I recently came across a comment (can’t recall where) that it’s wrong to binge on TV series now that we can get whole seasons on disk. The art form is designed to be watched and appreciated in installments and watching many episodes back to back prevents absorbing each one individually. I do see the point, […]
At the risk of losing credibility, I have to say that I was disappointed by Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil: Retribution, which opened theatrically today. Anderson is a frustrating figure because he’s capable of excellent genre filmmaking, but also regularly shackles himself to video-game-based projects. This began immediately after he left England in the mid-’90s […]
I’m not sure what I should blame it on – the enervating effects of a long hot summer, the stresses of finishing my documentary, financial worries, early onset dementia – but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to drag myself out to a movie theatre these days, and for some reason when I do go, I […]
Laddaland (2011) is a recent Thai entry in the Asian ghost genre. Interestingly, it also seems to draw on a western strain of horror, what you might call “real-estate anxiety” as exemplified by Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror, even to some degree the Paranormal Activity series. Here the fear is rooted more in economic and status […]
Flying to England a few weeks ago for my nephew’s wedding, my experience of airline entertainment was even less satisfying than on my trip to Beijing last year. As before, the wide selection of movie choices was undeniably eclectic – in the “avant garde” section, for instance, we were offered Morgan Spurlock’s Comic Con Episode […]
Sometime during the Ming Dynasty, two wandering soldiers arrive in the southern city of Guancheng. Armed with unusually long swords, they fight their way past the four martial arts schools which reign in the city. One of the pair is captured, while the other escapes and goes into hiding. He is Liang Henlu (Song Yang), […]
I recorded the voice over for my documentary last Friday and spent the next few days making final detail changes in the edit. Yesterday, I turned the project over to the techies for on-line picture corrections and sound fix-ups and mix. So the editing is finally done and I’m feeling a kind of post-partum depression […]
My project of revisiting all of Stanley Kubrick’s movies in chronological order has, once again, been stalled for some time, although the delay in looking at Barry Lyndon again has nothing to do with the kind of reluctance I felt with Spartacus. Rather, it’s just been difficult to find a clear window of three-plus hours […]
Jim McBride was one of the most interesting and accomplished filmmakers to emerge in New York City in the ’60s, debuting with the remarkably assured and inventive David Holzman’s Diary in 1967. One of the earliest, and finest, examples of faux documentary, it fooled many people with its convincing portrayal of a filmmaker (L.M. Kit […]
I was surprised to read over the weekend of the death of Kurt Maetzig. He was 101. Maetzig began his career in film in the ’30s with work on film technologies and animation. After the rise of the Nazis his work permit was revoked because of his mother’s Jewish heritage, and he spent the war […]