England’s Arrow Video, while still largely focusing on genre titles, is rapidly becoming the equal of the BFI and Criterion in the quality of their releases, including extensive, informative supplements on many disks.
A friend who teaches film to university students occasionally offers a course in comedy. He’d originally thought it would be fun, but was quickly disillusioned. Of course, comedy, more than drama, tends to be specific to its context as jokes are frequently dependent on shared cultural referents. So these student fans of Adam Sandler, American […]
Someone recently posted a comment on one of my reviews for Blogcritics, calling me stupid for not “getting” a movie he’d obviously been obsessing over for a long time. Sometimes, of course, one doesn’t completely understand a movie the first time one sees it (I never could understand Pauline Kael’s assertion that she only needed […]
One of the real pleasures of the BFI’s Flipside series of DVDs and Blu-Rays is the sheer eclecticism of the choices being made available. The series’ mandate is to present fringe works, movies outside the mainstream. So far, we have gained access to early thrillers by Pete Walker (Man of Violence, The Big Switch); three […]