In the 1934 film One Night of Love, Tullio Carminati tells Grace Moore that he’s going to star her in Carmen, in large part because, “For once I’d like to see a Carmen who weighed less than the bull.” In this same spirit, one suspects that the opera impresario played by Carminati would have approved […]
For the uninitiated, Father Mychal Judge was the first recorded victim of 9/11. The FDNY chaplain was killed by falling rubble when he followed the firemen into one of the buildings. He was also gay—albeit presumably celibate—a fact that made him instantly controversial, since gay activists seized on this fact, while conservative Catholics wanted to […]
I honestly don’t quite know what to make of Ruy Guerra’s peculiar film Eréndira (1983). The film itself has an odd history. Gabriel García Márquez wrote the story as a screenplay, then incorporated it into his book One Hundred Years of Solitude, and then recreated the screenplay from memory (the original was lost) for Guerra’s […]
Fresh from having traumatized an entire generation with the “nasty medicine that’s good for you” classic Old Yeller (note to parents: most small children don’t really enjoy seeing a boy having to shoot his dog), Walt Disney and his recently acquired house director Robert Stevenson decided to go lighter with Darby O’Gill and the Little […]
Somehow or other, Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs trilogy—Blue (1993), White (1994) and Red (1994)—never crossed my path until now, though I knew of it. I was a little hesitant about tackling the third film in the trilogy as an introduction, but needn’t have been. Despite the fact that the films interconnect (check the cast lists […]
Despite the presence of Stanley Donen as co-director, The Pajama Game (1957) isn’t a great deal more cinematic than theater legend George Abbott’s solo-directed Damn Yankees of the following year. (Strangely, Abbott’s early talkies for Paramount aren’t nearly so stodgy.) The best Donen can do is keep the camera fairly fluid and play with the […]
There’s something at once ironic and apt about screening Liz Mermin’s documentary at UNCA’s “F-Word Film Festival,” which is billed as “a celebration of images by and about women (but for all audiences).” On the one hand, it’s certainly about women and most definitely by them. (Mermin worked with an all-female crew). On the other, […]
I’m not sure that Zulu Dawn is an especially good movie, though it may be a better one than suggested by the pan-and-scan presentation of its original widescreen compositions. Still, the direction of Douglas Hickox can at best be described as workmanlike. However, it’s a remarkable work for what it set out to do—for what, […]
What? might almost be called The Missing Roman Polanski Film. It was made between Macbeth (1971) and Chinatown (1974) and was scarcely released in the U.S., though it received a spotty release in the late ‘70s in an attempt to cash in on the notoriety of Polanski fleeing the country. At that time it was […]
