Even though I like Steven Soderbergh, I don’t understand him. The way he ranges from the linear density of sex, lies and videotape to the off-kilter drama of Kafka and Schizopolis to crime thrillers, period pieces, possible Oscar bait, and science fiction retakes makes it difficult to talk about him as an auteur. If he […]
Earlier this year, my family took a long-awaited trip to Japan. I had been wanting to go to the “Land of the Rising Sun” for many years now, due in no small part to my love of that nation’s cinema (animated or otherwise), and the trip didn’t disappoint in the slightest. I joked with Japanese […]
Excerpts from Roger Ebert’s Journal, September 20, 2009 Every year good films show at the Toronto Film festival that never open anywhere near you. This year some good films played that may never open anywhere, even if you live in Toronto–or New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Austin or upstairs over a Landmark Theater […]
A poem in the ghazal form that elegizes Emmett Till, an African American boy who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after reportedly whistling at a white woman.
Okay, maybe you can’t actually earn a film degree at Filmwell, but Filmwell is an essential resource for your film studies, according to the Online Degrees Hub. Today, Filmwell was honored among 99 other film-related blogs and websites in the Online Degrees Hub list of the Top 100 Film Studies Blogs. Filmwell’s contributors are also […]
Thanks to The Village Voice, we can now listen to Harlan Ellison voicing the sentiments of many accomplished writers in this Dr. Seuss-inspired take on Josh Olson’s recent article, “I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script.”
Religion, however ironically disguised, makes its presence felt early in both of Stillman’s previous films, but for much of The Last Days the only cathedral is the dance club, the only faith an ill-fated allegiance to “the disco movement.” That absence, combined with the realistically rendered downward spiral of Alice’s search for love, lends the story a slowly accumulating gravitas that has much to do with moral consequence and spiritual emptiness: isolation surrounded by copulation, loneliness in the middle of a partying crowd. The director’s trademark irony falls away for entire scenes: he’s playing for keeps. This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no foolin’ around.
Asian Americans are perhaps the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States, and their rapid population growth represents a pivotal moment in our history, a moment where traditional ethnic enclave ideas need to be reconsidered.
This fortune cookie is brought to you by The House Next Door. I’m not sure what it all means, but I suspect it has something to do with the collective chill suffered by moviegoers worldwide as both Harrison Ford and Karen Allen speak publicly about George Lucas’s development of Indiana Jones 5. These truly are […]