Category: Uncategorized

The Museum of Home Video’s Ring, Ring: a Doorbell Cam Fantasia is Coming to Town! Some Context on Bret Berg’s MOHV from a Fellow Los Angeleno Who Witnessed its Inception

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A blurry black and white image by a door camera, showing a person dressed as a scary clown, holding three balloons, standing in someone's doorway, facing the camera.

|Penny Folger| The Museum of Home Video is an online streaming show that took flight during the pandemic and seems to have created an empire. Started by Los Angeleno film programmer/distributor Brett Berg, it takes place at museumofhomevideo.com at 7:30 pm PST most Tuesday evenings. Since its inception in July… Continue reading

A Whale of a Tale: Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies

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A slow walk through the small town.

|Luke Mosher| Béla Tarr’s slow cinema masterpiece Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) is a bleak and beautiful experience. It is exactly the kind of film that repertory theaters like Trylon were designed for. During the nearly 2.5 hour run time, you can’t check your phone or get distracted by your dog; you must sit in the theater and reckon with it… Continue reading

I Lived It: The Joy of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure

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Paul Reubens as Pee Wee, a light-skinned man with short, light brown hair. He is shown from the back looking at himself in the mirror of a bathroom, wearing a face contraption the lifts his nose tip an upper lip.

|Alex Kies| Pee-wee’s Big Adventure plays at the Trylon Cinema from Thursday, January 11th, through Sunday, January 14th. Visit trylon.org for tickets and more information. I went to college with a guy who, among other eccentricities, would periodically dress up as Pee-wee Herman and go through his whole day, classes,… Continue reading

Things You Shouldn’t Understand, Things You Couldn’t Understand: A Love Letter to the Cast of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure 

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Pee Wee is laying down surrounded by cowboys

|Sophie Durbin| What movie has the finest ensemble cast of the 1980s? Hannah and her Sisters? The Color Purple? The Breakfast Club? The Untouchables? Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean if you’re feeling obscure? Nope! It’s Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. I could write… Continue reading

iPhones Will Also Be Sex Vibrators: An Ode to Little Freaks

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|Finn Odum| 0. The Fool. I’ve always had a thing for weird little freaks. They’re exactly what they sound like: people whose behavior is absurd or unsettling. They have complicated relationships with subjects like sex, drugs, and religion. They can be repressed or unhinged… Continue reading

Taking Silly Seriously: The 90s Niche of Jean-Claude Van Damme in Sheldon Lettich’s Double Impact

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A close-up of Jean-Claude Van Damme as Alex, scruffy and serious with a toothpick in his mouth against a blurred background.

|Chris Polley| Nine years ago, as is the American way, a viral car commercial brought us all together. Advertising Volvo’s state-of-the-art dynamic steering, it showed a chiseled man in his 50s atop two large trucks, his stance wide and firm, with one foot planted on each of the behemoths’… Continue reading