7 years ago
Martin Scorsese 10
“That’s Italian!”: On the 25th Anniversary of “GoodFellas”
I was fifteen years old on September 21st, 1990 – the day Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas opened in theatres -- and a full two carloads of us had negotiated the necessary curfew extensions to go see a 10:30 PM show at the Showcase multiplex in Revere, a suburb ju...
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“Black Mass” Is An Ugly, Droning Nothing Of A Movie
What an ugly, droning nothing of a movie director Scott Cooper’s Black Mass turns out to be. This much-ballyhooed (at least here in Boston) take on the frankly exhausted Whitey Bulger mythos has nothing new nor particularly interesting to say, cycling through ...
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Blank’s Canvas: On “A Poem is a Naked Person”
Partway through My Old Fiddle: A Visit with Tommy Jarrell in the Blue Ridge (1994), Les Blank’s look at the Appalachian fiddling and banjo master whose humble instrument landed itself in the Smithsonian after its owner’s death, we’re treated to a tutorial from...
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Mezzanine Essentials: “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams”
Like the magic lantern that evokes childhood’s fascination with moving images in the films of Ingmar Bergman, the whole of Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams seems to take us back to the medium’s infancy, to its primal pleasures and terrors. It is a film in which the sho...
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Mezzanine Essentials: “Peeping Tom”
The story of how Peeping Tom effectively killed Michael Powell’s career in the U.K. is well known, but perhaps Powell was actually trying to slay cinema itself? The film was trashed by British critics upon its release in 1960, resuscitated by the American New ...
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Falling Stars: The Peril of Fame in Film
Looking from the outside in, the lives of the rich and the famous look pretty spiffy. They live in awesome houses, they wear awesome clothes, they have awesome accoutrements, and they get to do awesome stuff pretty much all day, every day. But if David Bowie a...
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10 Best Picture Nominees That Should Have Won
Star Wars was nominated for Best Picture. Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial and Avatar were all nominated for Best Picture, but failed to hold the statuette. Oscars rarely celebrate the box-office smash or sci-fi adventure film. They represen...
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Bye Bye Life: “All That Jazz” as Film Criticism
“Sometimes I don’t know where the bullshit ends and the truth begins.” Neither do any of us, really, but so few eviscerate our own lives with the kind of crackling critical energy that Bob Fosse did. As Angelique (Jessica Lange), his own personal angel of deat...
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Video Essay: Lessons from “The Wolf of Wall Street”
Do you have thirty minutes to spare? This isn't just like any thirty minutes, and, no, this is not Jordan Belfort trying to sell you on something. From the moral motivations and the moral depravities of Mr. Belfort to the specific techniques Martin Scorsese us...
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Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” Still Happening According to Al Pacino
Well just about anything regarding what Martin Scorsese is doing is good news, so this update from Al Pacino is certainly welcome. For those unfamiliar, The Irishman is an adaptation of the true crime book I Heard You Paint Houses about the man who claims he k...
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