CATCHING UP WITH FILM - FILM CRITICISM WITH AN EYE ON A PERSONAL CANON

Inspired by the 1001 Movies to Watch Before You Die, Edgar Wright’s 1000 favorite films and other lists, I am striving to come up with my own personal canon of films. Most cinephiles will never seek out Andrei Tarkovsky, or for that matter, Chantal Akerman, Tsai Ming-Liang, Bela Tarr and the other auteurs who specialize in “slow” cinema. Some of the more snobbish ilk may say that such heretics are philistines who besmirch the good name of cinephilia. I personally think cineph

Inspired by the 1001 Movies to Watch Before You Die, Edgar Wright’s 1000 favorite films and other lists, I am striving to come up with my own personal canon of films. Heaven’s Gate has been overshadowed by its reputation as one of the biggest box-office bombs ever. It was a revisionist Western when the Western was supposedly going out of fashion. It was apparently plagued with tons of production problems, mostly instigated by obsessive director Michael Cimino’s outrageous dem

I’ve always been a sucker for pub trivia, and I almost like creating trivia quizzes more than competing in them. The answers to the first nine questions are all connected by a theme, and the tenth is the theme. Feel free to share this quiz, and no Googling when you’re trying it! (What’s the fun in that?) Answers will be posted next week with the newest quiz. What you use to make white clothes whiter. The people who were attempting to create the philosopher’s stone so as to cr

K-pop is perhaps the most interesting and innovative pop music in the world right now, so I will be examining some of the most distinctive and artistically compelling K-pop music videos for April. Strangely, this isn’t the first K-pop music video with a vaguely Power Rangers-inspired theme that I have ever seen. (That honor would go to Crayon Pop’s FM.) EXO is one of the most popular groups in Korea and most of Asia, thanks to the powerful influence of SM Entertainment and th

For April 2018, I will be exploring films that feature indigenous people in leading roles and feature narratives about the identity of such people and the society that has inevitably oppressed them. Drunktown’s Finest focuses on many of the same themes I have seen in indigenous narratives. It follows three characters - Sick Boy, Nizohni, and Felixia - and their struggles. Sick Boy (Jeremiah Bitsui) is a immature, volatile young man who is attempting to join the military to su

Inspired by the 1001 Movies to Watch Before You Die, Edgar Wright’s 1000 favorite films and other lists, I am striving to come up with my own personal canon of films. Ms .45 is much better made than its material really merits. Thana (Zoe Tamerlis), a mute seamstress in New York, embarks upon a quest of revenge against all men after she is raped twice in one day. She manages to kill the second rapist, who had threatened her with the titular .45, which becomes her main instrume

Inspired by the 1001 Movies to Watch Before You Die, Edgar Wright’s 1000 favorite films and other lists, I am striving to come up with my own personal canon of films. Losing Ground doesn’t start in a particularly cinematic fashion. Sarah Rogers (Seret Scott), a college professor of philosophy, is lecturing on existentialism. The camera pans smoothly across the classroom as we see students in various states of engagement. One of the wonders of this scene is that we see a woman

I’ve always been a sucker for pub trivia, and I almost like creating trivia quizzes more than competing in them. The answers to the first nine questions are all connected by a theme, and the tenth is the theme. Feel free to share this quiz, and no Googling when you’re trying it! (What’s the fun in that?) Answers will be posted next week with the newest quiz. What R in pilot or NATO code stands for. A small town or settlement (Must fit with theme) A game involving black and wh

K-pop is perhaps the most interesting and innovative pop music in the world right now, so I will be examining some of the most distinctive and artistically compelling K-pop music videos for April. If K-pop were embodied in a person, it would have to be Kwon Ji-young, better known as G-Dragon. K-pop is characterized by an obsession with image, but more specifically, how that image can be manipulated to serve different purposes: to exude sex and confidence or innocence and vuln

For April 2018, I will be exploring films that feature indigenous people in leading roles and feature narratives about the identity of such people and the society that has inevitably oppressed them. Taika Waititi has had such a meteoric rise, going from small indie features to one of the biggest Marvel movies of all time (Thor: Ragnarok), that it’s difficult to see how dedicated he is to his Maori roots. It’s not as if he tries to hide it. In Thor, his character Korg has the