Category Archives: film

Summer of Love: The 400 Blows

Just watched François Truffaut’s 1959 masterpiece The 400 Blows again tonight because I needed to be transported back to something else, something other, and few, if any, films can do it like this one. This may be one of the … Continue reading

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Summer of Love: Bava’s Twitch of the Death Nerve

I recently saw the above movie poster for Mario Bava’s Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971), and I just love the whole sense of occasion created by the hysteria: “The first motion picture to require a face-to-face warning!” The exaggeration … Continue reading

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Summer of Love: “Ahhh, los gringos otra vez”

The best scene from a movie ever? I don’t know, but there can be no question that this little bit of magic from Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) would have to enter the conversation. I mean this film has … Continue reading

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Summer of Love: Monsieur Klein (1976)

Joseph Losey fascinates me, from his early masterpiece The Boy with Green Hair (1948) to his work with Harold Pinter in the 60s on adaptations like The Servant (1963) to his slumming with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Boom!, … Continue reading

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“Hey, Nancy, no running in the hallways”

Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) remains one of the great films of the slasher genre, I actually taught it back in the Summer of 2000 as part of a discussion of recent Horror film cycles. Not only does it pick … Continue reading

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Erland Van Lidth, a.k.a Terror, Grossberger, and Dynamo

Erland Van Lidth is in my mind the b-movie equivalent to a John Cazale. Cazale has one of the most remarkable, and tragically short, film careers in history. He was in five films before his untimely death, all of which … Continue reading

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What the Magnificent Ambersons can teach us about the Internet

Last night I stumbled upon Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) on TCM and I have to admit I’d never seen it before. In fact, I didn’t see the whole film I just caught a piece of it, but it … Continue reading

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Once Upon A Time in the West – Opening Scene

The opening scene from Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) may very well be the greatest opening scene of any film ever. And I mean ever, I can’t even think of anything remotely close, save maybe … Continue reading

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Andrei Tarkovsky Talks about his favorite Directors

I love this video of Tarkovsky in his living room talking about his favorite directors. He seems so tortured and real at the same time, what a nut. I also love his analysis of Antonioni’s vision of “action” in his … Continue reading

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Ace in the Hole

The Media Funhouse just posted about the unbelievable classic film treasures that enjoy a short, but rich life on YouTube (kinda like the cicada in August). And the two collections he links to are filled with Western and Film Noir … Continue reading

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