SIDE ORDERS #8

For this edition of the video roundup I call SIDE ORDERS, I've again fallen back on my love for the marriage of movies and music:The single best trailer this year was for Michael Haneke's stunning shot-by-shot remake of his 1990s classic Funny Games. This has the drive and flavor of a trailer for one of Kubrick's movies, right down to the choice of music, graphics, and shots. Alone, by itself,

Film #99: A Charlie Brown Christmas

The 99th film I'm profiling isn't at all a theatrical product--it was made for CBS in 1965. It has been repeated every Xmas for over 40 years, and must surely rank as one of the most watched (and treasured) examples of animation art ever produced. Thus I think it deserves to be ranked as one of my favorite films of all time.

A Charlie Brown Christmas, based of course on Charles Schulz's

I think of her as a cute 5 year old :)

Film #98: Little Women (1994)

It being Christmas Eve, 2008, I figured I'd offer up a recommendation for a holiday movie everyone should enjoy, but relatively few movie lovers ever site in this manner. Australian director Gillian Anderson delivered quite a lovely screen version of Louisa May Alcott's perennial classic Little Women in 1994, and though it's not a Christmas movie per se, it sure feels like one. In fact,

Merry Xmas!

These little things are just so fun to create! I'm gonna make more and more!

Film #97: Napoleon Dynamite

A reprint here of the interview Dark City Dame (of Noirish City fame) conducted with me in November regarding one of my favorite movies of the 2000s!DarkCityDame: Let me start off by asking you this question: why did you select the film Napoleon Dynamite to be #23 on your list of the top 30 films from this decade? Dean: It's really quite simple: no movie of the 2000s has made me laugh harder. I

What About The Honorary Awards?

As a ridiculously devout follower of the Oscars, I pay attention to the details. That means that I wonder, every annum, who's gonna win the Honorary Oscars AS WELL as them Golden Boys we all expect to be handed out year after year.

To wit: In 2004, I was surprised, but then really not so much so, when I predicted the winner of that year's Honorary Oscar to be the reliable producer/director/

Film #96: Oh How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning!

Max and Dave Fleischer were sibling animators who made film history with their long series of Betty Boop, Popeye, and Superman cartoons, and with their groundbreaking full-length 1939 movie Gulliver's Travels (the first non-Disney animated feature and the first film to use a process of animation called rotoscoping, based on tracings of live action images, later popularized further by 70s/80s-era

Dividers

I really like doing these divider things!

Sleep well, dear butterflies

Is it Winter break already?
Time flies, it seemed just like yesterday when I stumbled upon this place, dazed and confused.
My mind has cleared up a little though. Have a great Winter break, and come back in the Spring refreshed and rejuvenated!

My 20 Favorite Actresses

In taking Tony Dayoub of Cinema Viewfinder up on his invitation for me to join the 20 Favorite Actresses meme started by Nathaniel at Film Experience, I tried hard to balance my love of these ladies' acting ability equally with my adoration of their feminine wiles. I also attempted to make my list an appreciation of actresses from all different eras--from the 1920s to now. I think I've done

My 2009 Academy Award Predictions: round one

NOTE: I originally had THE DARK KNIGHT as a winner of 10 noms, including Best Picture, but I have recently vascillated back to my pre-awards season conviction that it's not yet time for a superhero movie to win a best pic nod (this got me into a lot of hot water with some of the more vociferous lovers of the Batman, who often confuse fan favoritism with award-worthiness). I was once convinced by

Film #95: The Brown Bunny

2003's The Brown Bunny, written and directed by the inimitable Vincent Gallo, is an even more significant achievement that his late-90s cult-hit debut Buffalo '66, which left many viewers stricken with its quiet yet demanding quirkiness. Like The Brown Bunny, it too told a lonely, needy story. But Gallo's newest and more resplendent work engraves into our subconcious the overcast feeling of a

Film #94: Grizzly Man

Werner Herzog’s 2005 documentary Grizzly Man somehow wasn't even nominated for the Academy Award taken home that year by another nature-centric movie called March of the Penguins. While I like them tuxedoed, flightless, Morgan Freeman-endorsed birds as much as the average bear, it doesn’t take a film expert to clue you in that Grizzly Man is the far more complex and superior movie. Yeah, man,

Film #93: Vera Drake

I’ve been a fan of the UK’s Mike Leigh ever since he delivered an incisive look at a working class love affair with High Hopes, back in the late 1980s. (I would consider that film his US breakthrough, even though he’d been making films in Britain since 1971’s Bleak Moments.) His is a unique voice on the world film scene, since he has almost exclusively focused his camera on Britain’s

Schin's Charms

I had too much fun making these charms and photographing them..
I'll have them up in my Etsy shop when I have more time to photograph the rest!

Persephone Destroys the Light

Finally, the painting is done. I'll probably tweak it around for the next few days, but I think I want to get started on a Christmas card or something.

The picture next to it is a beautiful poster for Wong Kar Wai's 2000 movie In The Mood For Love. At first the movie was just normal to me, but I found myself going back to it over and over again. I love the music (the movie soundtrack has inspired many of my recent paintings), colors, story, actors (so classy DX), fashion etc. It's a rather slow movie to digest, but I love painting while watching it <3
The Criterion Collection version has some pretty awesome deleted scenes and alternative endings that can give a wider perspective of the movie.

Persephone & Hades 2

This is turning out to be very fun to paint! I think in a way it is the theme that I am most comfortable with: romantic environments, pretty girls, flowing cloth, flowers, etc. I do so miss painting like this.

In other news, I'll be at Katsucon 15. Come see me at the Artist Alley on February 13-15 2009, at Hyatt Regency Crystal City, Arlington, VA. I'll post the table numbers once I get em.

For fun, I made an Etsy shop. I'll add more products and stuff later. God I love Etsy!! I just want to buy everything in there.

Persephone & Hades

New painting, Persephone and Hades. I always liked their story.. it's got all the cool things: God of the Underworld, innocent virgin girl who eventually turns into a fearsome 'Iron Queen' and earns the title 'She Who Destroys the Light' (damn!), estranged mother-in-laws, captivity, change of seasons and.. pomegranates. Just so much fun.

Still working on the bodies, I don't think I'll ever be happy with it...

SIDE ORDERS #7

This month, SIDE ORDERS begins with a vintage 1980 TBS late movie opening which stars my favorite theater in the United States, Atlanta's Plaza Theater (open since 1939 and still going strong). This is pure nostalgia for me, and a suitable sort of policy trailer / theater intro for the superlative movie scenes you're about to see!While working at the Plaza, I met Patrick Flynn. An accomplished

Popcorn

Finally Popcorn #1 is out, with my image Equus in it. The book is great quality, with a zillion awesome artworks and interviews inside. I can't stop flipping through it!
They used my old name 'Luciole' on it, and edited my blurb adding the 'stunning thing' *blush*. It was the silliest blurb too. Everyone listed their accomplishments and things, but I just wanted my platforms and bellbottoms..

Light 2

Must.. continue..

Film #92: Reds

Still pretty charming even now, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis arrived on TV in 1959. This black- and-white sitcom revolved around Dwayne Hickman as the girl-crazy title character, smitten most obsessively with blonde high school heartthrob Thalia Menniger (Tuesday Weld). And, for six episodes in 1960, on came this handsome dude playing Milton Armitage, Dobie's alpha dog rival for Thalia's

Film #91: The Dover Boys at Pimento University, or: The Rivals at Roquefort Hall

Warner Brothers animator extraordinaire Chuck Jones says that, after he and head animator Robert (Bobe) Cannon produced the groundbreaking 1942 cartoon The Dover Boys, he almost got fired from WB's Termite Terrace (the name for the WB animation house which included Frank Tashlin, Friz Freling, Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson and other WB-contracted animators). The wacked-out style of "smeared"

Film #90: Witness for the Prosecution

Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution, still remains one of the most utterly surprising and enthralling courtroom dramas ever made. Adapted from the Agatha Christie stage play by Wilder, Harry Kurnitz and Larry Marcus, the film stars a playful Charles Laughton as Sir Wilfred Roberts, a British barrister who, despite his ill health, is compelled to take on the case of a penniless drifter (

Film #89: Max

In this interview, conducted by the excellent Dark City Dame at Noirish City (where she's kindly invited me to discuss my thirty favorite movies of the 2000s all throughout the month of November 2008), we talk about the incredible film Max. Dean: Hi, Dame!! DarkCityDame: Hello! Dean, I’m glad that you’re able to join me for day 3 of our look at your countdown to number one of your 30 best films

Film #88: The Buddy Holly Story

Some people out there may see Gary Busey as a punchline these days, after his reality show appearances and much-vaunted, helmetless motorcycle accident in the late 90s. I don't because, in 1978, he garnered a well-deserved Oscar nomination as Best Actor for the unlikely achievement of embodying early rock and roll's greatest poet, and ever since, I've always enjoyed seeing him in whatever he

Film #87: Logan's Run

Yeah, it's cornball, I know. But I was nine years old when I saw it so whaddaya expect? We all like EVERYTHING we saw when we were nine. So I still like Logan's Run.



Set in the 23rd Century, director Michael Anderson's 1976 MGM sci-fi epic (MGM submitted many titles to the genre in the wake of their 2001 success) envisions a future where major cities are confined under gigantic domes because

Film #86: Rollerball (1975)

Remakes make me so angry. Let's take the redo of 1975's Rollerball. When one deigns to mention this, yes, over-the-top but still entertaining and meaningful film to people who don't know about IT, but DO know about John McTiernan's missed-the-whole-point, Razzie-nominated 2002 remake, you inevitably hear a groan. And then you have to explain "No, not that one---the GOOD one..." I must have

Film #85: All The Real Girls

The following is an interview conducted by the excellent DarkCityDame on her website Noirish City as part of our examination of my 30 favorite movies of the 2000s. She's given me permission to reprint a few interviews as part of filmicability, so here's a look at my 29th favorite film of the decade All The Real Girls. DarkCityDame: Okay! First of all, I did watch the film All Real Girls last

Film #84: The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three

I still remember sitting over at my friend Brian Matson's apartment, snacks in hand, as I ran across this movie's opening credits. I'd always remembered the title: The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three. But somehow I missed this bloodcurdling juggernaut as a free-so-freeeee filmgoing child of the 1970s. But, here, in the 1990s, sitting in my friend's living room, I was struck by one thing first

Film #83: Barbarella

Jane Fonda, then absorbed in the cheesecake phase of her career she no doubt regrets, teamed with her then-husband, overrated womanizer/director Roger Vadim, to produce 1968's campy adaptation of Jean-Claude Forest's French comic book Barbarella. Psychedelicized art direction by Luchino Visconti's house designer Mario Garbuglia (The Leopard, Rocco and His Brothers) and costume design (by

The Alphabet Meme, filmicability-style

The idea, first proposed by Fletch at Blog Cabins: the alphabet, a to z, as represented by film titles. The only thing is: I've added numbers 0-9, too (yes, I know Fletch had a rule about this...but I ignored it--sue me). So we have: A - Annie HallB - Breaking the WavesC - City LightsD - David and LisaE - EraserheadF - Fanny and AlexanderG - Godfather H - Hard Day's NightI - It's a Wonderful

Light

Gah! This is already pissing me off.

Film #82: The Wrong Man

Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 drama The Wrong Man remains an anomaly among the director's works. Eschewing his vividly colored, 50s-era studio slickness in favor of a street-level B&W, quasi-documentary form, Hitch held back nothing in telling the true story of Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda, in possibly his most harrowing performance, next to his role as The President in Sidney Lumet's Fail-Safe).

Border design

I made a sorta border sketch today. Feel free to print it out and use it as a memo or something.. but don't sell it!

Film #81: Mulholland Dr.

NOTE: This is an article primarily for those who’ve already seen this movie, so SPOILERS abound. Still, see the movie if you haven’t--it's a must-watch--and then read this.Just recently, I perused an article on Daniel Johnson’s Film Babble Blog titled 7 Years Later, Does Mulholland Drive Make Any More Sense? In it, Johnson vividly recounts a recent experience of watching David Lynch’s 2001 film

4 Chinese Beauties design

Well, here are the designs for this image if it's a real book cover. We liked the third one best, and there's a few more changes to be done on the image and the design before it is finalized. Phew!

My next project will be steampunk. I know I know.. done to death.. but I love the designs of it, and it was so fun going around looking at all the steampunk blogs and personalities. Some of these people take their interest really seriously though.. going to great lengths to modify an item, but the computer on the left is probably the coolest thing I've ever seen, ever.

4 Chinese Beauties

Almost done..! I really like how the fourth one turned out, though now it seems like she's not fitting in with the others.

Sometimes I wish I was in graphic design.. I love so much of what they do, but I can never pull it off without making cheesy designs.

Adam Hughes interview

1. When did you first become interested in illustration?

I first became interested as a small child; I think almost all children like to draw and create. I think the difference is, while 90% of all children grow out of this phase, a few of us don't and we end up being creative our entire lives.

2. Where did you get your training or schooling?

Unfortunately, I am self-taught. I was to dumb to be able to win a scholarship, and too white/middle class to qualify for government aid. So, I went about learning it myself. The first thing any school should teach its students is the skill of self-instruction. Being able to figure things out for one's self is the best thing in the world.

3. How did you get started in the business of illustration?

When I was 19, I started taking my samples to conventions to get professional critiques on my work, and try to improve. At my 3rd show, someone critiqued my art and then offered me a job. Other than a 90-minute window in between MAZE AGENCY and JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA, I haven't been without illustration work in 22 years. I guess that's saying something.

4. How do you go about self promotion (websites, mailing, source books etc)?

I use MySpace, DeviantArt, and my website. But my work kinda does all the self-promotion; I draw stuff, and people seem to end up seeing it.

5. What advice would you give a student entering the field of illustration?

1. Never stop drawing; there's no ceiling on your skills in art. You can always get better the more art you create. And 2. When your hobby becomes your job, it's time to find a new hobby.

6. Would you have any general tips or ways to improve oneself in illustration?

Personal dissatisfaction and self-loathing do WONDERS for me. I'm never quite content with the work I produce, so I never get comfortable. I always strive to do better the next time. The best tip is: know your weakness. A man's got to know his limitations. If you know what aspects of your art that you excel at and what you are weak in, you can focus your time trying to improve your weak spots.

Good luck,

-AH!-

He sounds so humble and nice! I was melting by the time I finished reading this.

The End: 150 Great Climactic Movie Moments

NOTE: Naturally, in a story like this, there's going to be SPOILERS. So consider yourself warned, but still, don't be scared away... I got to thinking about movie endings the other day. I was watching George Roy Hill's A Little Romance again and noticing how my heart beats faster as it barrels towards its conclusion, even though I've seen it a hundred times. There's that race against time,

4 Chinese Beauties

An update.. I'm getting a little sick of this!

Marta Dahlig Interview

Well, I interviewed several people for my class homework thing, and only selected one (Adam Hughes), so I'm going to post the others here so these wise words won't just be hidden away in my email archives.
The first one is from Marta Dahlig.


1. When did you first become interested in illustration?
I have been painting since my earliest childhood, so painting has always been extremely close to my soul. I took interest in digital art 7 years ago, at the age of 15. Since then I have gradually left the traditional media in order to explore the digital techniques.

2. Where did you get your training or schooling?

I am purely self taught. The only art-related subjects I went through in high school, and those regarded the history of art and architecture. Painting itself I have learned by observing the artworks of artists I admired and trying to figure out their techniques. I am a believer of "learning by doing" - it was all a mater of trial and error before I started making progress.

3. How did you get started in the business of illustration?

To be honest, it all came very naturally. I started displaying my artwork on various internet forums from the very beginning, in order to receive some feedback and improve at a quicker rate. With time, as my works got better, I started receiving my first commissions from private individuals. It only took a couple of months more for me to get my first commercial commission (I was lucky enough to cooperate with one of the biggest European publishing houses), and since then it all happened very fast - more and more commissions came and I quickly found myself drowning in work :) I can't say I complain, though!

4. How do you go about self promotion (websites, mailing, source books etc)?

Well I didn't ever do self-promotion conciously, e.g. submitted links to any linking services nor did I buy banners and such. In fact, I still don't have my own website (even though I own a domain name)... :) The publlicity and promotion all came naturally with the Internet galleries I submitted my works to (most specifically - deviantart.com). They were my source for feedback and attention-catchers in one. The more I developed, the more people visited my site.

5. What advice would you give a student entering the field of illustration?

I would say: Do not to copy anyone else's style just because it proved successful. Even though the field of digital art is big and broad, going the safe, already explored ways isn't really going to get you anywhere. Try to question everything you see and ask yourself, how can painting you admire be improved, what are they lacking, how could they be more original or more captivating?
A mixture of ones style is, in the end, a mix of things you admire enriched with your own sensitivity, emotions and thougths.

6. Would you have any general tips or ways to improve oneself in illustration?

There is only one tip, I think: be open to people. Be open towards opinions - positive as well as the negative feedback. Do not let groundless criticism down you, but appreciate every word of constructive criticism you get. After all, noone i perfect and none painting flawless - realizing that will help you expand your horizons towards new points of view and thus new levels of improvement.

4 Chinese Beauties

The four legendary Chinese beauties: Xi Shi, Wang Zhaojun, Diaochan and Yang Guifei. I'll post their full stories when I'm done with this.

The crazy wedding hat on the second one is going to give me alot of trouble!

Trippy, Dude: A Guide to Films Best Seen in an Altered State

Ideally, when we succumb to a film, we’re giving ourselves over completely to it. We ask it to take us away to another place, another time, away from where we might be in our lives. When the lights dim in a theater or a den, we hope the trip on which we’re about to embark will lead to unabashedly spiritual or physical changes in our bodies. In that way, movies certainly resemble drugs,

Meme Challenge: What Should Have Won Best Picture...

So it's getting close to Oscar season--it's that magic time when we know something's coming up, we just don't know what. (My October picks for the Best Picture nominees, based on absolutely nothing but marketing bullshit, cast and crew pedigrees, and gut feelings: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Gran Torino, Milk, Revolutionary Road and The Wrestler. However, we should remember that one or

Film #80: Skaterdater

Skaterdater is, to my knowledge, the first skateboarding movie ever, and still the best I've seen (Gleaming the Cube and Dogtown and Z-Boys are pretty good, though). Look at how deftly director Noel Black catches the innocent, all-barefoot hot-dogging of this Cali street gang (his steady cameraman Michael Murphy deserves props, too). And that this is a love story, ultimately, captures my

SIDE ORDERS #6

We start off with this edition of SIDE ORDERS with a fascinating, mysterious, graphically boisterous trailer for one of the world's perfect drive-in movies: Monte Hellman's 1971 masterpiece Two-Lane Blacktop. Despite his steady inprovement (there's not a movie I'm looking forward to more than his Lincoln bio-pic in 2009), Steven Spielberg has never helmed a better scene than this transportative

Film #79: Power of Ten

First off, lemme show you some chairs. See if you can recall your ass resting in one of these...Now you see two people. They are husband-and-wife artisans Charles and Ray Eames. First off, may I opine that this must be the coolest couple of all time. They seem so happy working and playing together. Here's another photo:Now, I could pretend I know everything about the design of this

Film #78: Coogan's Bluff

1968's Coogan's Bluff, whether you've heard of it or not, is a deceptively historic movie. It brought Clint Eastwood out of the western milieu he'd been so well-known for through his TV series Rawhide and his Spaghetti Western cycle with Italian director Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad & The Ugly), and into the streets of U.S. cities like New York (

Film #77: Catch-22

Joseph Heller's now-classic 1961 novel was rejected by publishers 15 times. It started out as Catch-14, then Catch-11, Catch-17, and finally, upon publication, Catch-22. In the novel, Yossarian is a nervous WWII pilot who's fed up with risking his life and, by feigning insanity, wants to get drummed out of the force. In Buck Henry's college-try adaptation of this impossible-to-film novel (or

Film #76: Doctor Zhivago

Julie Christie hit it big in 1965. She won a Best Actress Oscar for portraying a sexually adventurous fashion model in John Schlesinger's Darling, but it was her role in David Lean's pristine Doctor Zhivago that really propelled her to stardom that year. Omar Sharif plays the titular doctor/poet who endures wars, winters and his own marital problems in order to spend some quality time with his

The Six Double-Feature Challenge

Okay, as an answer to a "meme" challenge put forth by my fellow LAMBs at The Dancing Image (which started it all), Cinexellence, Lazy Eye Theater, and Out 1, here are six double features of films not available through Netflix (most of these aren't even available on DVD yet) that I either have not seen or saw so long ago that I need to see them again. DOUBLE FEATURE #1: SMART KIDS1984's Old

Film #75: Thanksgiving

In 2002, when I was the Programming Director for North Georgia's Dahlonega International Film Festival (now the Rome International Film Festival), I had to watch hundreds of titles in the span of six months. This resulted in weeks upon weeks of movie-watching, most of it predictably disappointing. (Tip to all festival-bound filmmakers: Actually, with that many movies to watch, a programmer

Film #74: Repo Man

This is the very first major review I ever did, printed on page 9 of Georgia State University's Tuesday Magazine. Date: October 2nd, 1984, very nearly 25 years ago. As I am typing this in, I've made a promise to myself not to add or edit anything unless it's a egregious error. So here's how I wrote when I was one month away from being 18 years old:How many times have you said to yourself "Gee,

The Best Movies of the 2000s

The headline says it all. The top choices are placed in order of preference, with their directors in parentheses. The runners-up are listed alphabetically. The list will be updated as I see more movies from the era. Get your Netflix queue ready and enjoy!!

2000:
You Can Count On Me (Kenneth Lonergan)
The House of Mirth (Terrence Davies)
Dancer in the Dark (Lars Von Trier)
George Washington (

Richard Sandler's Brave New York and Sway

New Yorkers, especially the seasoned ones, will be in for a bittersweet taste of the city's old way of doing things when Richard Sandler's artful documentaries Brave New York (2004, 56 minutes) and Sway (2006, 33 minutes) screen at the Sixth Street and Avenue B Community Garden on Friday, August 22nd, starting at 8:30 pm. Given Sandler's singular talent behind the camera, this is truly an event

Farewell, Black Moses: Isaac Hayes (1942-2008)

A few months ago, in my town of New York City, I wandered into the Caffe Reggio. I love that place. It's a beautiful little coffee grotto on well-traveled MacDougal Street, near Washington Square Park. It's always supremely relaxing for me to sit there in its low light and contemplate the taste of a black espresso while basking in the outside street scenes, the rich-toned woods, the antique

Paul Newman

There is no celebrity calamity in my recent time--and I am including Stanley Kubrick--that has affected me more deeply than learning of Paul Newman's recently announced, soon-to-be fatal bout with lung cancer. It's difficult to imagine a world without Hollywood's greatest humanitarian and actor, but I suppose it's a feat we're all going to have to achieve. Today, it was announced that soon we

My screenplay.

I'm lucky enough to have an incredibly kind friend who sent me a link to a great, simple, perfect screenwriting program (a description that doesn't do it justice) that's enabling me to get my thoughts down on paper as I have never been able to do before. I hate FINAL DRAFT, as it is clunky and unmanagable. But CELTX is the best. So, over the next few weeks, I'll be working on my long-gestating

!!!My 100th filmicability Post: Side Orders #5

Thought I'd celebrate by keeping my post brief. Here are some of my favorite scenes:The truly creepy, nightmare-causing dungeon elevator ride taken by Hans Conried, Peter Lind Hayes and Tommy Rettig (where can I get a beanie like that?) in Roy Rowland's adaptation of Dr. Seuss's The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. This is kind of a scary movie for kids, I think, but it's cool because of that. Imagine

Film #73: Used Cars

Years before his Forrest Gump became the cultural touchstone that it is, director Robert Zemeckis was assaulting movie audiences with a recognizable, hard-edged yet invariably slapstick form of comedy. His first film, I Wanna Hold Your Hand (soon to be reviewed here on filmicability) frantically followed a bunch of New Jersey Beatles lovers and haters as they travel to New York to see the Fab

Film #72: It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, director/producer Stanley Kramer was well-known for his more socially-conscious brand of moviemaking, signified by heady "important" films like Judgment at Nuremburg, The Defiant Ones, Inherit the Wind, On The Beach and The Caine Mutiny. However, in 1962, he was itching to do another movie with his favorite leading actor Spencer Tracy. But Tracy was fighting a long

Film #71: The Last Waltz

After a lifetime on tour and in the studios, The Band--Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and Garth Hudson--decided to call it quits on Thanksgiving Day, 1976. But before they blew the scene, they staged one massive goodbye party at San Francisco's Winterland Theater...and Martin Scorsese--devoted fan and confidant of Robbie Robertson--was invited to film it all, lucky for

Film #70: Voices

This is a short review of a film I haven't seen in a long time, and would like to see on DVD as soon as possible. It's 1979's Voices, the only big-screen effort from television producer/director Robert Markowitz and TV writer John Herzfeld. Now that I think about it, given this pedigree, I suppose the film is a little tv-movie in quality--the visuals don't pop out at me much as strong memories.

Film #69: Streets of Fire

1984's schizophrenic sci-fi-tinged action musical from writer/director Walter Hill marked the beginning of the filmmaker's downward slide. Hill was once the heir to the Peckinpah throne, the action master of 80s classics like Southern Comfort, 48 HRS, and The Long Riders--and let's not forget his 70s classics like Alien (as producer and co-writer), The Warriors, Hickey and Boggs (as writer), and

Film #68: Saturday Night Fever

John Travolta created a huge stir in late 1977 with his Oscar-nominated role as Tony Manero, king of the Brooklyn dance floor, in Saturday Night Fever, the now-legendary hit directed by John Badham (WarGames). Manero (get it--MAN-ero?) is a hardware store worker who reconsiders his station in life when he meets Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney), a poorly name-dropping Manhattanite also striving for

Film #67: Duel in the Sun

Duel in the Sun, as shameless and vulgar as it certainly is, remains one of producer David O. Selznick’s most watchable post-Gone With The Wind motion pictures, even when one considers his infinitely more valuable productions like Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 40), Gaslight (George Cukor, 44) and Since You Went Away (John Cromwell, 44). The film also represents Selznick’s most blatant and

Film #66: The Conversation

Gene Hackman and Francis Ford Coppola were white-hot in 1974. Hackman had already delivered Jan Troell's underrated Zandy's Bride with Liv Ullmann, and Coppola was finishing up The Godfather Part II when they quietly eked out The Conversation, one of the most unexpected masterpieces of the 1970s, which landed Coppola the International Grand prize at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. The film follows

Side Orders #4: The Music Edition

I've been fooling around on playlist.com all day making a new set of tunes for my facebook page. My playlists are also a new feature on filmicability; just scroll down the sidebar a bit and you'll see the playlist box ! Honestly, I'm almost as much of a music junkie as I am a movie nut, so be sure that it's a collection worth listening to: it's quite diverse, once you plumb its depths. There's

Film #64: M.A.S.H.

1970's M.A.S.H. had a bottomless effect on me long before I actually got to see it. Imagine being an intelligent nearly seven-year old movie addict and going with his extra-cool parents to the Atlanta's space-agey North-85 Drive-In concession stand around, oh, say, 1973. And, week after week, as you wander amongst the Alice Cooper and Kung Fu pinball machines while your dad orders the movie

Film #63: High Plains Drifter

High Plains Drifter, Clint Eastwood's oddly scary initital directorial foray into the Western genre has Clint himself again playing a silent stranger who ambles into a small desert berg populated only by villains, cowards, and helpless townspeople. When a gang of escaped convicts returns to wreak vengeful havoc on the town, its inhabitants naturally turn to this enigmatic gunman for protection,

Film #62: The Fearless Vampire Killers, or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck

Director Roman Polanski earned another entry in his fantastic streak of masterpieces with 1967's aberrant, charming spoof of vampire movies that has Polanski himself portraying the assistant to a Van Helsing-like vampire hunter (the great Irish actor Jack McGowran), both of whom are determined to crash a grand ball for the undead, where they plan to annihilate all attendees. Former fashion model

Film #61: Duel

Fooling around on IGoogle's video collection, I recently found the full version of Steven Spielberg's 1971 TV movie Duel. Rewatching it again, I'm struck even more inescapably by how different it is from most Spielberg efforts--there's no John Williams music, no Michael Kahn editing, and the dust-splattered photography has a strictly TV-quality of realism to it. Of course, on the other hand, it's

The U.S. of A at 24 Frames Per Second: 200 American Movies Movie-Obsessed Americans Should See

Of course, July 4th has just passed, so I thought I would serve my country in the best way I know how: by talking about our movie heritage. More specifically, I have decided to list 200 important films that I feel best represent the true nature of America, warts and all. I won't bore you with a long intro--I'd rather you read about the movies than subject you to some wind-bagged soliloquy on our

Film #60: Sophie's Choice

Alan J. Pakula, the man who produced To Kill a Mockingbird and directed, among others, All The President's Men and The Parallax View, wrote and directed this majestic, extremely faithful adaptation of Pulitzer-Prize-winner William Styron's stunning semi-autobiographical novel. In it, Peter MacNichol endearingly plays Stingo, a young 40s-era Southerner who journeys to "a place as strange as

Film #59: Of Unknown Origin

Greatest rat movie ever made? Forget Willard! Fuck Ben! Don't even think about mentioning Ratatouille! Check out Of Unknown Origin, the rat extravaganza to beat all! George Pan Cosmatos (Tombstone) directed this 1983 Canadian production starring Peter Weller as a successful white-collar executive with a hot wife (Shannon Tweed), a little tyke, a new brownstone, and a helluva problem. When

The beginnings of my Web TV career

Well, since it's now history, I should include the three clips of me on The Latest Show on Earth, Joe Hendel's now kaput web TV program. Joe, it turns out, just didn't have the energy for an almost daily talk show (it IS a lotta work), so it's permanently on hold. It's too bad, but I'll continue onward, and probably launch a web TV thing of my own soon enough. RIP The Latest Show on Earth. But

Film #58: Foolin' Around

One of the ultimate "Saturday Afternoon" movies for me is what looked to me to be a waste of time at first glance--and this was when I was 15 or so! I know. Foolin' Around looks terrible. But I was quite smitten with HBO back in 1981 or so, and would watch anything they showed. And I'm glad because I love Foolin' Around. It's a dumb li'l movie following Texas architechture student Gary Busey

Film #57: The Verdict

Paul Newman delivers a career-best performance in this comeback film from director Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, Prince of the City, Network). In it, he plays Frank Galvin, an alcoholic, ambulance-chasing lawyer whose recent string of lost cases has put him in a desperate situation. He's given one last chance at a moneymaker by a working class family who're suing a powerful, Catholic-run hospital

Film #56: They Live

Scaremeister John Carpenter called the shots on this massively entertaining (and overlooked) variation on the Invasion of the Body Snatchers theme. World Championship Wrestling staple "Rowdy" Roddy Piper stars in They Live as an L.A. drifter who uncovers an alien takeover of earth after stumbling upon a pair of glasses that allows the wearer to see both the aliens and the Big-Brother way they've

Film #55: Sharky's Machine

All Atlantans of a certain age have a soft spot for this Burt Reynolds movie that, like it or not, remains one of the best ones ever shot in the ATL. I think it's a lotta fun and probably Reynolds' finest directorial outing. It's adapted from Georgia author William Diehl's best sellerabout Tom Sharky, an Atlanta homicide detective obsessively tracking a local mobster (a slimy Vittorio Gassman).

Film #54: The Secret of NIMH

Former Disney animator Don Bluth was so fed up with how the pre-Little Mermaid animation department was going that he broke away and formed his own animation studio, with The Secret of NIMH being their first offering. At a time when Disney animation seemed dead--the early 80s--Bluth's first solo effort was an extremely welcome pleasure that trumpeted a new force in the animation field. But,

Film #53: One on One

This is one of those "Saturday Afternoon" movies I like so much--sort of funny, sort of dramatic, a little romantic, not too demanding but not totally stupid either. Just real breezy and simple. Star Robby Benson co-wrote this likable story of a pampered high school basketball star who gets a scholarship to play with UCLA, but finds himself overwhelmed by a backbreaking practice regimen, a full

Film #52: The Naked Jungle

Producer George Pal rarely strayed out of the fantasy/sci-fi genre. He pioneeered animated shorts by creating the Puppetoon series of stop-motion animation shorts (he adapted two Dr. Seuss stories into shortform: I Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street and The 500 Hats of Batholomew Cubbins). His films won four Oscars for special effects (The War of the Worlds, When Worlds Collide, The Time Machine

Film #51: Muertos de Risa (Dying of Laughter)

Muertos de Risa (Dying of Laughter) is wildman Spanish director Alex de la Iglasia's raucous comedy about an Abbott and Costello-esque comedy team (expertly overplayed by El Gran Wyoming and Santiago Segura) who shoot each other dead on live TV, then are eulogized by their manager (Alex Angulo, the priest from de la Iglasia's equally accomplished Day of the Beast). Through flashbacks it's

Film #50: The Killing Fields

British documentarian Roland Joffe made his narrative filmmaking debut in 1984 with The Killing Fields, a devastating and suspenseful film about a real-life friendship. Sam Waterston plays Sidney Schanberg, an obsessive New York Times reporter stationed in Cambodia during the last days of the Vietnam War. Dr. Haing S. Ngor, in an Oscar-winning performance, plays Dith Pran, Schanberg's trusted

Film #49: The Hudsucker Proxy

1994's The Hudsucker Proxy is still Joel and Ethan Coen's gentlest, most magical movie. Its fairy-tale ambitions mix tastefully with good ol' Capra-corn and the Coens' own brand of hyperkinetic filmmaking, resulting in a gigantic comedy with philosophical musings on time and fate. Tim Robbins plays bumbling mailroom nebbish and aspiring inventor Norville Barnes. After mere hours on the job at the

Film #48: The Fly (1986)

David Cronenberg's unique take on the 1958 sci-fi staple The Fly stands as one of the few remakes that actually improves upon its predecessor, chiefly because of its superb lead performances and the infusion of Cronenberg's singular, biology-obsessed worldview into the story. Jeff Goldblum expertly portrays eccentric scientist Seth Brundle, whose invention of "telepods" goes horribly awry when he

Film #47: Dragonslayer

This Disney/Paramount co-production was almost completely overlooked when released in the summer of 1981--it was eclipsed by a little film called Raiders of the Lost Ark. But it deserves an unearthing, and a nicer DVD release that acknowledges its quality. In it, then-newcomer Peter MacNichol plays an inept sorcerer's apprentice who takes on the responsibility of slaying the massive

Film #46: Coal Miner's Daughter

Sissy Spacek rightfully won an Oscar for her portrayal of country music legend Loretta Lynn in this smartly-produced bio-pic directed by British filmmaker Michael Apted (the man behind the 7 Up series of documentaries). The film follows her from her life as the oldest of a brood of kids belonging to a Kentucky coal miner and his wife, to her marriage at 14 to a self-assured WWII vet named

Side Orders #3

Okay, this isn't really an opening to a movie I like, but it does feature a favorite opening song of mine---I mean, it rocks, and you can't get it out of your head!! A real earworm. Anyway, this is sort of a fan vid for a movie called The Sheriff and the Satellite Kid (El sheriff y el pequeño extraterrestre in Italian!). I have an interesting little story about this movie under my belt, but for

Bet 100 on The Flaming Nose

This is the intro to a ten-part series I'm contributing to The Flaming Nose, the web's premier website devoted to television. With each of my introductory articles, I'll be covering my very personal choices for my 100 favorite TV series of all time. I'm about to post #70-61, so if you haven't checked all three previous articles out, do. And make time for everything else TV-related at The

Film #45: The Celebration

The Dogme 95 film movement was the brainchild of Danish directors Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who, on a spring day in 1995 Copenhagen, penned a filmmaking "Vow of Chastity" as a laugh and a liberating gesture from the expensive technologies and tired formulas that plague many filmmakers. Then, along with fellow Danes Soren Kragh-Jacobsen and Christian Levring, they created Dogma 95,

Film #44: Straight Time

Since 1972, Dustin Hoffman had been obsessed with making Straight Time, an adaptation of ex-convict Ed Bunker's novel No Beast So Fierce. It was meant to be the actor's directorial debut but, concluding that directing and performing were chores too big for him to handle in tandem, he brought in British director Ulu Grosbard to helm things behind the camera. Good move, because in 1978's sadly

Film #43: Trans

Florida filmmaker Julius Goldberger's Trans splashed down at 1999's Sundance festival like a minor post-French New Wave masterwork unearthed decades after being inturred, mysteriously, near the swampy Everglades. Plainly influenced by Truffaut's The 400 Blows -- Goldberger obviously wanted more after Antoine Doniel reached the ocean tide -- Trans follows juvenile prison escapee Ryan Kazinski (

Film #42: Sisters

This is the first in a promised series of shorter posts, for those of you who don't have no durn time...Made back when De Palma’s Hitchcock-cribbing packed more charm than it did in later years, Sisters stars Margot Kidder as surgically-separated Siamese twins, one of whom is degenerating into a knife-wielding killer. Jennifer Salt is the newspaper columnist who witnesses one of Kidder’s murders

Side Orders #2

Here we go with more clips, previews and other fun stuff: I think, from now on, I'll start these Side Orders posts of with an opening from a movie I like. Now, when most people cite great credits sequences, they're usually in that Saul Bass/Kyle Cooper mode of thinking--animated graphics and the like. But what about the ones where the graphics aren't the whole magilla? Case in point: the

Film #41: Dad, Can I Borrow The Car?

When I was about nine years old, I tuned in to The Wonderful World of Disney one night to watch what I thought would be your typical Disney fare--cartoons, or a live-action adventure with li'l prairie dogs, or even a faboo tour of Disneyworld (an episode kids always wanted to see). Instead, what I got was something that blew my mind, and I hope it blows yours. But first...I was never a big fan

TriBeCa Diaries #9: Dying Breed

I had talked about seeing the film with a very sweet publicist earlier in the day. But I had forgotten about Dying Breed when it came to showtime. I had settled on seeing Harmony Korine's new film Mister Lonely instead, even though earlier in the day I had run into someone who said it sucked. I felt I should give Harmony another chance. He had, after all, written Kids. And though I disliked

TriBeCa Diaries #8: Green Porno

It's perfection, having the always extremely erotic Isabella Rossellini as the focus of Green Porno, her eight-film debut as director (along with co-director Jody Shapiro). The subject of these charming, inventively educational one-minute shorts?The sex lives of insects. In each, an elaborately costumed Rossellini portrays a bug--a firefly, a house fly, a spider, a snail, a bee, an earthworm,

Tribeca Diaries #7: The Autuer

WARNING: This is a salty-languaged review, by necessity. Writer/Director James Westby has certainly gotten off the most raucously received movies at the 2008 TriBeCa Film Festival with The Autuer. This brilliantly-constructed pastiche of mockumentary and true narrative storytelling posits the existance of Auturo Domingo, the world's foremost director of hardcore porn, the Kubrick of cum. Played

TriBeCa Diary #6: Bart Got A Room

I didn't come to TriBeCa to slag any movies, but I lost my patience with the contrived Bart Got a Room about 45 minutes in, and I just had to say something. At first, it looked as if I'd like Brian Hecker's somewhat hateful new film. It opens to Danny Stein (Steven J. Kaplan) as he's playing in his school swing band for a smatterling of beach-tanned senior citizens. It's a promising opening,

TriBeCa Diaries #5: The Wild Man of the Navidad

When Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez unleashed Grindhouse on us in early 2007, it was an essential orgy of nostalgia dressed up in zombie violence and car-chase-mania. It was an exhilerating experience for anyone who'd gone, back in the day, to the drive-ins and--yes--the grindhouses to catch Death Race 2000 or Dawn of the Dead or God Told Me To. It seemed to get every detail right--the

TriBeCa Diaries #4: Run For Your Life

I stepped into Judd Ehrlich's Run For Your Life not knowing anything about the history of the New York City marathon. I stepped out an educated man. The event was started by a charismatic, Romanian-born businessman named Fred Lebow, whose enthusiasm for running began the marathon's infancy in 1969. At that time, people on the street weren't used to seeing runners jogging alongside cars in clothes

TriBeCa Diaries #3: Empire II

Dedicated not to Andy Warhol but to late film geniuses Ingmar Bergman and Michaelangelo Antonioni, Amos Poe's new experimental documentary Empire II still owes a lot--including its title--to the white-haired pop artist. Warhol's 1964 film Empire was an 8-hour black-and-white shot of the top half of the Empire State Building. It was a quizzical experiment that I suppose had to be done, but of

TriBeCa Diaries 2: The first day

It's a thrill, being on this side of the festival operations. As a fully accredited press person at the TFF, I'm sitting here writing this entry not in my chaotic, book-and-DVD-strewn apartment in Brooklyn, but in the swanky press office here in the East Village. Nice. And much different than the homey but low-budget amenities we offered at the Dahlonega Film Festival when I was its

TriBeCa Diaries 1: The Universe of Keith Haring

I'm going to take a break from reviewing old favorites for a bit and concentrate on the experiences in store for me at the TriBeCa Film Festival taking place on the Lower East Side of Manhattan April 23 through May 4. In addition to being fully accredited as a member of the press (as the Film Correspondent for The Latest Show on Earth--see it at www.downtowntv.com or host Joe Hendel's

Film #40: Vampyr

Carl Th. Dreyer’s hallucinatory 1932 Danish masterpiece Vampyr has a unique creepiness all its own. It’s easy to see where some present-day filmmakers (chief among them David Lynch) got some of their ideas once you experience this moody trek through Cortenpierre, where vampire hunter David Grey (Baron Nicholas De Gunzberg, acting under the alias Julien West) has stumbled upon an atmosphere

Side Orders #1

Side Orders is going to be a regular column devoted to three or four little scenes from various movies, with the occasional video, short, commercial, and trailer popping up. Unlike my reviews, which can be long, I will brief in these pieces. They're designed for me to write quickly so you can read 'em quickly. Anyway, here we go: I first wanted to feature a series of trailers that I liked, but

Film #39: Full Metal Jacket

Maybe it's bizarre to start this review off with such an observation, but the problem with Oliver Stone's pre-emptive achievement with 1986's Platoon lay in that it, in effect, was Stone's (but perhaps not Hollywood's) simple way of glitzing over the true state of affairs during the Vietnam conflict, all in the name of good, clean, All-American storytelling. Stone's musculature was admirable;

Movie Time! Movie Time!

When I see the bits of long-lost film I've included in this post below, I feel the adrenaline rush through my body full-force. In the 1970s and 80s, these little animated films would always be my intro to a new cinematic experience (even if a lot of the time it was via television). I love the graphics for these things--bright, sparkly, Vegas-y, space-agey (I, of course, especially like the ABC

Film #38: Precious Images

If I'm on this shorts kick, I thought, what better short to include on a movie-themed website than Precious Images. Originally created by Chuck Workman for the Directors Guild of America in 1982, this awe-inspiring montage of the greatest moments in cinema history is downright riveting, especially for film junkies who will inevitably try and name all the movies sampled here. Give it up, guys--

Film #37: The Tell-Tale Heart

Stephen Bosustow's UPA Films had a juggernaut of a run back in the 1950s. From 1949 to 1957, this producer was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, winning three of them (one year he was nominated for all three awards in his category). Given the short time period, this surely must be a record. Not even Meryl Streep could get these numbers. During this time, UPA adapted Dr. Seuss's Gerald

Film #36: Frank Film

I'm so excited, my heart is racing! This is the fifth in a series of short films I'm featuring on filmicability. I just got my newest entry off of YouTube, and it's Frank Mouris's Academy Award-winning animated biography Frank Film (his wife Caroline Mouris gets credit on IMDB as a co-director, by the way). This is one of my favorite bits of animation ever, and certainly in the running for my

Film #35: The Critic

This is the fourth in a series of posts devoted to some of my favorite shorts. This one is popularly attributed to Mel Brooks, who came up with the concept and the narration. But it's a film by Ernest Pintoff, and I understand when he took home the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 1963, it caused a rift between them. Well, Mel got his Oscar five years later for The Producers, so I would think

Film #34: Quasi at the Quackadero

Yet another short I like (look at the two others below) is by Sally Cruickshank. Titled Quasi at the Quackadero, it's the closest that cartoons have come to replicating the feel of underground comix. The colorful, even trippy animation coupled with the wonderful voice work (I love Anita's nasal whine) captivated me when I first saw this on the big screen at the Rhodes Theater in Atlanta. I

Film #33: Special Delivery

This cartoon, by John Weldon and Eunice Macauley, is one of the funniest bits of animation I have ever seen. Everything works together: the soapy organ music, the inventive scripting, the sardonic narration, and the fun colored-pencil animation style. I saw this on HBO in the 1980s, not long after it took home an Oscar in 1978 for Best Animated Short. I remember being slightly shocked at the

Film #32: Timepiece

Jim Henson's Timepiece was Oscar-nominated for Best Live Action Short in 1965. I saw this unusual pre-Sesame Street short on HBO in the early 1980s and have remembered it ever since as one of the strangest moments I ever had watching a film--such a bizarre notion, that "Kermit" is behind all this madness. I still am not sure what Timepiece is all about, except to say that it explores beats,

Film #31: Titus

After mounting such grand Broadway productions as the acclaimed The Lion King, director Julie Taymor was seen as a natural to make the leap over to movies. Her first film, Titus, proved right those willing to take a chance on her. While the movie's extraordinary design suffers from the scale-down to television, Titus -- one of Shakespeare's most maligned plays -- now crackles as a most

Film #30: Electra Glide in Blue

It's a strange feeling to write about Robert Blake movies now, after so much has happened to him in his personal life. But, all that aside, if you think about it, Blake had a long and fascinating career in movies. Under his real name Mickey Gubutosi, he was Mickey in Hal Roach's Our Gang series of short films. He went on to play Little Beaver, the Native American sidekick to Red Ryder (Bill

Film #29: Inside Moves

I'll never forget catching Inside Moves on cable back in the early 80s. It was like finding buried treasure, it really was. This 1980 film has now been almost totally forgotten--it's not even on DVD. But if you ever get a chance to see it, and have a prediliction for the sentimental, the beguiling, the intelligent, the well-crafted film, then you will love it as much as I did. Richard

Film #28: Point of Order!

Anybody who saw George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck and was interested in learning more about dirty ol' Joe McCarthy should rent Emile de Antonio's 1963 documentary Point of Order! Cut from hours of old kinescopes of the 1953 Army hearings that destroyed the red-baiting senator and his evil minion/lawyer Roy Cohn, Point of Order! is one of the greatest historical documents ever put to film

Film #27: My Best Fiend

Werner Herzog's My Best Fiend chronicles the masterful German director's unbelievably volatile relationship with the late actor Klaus Kinski, whom he'd known and worked with for three decades. Before this film hit theaters in 1999, stories of these two massive megalomaniacs locking horns on troubled sets were already part of filmmaking folklore, thanks largely to Les Blank's landmark 1982

Film #26: My Bodyguard

Dave Grusin's jazzy, string-flecked score hits me first every time I see My Bodyguard. It takes me back to 1980 instantly and I am happy for it. It's bouncy, joyful, mopey, and erudite. It exemplifies Chicago--where this movie was filmed--all in a few bars. In fact, the only things that remind me of Chicago more than My Bodyguard are John Hughes movies, The Bob Newhart Show, and...Chicago.

Film #25: The Incredible Melting Man

The Incredible Melting Man is one of those "good bad-movies" that people with a taste for irony or simply with a lot of time on their hands seem to love. I have a lot of these guilty pleasures way on down my extensive list of favorites, but I find as I get older, I have less time for things that suck. But this movie--this one was an event I'll always remember from my childhood,so I guess I

Film #24: Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)

If you're looking for the greatest car chase movie in history, I’ve got it. It’s not The Fast and the Furious, or Bullitt, or The French Connection, or The Italian Job or The Seven-Ups. And it’s not the crappy Nicholas Cage remake that bears this movie’s title. It’s H.B. Halicki’s 1974 drive-in masterpiece Gone in 60 Seconds. The title refers to the time it takes for this movie’s thieving

Film #23: American Movie

It’s hard to make a movie. Think of it like building a car engine. You have to get all these parts, big and little, and fit them all together until the thing runs. Movies are also machines, and they have essential elements that become small when seen as part of the whole. The art direction, the catering, the casting, the loading of the camera…without any of these and many more elements, the

Film #22: The Reflecting Skin

This grotesque and downbeat destruction-of-innocence story has Jeremy Cooper playing Seth, a Midwestern ‘50s-era boy whose less-than-stellar upbringing by his pedophile father and mentally diseased mother results in his decidedly off-kilter worldview. Among his fears and delusions are that the pale redhead down the road is a vampire and that the withered fetus he finds in a barn is the

Film #21: Gregory's Girl

Scottish filmmaker Bill Forsyth specializes in what I call "Saturday Afternoon Movies." You know how you feel on a Saturday afternoon...as if everything is in store for you, as if the air is cleaner than the days before, excitement is flooding your veins and all your stresses have dissipated into the past? Most of Forsyth's films make you feel like that, even on non-Saturdays. But catch them

Film #20: Repulsion

(The above poster design is an astounding unofficial graphic for Repulsion created by +Pemo+ who, at the time of its making, was a student at FADU-UBA in Buenos Aries. Check out more of his amazing collages: go to www.flickr.com and search for +Pemo+. And click on the above image for a clearer view of its perfect copy.)If I were powerful enough to go poof! and instantly make one movie on this

Film #19: Last Night at the Alamo

Last Night at the Alamo, the late Eagle Pennell's seminal indie film from 1983, and one of the first hits at the Sundance Film Festival (then known as the USA Film Festival), is a boisterous, ultimately pitiful portrait of a doomed Houston bar's alcohol-sodden denizens. It takes its place alongside Barfly, Trees Lounge and Husbands as an unshowered, unshaven scetch of loud-mouthed drunks, so if

Film #18: The Beguiled

In 1971, Clint Eastwood was dangerously, fabulously nearing superstardom. He'd long since completed the "Man With No Name" trilogy--A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly--with Italian director Sergio Leone. But he hadn't yet gone supernova with his role as the unorthodox San Francisco cop "Dirty" Harry Callahan. That's probably why he and his other

Film #17: The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl

If you've ever seen Triumph of the Will or Olympia, you've probably wondered about their mysterious, reclusive maker. Leni Riefenstahl rose to prominence in pre-Nazi Germany with her strapping, sexy starring roles in Arnold Fanck's heroic "mountain" movies. Having given up acting in 1933, she resolved to turn her energies to directing films. Her reading of Adolf H.'s prison memoir Mein Kamph was

Film #16: Tales From The Crypt (1972)

Most people know Tales From The Crypt as an 80s/90s cable TV show in the Twilight Zone / Creepshow vein -- sometimes scary, very jokey, with an animatronic near-skeleton as its host. Those more familiar with this version of the classic, famously-banned 1950s EC horror comics probably aren't even aware that it was previously filmed, ever so slightly more earnestly than maybe was needed, in 1972.

R.I.P. Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)

One of my favorite notable people died the other day--in fact, the very day I unknowingly, maybe psychically, posted a comment about viewers whom I feel incorrectly judge my favorite and, frankly, the best movie of all time, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction/fact writer who co-authored the script to 2001 with Stanley Kubrick, and then wrote the novel around the

Film #15: The Gods of Times Square

In its pre-cleanup days, the Times Square area in New York City was a place of vague contradictions. They'd be creeps streaming out of the jerk-off palaces as the melancholy mop-up guy got ready for another swabbing of the booths. Down the street, at one of the broken-down but strangely opulent all-nite movie houses, Lady Terminator would be playing on a double bill with Killer Condom. Two

Film #14: Advise and Consent

I have to comment on the Elliot Spitzer prostitution scandal. I once respected Spitzer, mainly for calling radio stations out on taking payola for playing tons of bad songs over the past decade or so. With that, I was just glad to get an explanation for the unexplainable and some measure of vengeance for "Who Let The Dogs Out?" or whatever. But then, he started acting like an asshole, telling

Film #13: Safe

Everyone who hears me describe the quiet but terrifying film Safe as a horror film always gives me a lot of gas. (snicker!) “Safe isn’t a horror movie, it’s a blah blah blah!” Well, I’m sorry, but yes, it is a horror film--an extremely modern one, one perhaps way ahead of its time, but a horror film nonetheless. I don't get why some people can't see it. I mean, not all horror movies have monsters

Defending 2001

2001: A Space Odyssey is my favorite movie. Those real cinemaniacs out there will totally empathize with this, while the people who didn't understand the film or whose attentions drifted away while watching it will be baffled at the logic of my tastes. They'll say "Ewww, it's so boring" or--like I heard my dad say when I was a small child--"What the hell? There was a baby floating in space at the

Film #12: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

Certainly, few TV series in history have been poured over more than Twin Peaks. Without it, there probably would've been no Sopranos, Lost, 24, or Six Feet Under. Fans of director/writer David Lynch, and of great television have inspected each frame of its always enthralling, often frustrating 29 episodes, scrambling for clues to a myriad of mysteries posed by its hundred-some-odd characters. Who

Here I Come to Save The Day: Andy Kaufman on DVD and The Problem with Bio-Pics

It's a hard thing to pull off, the filmed biography--harder than ever, probably. If a life is exciting enough to spawn cinematic translation, then I’m sure—via the number of middling bio-pics I’ve seen--that the directorial temptation is to simply, one by one, dramatize those events that made the life portrayed so special in the first place. Do this and, hey, you got yerself a movie. These “They

Film #11: Ed Wood

Lessee now...bio-pics about filmmakers. I dunno what took moviemakers so long to get around to attacking this subject---doesn't make sense, given how they make their lettuce. But as far as I can tell, Clint Eastwood's 1990 film White Hunter, Black Heart seems to have come first, surprisingly enough. It may have cloaked its main character with the name "John Wilson," but it obviously and

Film #10: Black Christmas (१९७४)

I’ve always contended that John Carpenter’s 1978 film Halloween stole this movie’s place as the progenitor of the slasher genre. The 1974 Canadian shocker Black Christmas is classier, scarier, and nicer to look at than any other slasher film out there (with Carpenter's movie coming in a close second). The story is familiar: an escaped killer sneaks into the attic of a sorority house during

Film #9: Targets

It's time for us to rethink what constitutes a horror film, especially in this time of exquisitely poured-over daily bloodbaths. I know that, in literary circles, the horror genre has split into “fantasy horror”--Frankenstein, Dracula, ghosts and the sort--and “modern horror,” which considers serial killers, madmen and mass murderers. But why doesn’t this distinction exist as strictly for movies?

Film #8: The Innocents

In 1961, British director Jack Clayton delivered one of the greatest horror movies ever made--the ghost story to best all ghost stories. His exquisite adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw is boldly frightening, sexually suggestive, and beautifully shot (by Freddie Francis). Deborah Kerr, in perhaps her finest performance, plays a repressed nanny whose new charge--taking care of two

Film #7: Night Moves

With Night Moves, director Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde, The Miracle Worker) emerged with his best effort since 1970's Little Big Man and, as he did in Coppola's The Conversation a few years earlier, star Gene Hackman marked his career with another outwardly strong, inwardly crippled character. This time he plays Harry Moseby, an emotionally distant former football star now operating as a

The 80th Academy Awards--overview

The 80th Oscars, of course, were given out on Sunday the 24th of February, 2008. I have been a lifelong fan of the Oscars and their ability to teach us about some of the best the picture biz has to offer in any given year. This is not to say that I agree with their picks as a whole; 60% of the time, I disagree to whatever they picked as a winner, for any given year or category. Yet I still value

Film #6: Blood Simple

I thought I'd include one of my first reviews, written for my college newspaper in 1985, in honor of the Coens finally set, 22 years later, to get the recognition they deserve from Hollywood. By the way, this is largely the way the original story appeared, but I've been unable to resist editing it. I can't tell if this is a breach of ethics or what, but certainly full disclosure is at least

Film #5: The Conqueror Worm a.k.a. Witchfinder General

One of the horror genre’s most criminally overlooked classics is 1968’s The Conqueror Worm. Known in the U.K. as Witchfinder General, this extraordinarily downbeat tale stars Vincent Price as Matthew Hopkins, the real-life henchman for Cromwell in wartorn 17th century England who was assigned to find and prosecute witches hidden within the country’s tiny townships. He’s an intriguing character

Film #4: Thesis

Alajandro Amenabar’s 1996 film Thesis was made a few years before he stunned American audiences with his hallucinatory Open Your Eyes, but his debut, which won six Spanish Goyas (their Oscar equivalents), is more impressive. Ana Torrent is terrific as a film student working on a thesis about extreme violence in the media. While researching, she gets wind of a snuff video shot in Czechlosovakia,

Film #3: Eyes Wide Shut

Upon its release in 1999, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut promptly took its place alongside Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Antonioni’s L’Avventura, at least half of David Lynch’s entire oeuvre, and Kurosawa’s Dreams as one of the cinema’s great phantasms. If, upon seeing it, you’ve any sense of it sporting a traditional story--even a derailed or dull one--then, if you will pardon

Film #2: Bye Bye Birdie, Film #2 1/2: No Country for Old Men, 2007 Oscar Predictions, and "The Latest Show on Earth"

Well, I made my debut on Internet TV--more specifically, on "The Latest Show on Earth," hosted by Joe Hendel (www.downtowntv.com, www.thelatestshowonearth.com). Like you may have read on my earlier post, I have live TV experience, so it was a real trip back to those times for me. I'm a little rusty, but I think I aquitted myself nobly, making my picks for the Oscars on the show. Joe, a customer I

Who Am I? / Film #1: Chilly Scenes of Winter

(Here I am on the set of Film Forum, the Atlanta-based, live movie review show once hosted by Aron Siegel and myself; I was on it from 1999 to 2003.)

I think it's only fair I introduce myself before you read my stuff. It's a complicated history, so bear with me.

My name is Dean Treadway and I have been studying movies all of my life. I live in Brooklyn, near New York City now. But back down

MAC First Look: Herve Leger by Max Azria

"Sexy bond bitches - wet liquid eyes and gorgeous skin - a just-came-out-of-the-water look."
Val Garland - Key Artist


Face
Face and Body Foundation was buffed into the skin using Brush 187 followed by a touch of Blot Powder Loose on the t-zone. Cheeks were lightly contoured with MAC Crème Colour Base in Bamboo and highlighted with Crème Colour Base in Hush.


Eyes
MAC Gloss Texture was blended with Reflects Gold to create a sheer and shiny base on the lids. Photogravure Technakohl Eye Liner was smudged on the lash line using MAC Brush 224. PRO Lash Mascara in Black was brushed onto lashes using MAC Fan Brush 205 for a defined lash.


Lips
MAC Paintstick in Cool Pink was faintly blotted onto lips.

MAC First Look: Herve Leger by Max Azria

"Sexy bond bitches - wet liquid eyes and gorgeous skin - a just-came-out-of-the-water look."
Val Garland - Key Artist


Face
Face and Body Foundation was buffed into the skin using Brush 187 followed by a touch of Blot Powder Loose on the t-zone. Cheeks were lightly contoured with MAC Crème Colour Base in Bamboo and highlighted with Crème Colour Base in Hush.


Eyes
MAC Gloss Texture was blended with Reflects Gold to create a sheer and shiny base on the lids. Photogravure Technakohl Eye Liner was smudged on the lash line using MAC Brush 224. PRO Lash Mascara in Black was brushed onto lashes using MAC Fan Brush 205 for a defined lash.


Lips
MAC Paintstick in Cool Pink was faintly blotted onto lips.

MAC First Look: DKNY

"Really fresh, innocent young girls with naturally rosy lips - a just-been-for-a-walk-in-the-country look."
Charlotte Tilbury - Key Artist


Face
MAC Select Moisturecover and Face and Body Foundation were applied to skin in appropriate colours as needed. Ladyblush Blushcreme was tapped high onto the cheekbone and blended out with fingers to create a natural flush.


Eyes
Lashes were curled at the roots and coated multiple times with MAC PRO Lash Mascara in Black.


Lips
MAC Lip Pencil in Beet was applied to the lips and sheered out to create a stain.

MAC First Look: DKNY

"Really fresh, innocent young girls with naturally rosy lips - a just-been-for-a-walk-in-the-country look."
Charlotte Tilbury - Key Artist


Face
MAC Select Moisturecover and Face and Body Foundation were applied to skin in appropriate colours as needed. Ladyblush Blushcreme was tapped high onto the cheekbone and blended out with fingers to create a natural flush.


Eyes
Lashes were curled at the roots and coated multiple times with MAC PRO Lash Mascara in Black.


Lips
MAC Lip Pencil in Beet was applied to the lips and sheered out to create a stain.