Parallax View

The “Commercial” Life of Luis Bunuel

Peter Hogue — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:01:17 +0000

[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] One tends to think of Luis Buñuel’s “early” career in terms of long desert spaces between highly personal landmarks: almost two decades of relative anonymity between the collaboration with Dalí—Un Chien andalou (1929) and L’Age d’ôr (1930)—and the explosive resurfacing occasioned by Los olvidados (1950), and then [...]

MOD Movies: ‘Safe in Hell’ and other Pre-Code Pleasures

Sean Axmaker — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 18:52:58 +0000

11 sassy, sexy and sometimes stiff early sound pictures with attitude from the Warner Archive. When Hollywood was trying to find its way in the early sound era, learning to work around the sudden production constrictions imposed by sound recording and editing while struggling to find its own distinctive voice and delivery, it was also [...]

The Wonder That Is Margaret

Sheila Benson — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:59:30 +0000

Never, ever dismiss a grassroots movement (just ask Elizabeth Warren). Or the indignation of film critics, denied the chance to see what one of their clan has called “One of the year’s, even the decade’s, cinematic wonders.” The result has been a flurry of petitions, blog-wails and unkind aspersions directed at Fox Seachlight, from here [...]

The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for week of February 3

Editor — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:21:59 +0000

The only links page that matters… except for all the others. “But I want you to do more than just watch a race. I want you to take part in it.” Press Play celebrates the Oscars by looking back at the five best picture nominees from…1981, chosen at random so far as I can determine. [...]

‘The Woman in Black’: One Dreary Dame

Kathleen Murphy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:16:00 +0000

“The Woman in Black” has scared the bejesus out of audiences since first materializing in Susan Hill’s 1983 faux-gothic novel. Subsequently, this Victorian ghost story’s been adapted for British radio and television, and even for the stage. (The play opened in 1989 and is still selling tickets — the second-longest run in London history.) Now [...]

New on Blu-ray: Hitchcock, Huston and the First Oscar Winner

Sean Axmaker — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:50:25 +0000

Hitchcock / Selznick: Rebecca, Notorious, Spellbound (MGM) Hindsight is 20/20, but teaming of British perfectionist director Alfred Hitchcock and American iconoclast producer David O. Selznick was doomed to conflict. Selznick, who brought Hitchcock to Hollywood with an exclusive contract, was a director in all but name. He micromanaged his pictures down to the shot, rewriting [...]

Losses and Gains

Sheila Benson — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 02:16:02 +0000

Very mixed bag, in and around the Oscars this week. At Park City, Utah, the Sundancers had the heaviest kind of pall thrown over their festival when one of the pioneer Indie good guys, Bingham Ray, there as always, suffered a stroke and died at a Provo hospice at 57. During its too-short life span, [...]

DVD/Blu-ray: Le Cinema Fantastique de Jean Rollin

Sean Axmaker — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 02:50:04 +0000

There was no director like Jean Rollin, the French horror fantasist who died in 2010 and left behind a strange and wonderful (and sometimes horrible) legacy in his distinctive films. His reputation never really extended beyond cult circles but the weird sensibility and distinctive style and imagery of his sex-and-horror exploitation films, and his ability [...]

The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for week of January 27

Editor — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:38:39 +0000

The only links page that matters… except for all the others. “I’ve seen some creepy things in the movie business.” Accompanying their Cronenberg retrospective, the Museum of the Moving Image’s websiteis hosting some fine writing on the director’s career, including Tom McCormack’s look at how Videodrome‘s prophecies have played out, and a salute to his [...]

‘Man on a Ledge’ Wobbles

Kathleen Murphy — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:57:32 +0000

Asger Leth made his directorial bones with Ghosts of Cité Soleil, a hard-hitting documentary about the crime-ridden slums of Haiti’s Port-au-Prince, advertised as the most dangerous place on Earth. The multi-talented Leth also wrote, photographed and provided production design for “Ghosts,” which garnered good notices for visceral immediacy, as well as some critical cavils about [...]