, Santa Claus was billed as bringing viewers “an echanting world of make-believe.” In reality it’s known in some circles as the worst movie of all time, and was even given the MST3K treatment for its ridiculous story about a grumpy, kinda scary Santa battling an inept demon. Here’s the breakdown from the [...]
