Blog Archives
Overlooking The Shining
Every now and then I try to make my list of the ten best films of all time, but the best I’ve been able to do is to come up with my favorite films by my favorite directors. Stanley Kubrick has lots of great movies, and they’re all worth watching over and over again. That [...]
Celebrating Pop
Iggy Pop released Post Pop Depression last year, claiming that it would be his last album. Next month, Pop celebrates his 70th birthday. Unlike with his buddy Bowie, we have a chance to celebrate Pop’s music while the man himself is still here to enjoy it. Yesterday I found this fun rundown of Pop’s 18 [...]
Sunshine Supermen
I just watched the The Sunshine Makers documentary. The 2015 flick tells the story of two idealistic young men in the 1960′s. The pair couldn’t be more different, but they both shared a common goal: to manufacture and distribute a massive amount of LSD, thoroughly convinced that the insights provided by the drug would create [...]
Kinski’s Beast
I saw a preview screening of Disney’s new live-action Beauty and the Beast film based on their classic 1991 animated adaptation of the 18th century fairy tale. Fans of the Disney cartoon will find a lot to like here. It’s not as good or as groundbreaking as the animated movie, but it does justice to [...]
Darko, Darker
I just read an article about Donnie Darko being re-released in 4K later this year. It might be fun to see that flick — and hear that soundtrack — in a proper theater as many of us only discovered the movie after its original theatrical flop. Here’s a look back at the film and a [...]
GoNY 15
When Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York debuted in 2002, I didn’t go to see it right away, and when I finally did I remember feeling like it seemed sort of silly, and that Cameron Diaz was terrible. Diaz is still a weak link for me, but a recent article on Medium got me interested [...]
Ra-Ra-Rafelson
Bob Rafelson directed some of the best films during the most important period in movies: flicks like Five Easy Pieces and The King of Marvin Gardens guarantee the director’s inclusion among the best of the New Hollywood auteurs, and his experimental send-up of The Monkees, Head, makes him a mad genius for the ages. Rafelson [...]
Shepard’s Heaven
I’ve been on a bit of a Sam Shepard jag lately, probably because I’ve been thinking a lot about what distinguishes the experience of theater from other performance arts or even movies and television. Here’s a great little interview I found featuring an unusually open and generous Shepard talking about director Terrence Malick, and the [...]
Desperate Waters
Another post celebrating the movies of 1977, here’s John Waters’ Desperate Living — an experimental fairy tale that according to Rotten Tomatoes features Waters’ penchant for “nauseating set-pieces, such as a transsexual lesbian having her new penis cut off with scissors and fed to a dog, women being fed live cockroaches, and Peggy being assaulted [...]
