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I Have A Way

"Bresson is a rarity among filmmakers: he apparently knows exactly what he does and why he does it... any study of Bresson must take into account his astute self-criticism." - Paul Schrader,...

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The Q Word

"Travis seems confused. He is so much part of his own world, he fails to comprehend another's world."- Paul Schrader, TAXI DRIVERDo you remember that scene in TAXI DRIVER where Travis Bickle finally...

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“I hate movies.”

Being part the fourth of my wrasslin’ with the work of Jean-Luc Godard. The first two parts – 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER and BREATHLESS – went undocumented. The last bout between Godard and I –...

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SHOAH Part 1 - An Everlasting Memorial

The image above is probably the most famous from Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 SHOAH. Having never seen the film (until recently), the image has been my brain’s shorthand for it; mention SHOAH and the impish...

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SHOAH Part 2 - "A production line of death"

"One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic."- Joseph StalinSix hours in and SHOAH is starting to congeal into several main thoughts/ideas.The biggest revelation for me during this round...

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SHOAH Part 3 - "Bureaucrats became inventors."

By the end of 1940, if you were a Jew living in Warsaw, you were forced to relocate to the well-guarded ghetto in the center of the city. You were among 400,000 fellow Jews -- some 30% of the...

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Bully For You, Chilly For Me

Hey everybody. Over at GreenCine, I have a write-up of Delmar Daves'JUBAL and 3:10 TO YUMA, which came out in May from the Criterion Collection. However, I'm taking a break from my Criterion reviews to...

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Everything can be done, in principle.

As long as I'm talking about Westerns, here's a piece that was supposed to go up last fall but never did.In 1978, MGM/UA gambled about $44 million (around $150 million in today’s dollars) on Michael...

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Hugger-Mugger Propinquity

Well... it's been quiet around here. A little TOO quiet. Eerily quiet, even. I...AAH! WHAT'S THAT?!Oh. WHEW. It's just Bill Ryan, ladies and gentlemen! My! Did his bulged eyes and exaggeratedly...

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Glittering Eyes

I was feeling free. I thought all my debts were settled. And then I received another summons from the redoubtable Bill Ryan (right). I had no choice but to carry out his diabolical orders and write up...

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Happy November Everyone!

Pretty uninspired you guys.

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Undateable?

I tend to hate reviews that arbitrarily pit films against each other, setting one up as a cudgel to thrash the other with. It's the obnoxious conceit that drives Armond White's annual "better-than"...

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The Barnes & Noble 50% Off Criterion/Eclipse-mas Holiday Gift Guide-a-thon...

Since we've already established that I'm essentially a shill for the Criterion Collection, I figured I'd throw together a couple quick lists of recommendations for the ongoing 50% off Barnes &...

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The Barnes and Noble Criterion Sale Ultimate Decision Maker!

As with yesterday's little exercise, I'm giving you a list of films to buy in the BN.com sale during the Criterion 50% off promotion they're running. Sure, you could stream them on Hulu or get them...

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Making Out With Pan

There's this moment in Michelangelo Antonioni's LA NOTTE (recently out on Bluray) where a woman attending a lavish, la dolce vita fete gets carried away in the middle of a downpour and starts making...

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A Visable God

 "Money is an abominable idol. It is everywhere. The only things that matter are invisible. Why are we here? What are life and death?"- Robert Bresson, in conversation with Michel Ciment "(I saw)...

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State of the Internet

Happy 2014 everyone! The above sums up the type of writing I hope to bring to this blog in the coming months. Terser, less informed, and more off-the-cuff. It's exactly on the way I would write. It's...

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Foolish and Beastly

Once again, it's time for the White Elephant Film Blogathon. Last year, when Paul Clark asked for volunteers to take over hosting duties for the big event, I drew the short straw. So here is where we...

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The Ninth Annual White Elephant Film Blogathon

And we're off! I'll be updating the roster below throughout the day and then add some closing thoughts. [UPDATE 6/2/14: thoughts have been closed, pull quotes have been added. See below.]Since I'm...

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Hyponatremia

(Note: this for a fiction writing competition I participated in and only serves obligations related to it. Posts should resume here in the fall. It's been a very busy summer. Cheers.)“Of course they...

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Driven Through The Field

"As I was plodding along the River Fuji, I saw a small child, hardly three years of age, crying pitifully on the bank, obviously abandoned by his parents. They must have thought the child was unable to...

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A Moment of Rosi

Yesterday saw the passing of Francesco Rosi, who made (among many others) the excellent CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI, SALVATORE GIULIANO, and HANDS OVER THE CITY. Rosi leaves behind an impressive (and...

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It's the 2015 WHITE ELEPHANT BLOGATHON, people!

By now, you all know the drill: film bloggers the world over have submitted their favorite (or, if they're particularly sinister, least favorite) film oddities to me. Those films have gone into a hat...

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Spooky Things #1: M.R. James "The Mezzotint"

Well it's Halloween season. And - why not?! - let me go ahead and use that time to inch my way back into the blogosphere.I'm officially done as the movie reviewer over at GreenCine. Everything I've...

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Spooky Things #2: Victor Sjostrom's PHANTOM CARRIAGE

Within a few years of its release in 1921, Victor Sjostrom’s The Phantom Carriage was considered a masterpiece of the cinema, alongside such canonical stalwarts as The Gold Rush, Battleship Potemkin,...

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