8 years ago
Longform (10 posts found)
Mea Culpa: Why I Avoided Tyler Perry Films For So Long
A few weeks ago, Scott Mendelson at Forbes published a surprisingly positive survey of Tyler Perry’s film career. The piece, which is worth reading in full, highlights Perry’s unsung contributions to 21st century cinema, including how he essentially served as ...
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How to Survive a Plague: On the Resonance of “India’s Daughter”
Over the past two weeks, the Indian government has been fighting with the BBC over a documentary titled India’s Daughter, in a tussle that keeps revealing new facets with every passing day. At the time of writing, there is debate about, among other things, the...
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All That Glitters Isn’t Gold: The 25th Anniversary of “Pretty Woman”
Vivian Ward is the one Disney princess you won’t find roaming the grounds of the Magic Kingdom or Epcot; the prince with whom she rode off into the sunset saved her from a life of servitude far more salacious than anything her fellow princesses endured. Ward i...
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Into the Wild Dual Career of Sean Penn
Actors inevitably change as they age, sometimes altering their screen personas dramatically in the process. After spending much of their early careers exuding restless energy, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt became comfortable with stillness. Others, like Daniel Day-...
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Ethan Hawke’s Patient Journey
In Seymour: An Introduction, Ethan Hawke’s first attempt at making a documentary, pianist Seymour Bernstein proves to be an affably candid subject, sharing the story of his long life and genius-level talent. But a more subtextual question can’t help but hover ...
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On the Reflective Horror of “It Follows”
On paper, David Robert Mitchell’s supernatural thriller It Follows seems like an odd sophomore effort from the filmmaker who first made his mark, however lightly, with 2010’s wistful teen drama The Myth of the American Sleepover, which trailed a handful of you...
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Being in This House: Albert Maysles and the Ghosts of “Grey Gardens”
On March 5, the film community reeled at the news of the death of Albert Maysles at the age of 88. Maysles, along with his brother David (who succumbed to a stroke in 1987), was responsible for some of the most indelible classics of American nonfiction cinema,...
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Dariush Mehrjui’s “The Cow” and the Birth of Iranian New Wave
The Cow screens this Friday, March 6 at TIFF Lightbox as part of their I for Iran: A History of Iranian Cinema by Its Creators program.
While Iranian films have screened at festivals as early as 1958–Samuel Khachikian’s Party in Hell played in competition ...
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The Rise of Will Power
He sits atop a rotating throne, rebuking gravity in a spray-painted netherverse, a spinning emperor with a golden scepter. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was indebted to the graffiti and Reebok aesthetic of hip-hop’s golden age, from which Will Smith had emerged ...
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“Stored in the Thighs”: On “Maps to the Stars” and David Cronenberg’s Comedies of Physical Frailty
Depending on where you stand, the past year has either been a watershed for David Cronenberg or another measured auteurist step. In September, the Toronto-based filmmaker joined a small club of septuagenarian debut novelists, releasing Consumed, an equally pul...
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