I’m not that impressed by the Oscars, period. They simply have too long a history of overlooking anything and anyone that might frighten the horses in favor of the safely middle-brow. All the same, it’s impossible to be interested in movies and completely ignore the damned things however irrelevant you think they are.
Film criticism, film theory and film history — all inextricably related — are by necessity voracious animals. The problem is that there’s only so much to work from — even though there’s more of it all the time. This can result in some pretty curious notions.
The Southeastern Film Critics Association named Milk the Best Picture of 2008 in its 17th annual voting. Director Gus Van Sant’s powerful look at slain activist Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to hold public office in the nation, earned a total of three awards, with its other victories coming in the categories of […]
Here we are at the end of another year (which, you’ll agree, beats not getting to the end of another year). That means here I am with my seventh or eighth (I’ve lost track) Best of/Worst of lists, while my cohort in cinema Justin Souther offers up his second such list. This also means that […]
I think this year the reflection process has been ramped up by virtue of the death of film historian and collector Forrest J Ackerman at the beginning of December.
For the past several years I’ve been asked to come up with holiday viewing suggestions at this time of year. This year you’re on your own. Instead, I’ll tell you what I’m planning on watching and let it go at that.
The results are certainly not geared to maximum recognition value. But they do reflect 20 movie characters I find indelibly imprinted on my cinematic psyche.
When I jotted down my list of movies that qualify for the comfort food category, the first thing I realized is that only two of them qualify as representative of their makers’ best work. Here you’re looking for something that produces a feeling — and does it consistently — that’s somehow soothing to your innermost being.
Most of us — at least those we call “of a certain age” — grew up on the Little Rascals on TV, which, by the way, is when they actually became the Little Rascals. The question, of course, is how do these old movies hold up?
The 2008 Asheville Film Festival is behind us, and with its passing comes the usual postmortem examination of what went wrong, what went right and what could have been better.
The comments in last week’s column — from a fellow veteran of the University of South Florida’s early-mid-1970s marathon movie screenings — brought my own memories of those days back with no little nostalgia for a time when I was young enough, resilient enough and possibly dumb enough to undertake such a thing as 16 movies in the space between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon.
All I knew was that it was really cool, that it took place in this really neat place and boasted a super cool hero. And it had a great opening credit sequence with a terrific theme. When you’re 13, that’s more than enough.