Queen of the Roller Derby
Raquel Welch. Not a name that conjures up Oscar-winning movies. Instead, a vision of a cavegirl in a bikini comes to mind. Or maybe a buff female fitness instructor with a video line for women with...
View ArticleQueen of the Roller Derby
Raquel Welch. Not a name that conjures up Oscar-winning movies. Instead, a vision of a cavegirl in a bikini comes to mind. Or maybe a buff female fitness instructor with a video line for women with...
View ArticleSun Tribe Redux
When Ishihara Shintaro died on February 1, 2022 at age 89, most obituaries focused on his career as a politician in Japan. He first served as a member of the House of Councillors (1968 to 1972) and...
View ArticleJoe Meek: Studio Recording Wizard
Most record collectors and music lovers of the baby boom generation fondly remember some of the top forty hits created by such innovative producers like Phil Spector, Bob Crewe and Eddie Kramer during...
View ArticleShattered Bodies, Shattered Souls
When director Fred Zinnemann left MGM Studios after his contract expired with Act of Violence in 1949, he embarked on a new career as an independent filmmaker. After trying to find a suitable movie...
View ArticleJohnny Rotten’s Alter Ego
Some movies fall through the cracks and then are rediscovered years later by movie geeks who are amazed that such formerly “lost films” even exist. Such is the case with Corrupt (1983), which was also...
View ArticleA Nouvelle Vague Musical?
Of the more than 120 movies and short films in director Jean-Luc Godard’s oeuvre, there is really nothing like Un Femme est une Femme (English title: A Woman is a Woman, 1961). What other Godard...
View ArticleKay Kyser Meets the Three Horror Men
It’s hard to imagine what moviegoers today would make of Kay Kyser and his Kollege of Musical Knowledge, but during the late thirties and early forties the big band conductor was one of the most...
View ArticleTales from the Balkans
When Yugoslavia ceased to exist as a country in 1991, the six republics within that nation – Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Slovenia and Macedonia – split up into individual...
View ArticleCanuxploitation or Social Realism?
Canadian writer/director Denys Arcand burst upon the international film world in 1986 with his film The Decline of the American Empire, which won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes and the Best Foreign...
View ArticleBalancing Act
When was the last time you went to the circus? For most people, that form of popular entertainment has changed drastically over the years and is now more likely to be a showcase for human acts like...
View ArticleJust Deserts
Men behaving badly could easily qualify as a cinema subgenre with such classic examples as Kirk Douglas in Champion (1949) and Robert De Niro in Raging Bull (1980) leading the pack but the athletic...
View ArticleNot Fade Away
For rock ‘n’ roll fans, February 3, 1959, has a special significance. It’s “the day the music died,” because on that date Buddy Holly, one of the pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll music, was killed in a plane...
View ArticleWim Wenders Explores Yasujiro Ozu’s Favorite City
By the time Wim Wenders won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for Paris, Texas in 1984, he was well established as an internationally renowned director. He made his first big splash on the world stage in the...
View ArticleCharlotte Rampling’s Wild Card
Charlotte Rampling has been an international star since the mid-1970s when she appeared in Zardoz (1974), The Night Porter (1974) and Farewell, My Lovely (1975), but during her early career, critics...
View ArticleWith Sword in Hand
When was the last time you heard someone use the term swashbuckler? That’s a word that harkens back to another time but cinephiles associate it with a specific kind of action-adventure costume drama...
View ArticleThe Italian Conspiracy
On December 12, 1969, a bomb exploded in the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura (National Agricultural Bank) in Piazza Fontana, near the Duomo in Milan, Italy. 17 people died from the explosion and more...
View ArticleTime Machine
There may come a time in the future when science or even advanced AI creates a way that humans can time travel to another year or century. It might seem improbable now but look at all the technological...
View ArticleThe Dark Side of Robert Young
When most baby boomers think of actor Robert Young, they probably recall his popular TV medical series Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969-1976) where he was the epitome of the kind, compassionate doctor or they...
View ArticleHere Today, Gone Tomorrow
Film critics and moviegoers familiar with the work of French filmmaker Agnes Varda were unprepared for her seventh feature film Sans toit nil oi (English title: Vagabond) when it hit theaters in 1985....
View Article