I joined the all new How Would Lubistch Do It? podcast to cover a myriad of issues on this defining early feature of the director's career, including covering its oft inclusion as a key early work of Trans Cinema.
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The Cardinal 1963
In one of my likely abandoned history articles, I was writing a history of copyright law in postwar France, and particular the fights around whether directors would be formally given "moral rights" and thus bestowed as authors within the legal landscape of art (for thos trivia nerds: it was this law that allowed the Huston family to sue and stop the colorization of The Asphault Jungle in the 1950s). What struck me is how little involved the major film critics…
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The Fabelmans 2022
Wild that the two most important cinematic references Spielberg uses beyond his own filmography is Antonioni's Blow Up and Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia.
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The Decks Ran Red 1958
Maybe as Twitter dies and my new job is less focused on writing about old films I can get back into the letterboxd game...
Shown at the Academy Museum obstensibly as part of a Dorothy Dandridge series, here forced into a role playing the Maori wife stuck on a boat. The film can't decide whether Dandridge should be a sex kitten or a vulnerable ingenue sadly so she does her best alternating between the two. But that's all sideshow to…
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The French Dispatch 2021
A film about depth beyond the surface. Anderson's films almost always appear in two dimensions to us, so what is apparent throughout is how often the film seems to push further in or out within the frame. Layered surfaces are literally pulled back to reveal something in and out. Temporal strategies are employed throughout to contextualize art in ways otherwise inexpressible. An aside of (violent?) sexual rapture requires moving closer in to the audience to break the spell of presentation.…
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Red Notice 2021
There are more shows and films to watch than ever before. So why does it feel so hard to find something good? Turns out this is just another effect of Hollywood's exploitation of labor and its poor business practices in the Streaming Revolution. Today I'm on "The Politics of Everything," a podcast from The New Republic, discussing why streaming made Hollywood Suck more than ever.
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Black Widow 2021
No I did not watch this. But I'm over at IGN this week with some quick analysis of the recent lawsuit begun by Ms. Johansson over this film's theatrical release and the future of streaming. A teaser:
"This will lead to a tough question for fans: Do you see the Marvel Cinematic Universe as belonging to the studio and its underlying intellectual property, or its creators that inhabit and make these roles iconic in the first place? In our digital…
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Ready Player One 2018
"Skeptics will say that independent filmmakers will just hustle, as they always have. But that becomes harder when digital distribution — and the need to access these primary platforms to make any profit — strangles the industry. Giants such as Netflix are positioned to control which films get made and how, without necessarily following the preferences of consumers.
But antitrust offers a solution. For more than a century, the U.S. has used antitrust laws to break up or curb monopolies…