Fifty years ago today (the day after JFK was assassinated), as a nine year old boy living in a small village in southeast England, I sat down after what we then called “tea” (our evening meal) and started watching a TV show I knew nothing about. It had several characters in a blue police phone […]
When approaching 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman, Criterion’s new 5-disk DVD edition of the first three collaborations between the Italian filmmaker and the Hollywood star, it’s difficult not to feel a certain degree of trepidation. These three films, critical and commercial failures at the time of release, now stand as something like […]
Howard Curle recalls another formative experience with William K Everson’s class at NYU in the ’70s; The Sound Barrier, a key film in David Lean’s career
Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 provides free rein to five obsessive fans who air their personal interpretations of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). While other people’s obsessions can be fascinating, and conspiracy theories often provide narratives more satisfying than prosaic reality, sometimes, when overexposed, they can become exhausting and irritating. I approached Ascher’s film with a […]
Anyone interested in movies – and particularly anyone who writes about them – had to take note this past week of the death of Roger Ebert, the Chicago-based movie critic who over fifty years became the face and voice of criticism for a large public. He more or less fell into the role in the […]
Like most people who grew up with them, books mean more to me than simply the words they contain. I bought a Kindle last year, and I have dozens of books on it, but mostly it sits untouched on a shelf. I’ve only really used it on my trips to Beijing last year and England […]
Kier-La Janisse was in town over the weekend to launch her book House of Psychotic Women at the Cinematheque. To highlight the event, she chose to present a screening of David Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979), one of the key films in the book. While the print, which Dave Barber obtained from the national archive, had […]
Kier-la Janisse has had a varied and colourful career as a film and music programmer in various places, including Vancouver, Austin TX, Winnipeg and Montreal; she initiated and ran a festival of horror and fantasy films in Vancouver called CineMuerte and has connections with Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival. Her first book, a slim, attractively designed […]
In light of my defense of Paul W.S. Anderson a couple of weeks ago (in the context of my disappointment with Resident Evil: Retribution), I was interested to come across Armond White’s joint review of Retribution and Paul Thomas Anderson’s much-lauded The Master. White is one of the most interesting critics in the U.S. today, […]
This is a review I wrote a few years back for Prairie Fire. A couple of reasons for republishing it here: 1) I don’t have a lot of time to write at the moment as I’m pushing to finish my documentary; 2) I recently ran into Caelum on the street and we had a chat […]