8 years ago
Longform (10 posts found)
On Hypermasculinity: The Objectification of Men in “Magic Mike XXL”
In 1973, British film theorist Laura Mulvey described the “active/passive hetero sexual division of labor,” declaring that men “cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification.” You heard it: They simply cannot bear it. Pleasure of display is warranted in art...
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Three’s Company: A Trio of Modern LGBT-Themed Comedies
Movies—is there anything they can’t do? On Friday, the Washington Post’s Alyssa Rosenberg celebrated the legalization of same-sex marriage by remembering a film that laid the groundwork for the historic Supreme Court decision: In & Out. The 1997 comedy is ...
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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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Realism and Intimacy: The Partnership of Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn
Theater is a feeling, more than anything, and performativity defines the act of living. The world is a stage and we the players, as Shakespeare’s Jaques said. In the vision of Modern Theater, stemming from the likes of Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov, and which...
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The Dark Side of Popular Music In Modern Cinema
Mia Hansen-Love’s new film Eden is a decades-spanning epic of a recent niche cultural past: the rise of French house music in the 1990s and 2000s. Eden is not a docudrama like The Doors, a biopic like Ray or a generic “scene survey” such as the millennial rave...
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The King and the Fool: Robin Williams in “The Fisher King”
Robin Williams’s suicide last August kicked off the latest round of handwringing over the received wisdom that the funniest comedians often suffer from overwhelming depression. But as shocking as the entertainer’s death was, Williams could never really bury hi...
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“Jaws” At 40
Few directors have a filmography with as many highlights as Steven Spielberg, and few of his films transfer so cleanly from one decade to the next as his 1975 film Jaws. Spielberg’s first major feature at the helm, which is turning the corner on 40 years since...
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SNL in Review: “The Blues Brothers”
In SNL IN REVIEW, we look back at some of the notable cinematic efforts from Saturday Night Live alums, and place them in context of the actor-comedian’s career.
The release of last week’s Live from New York! followed February’s much-publicized Saturday Night...
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On Animation as Genre And Medium in Cinema
In a recent article profiling Inside Out, the new film from Pixar Animation Studios, New York Times journalist Brooks Barnes wrote the following regarding the state of modern animation and the burden that Inside Out bears in the industry: “The rival DreamWorks...
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A Tale of Two Batmans: “Forever” and “Begins”
Batman doesn’t exist. Objectively, Joel Schumacher’s neon camp-fests are no less defensible than the “what if he were a real guy?” approach director Christopher Nolan and co-screenwriter David Goyer introduced 10 years ago with Batman Begins. Batman has been a...
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