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Male Hysteria; or, Fear of Magna Cum Laude Pussy
|Devin Bee| Continue reading
Author: Finn Odum
How to Get Ahead in Advertising and the Great British Special Effects Tradition
|Hannah Baxter| How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1988) has a title reminiscent of a screwball comedy, maybe something starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. He’s a staid account executive and she’s a free-spirited graphic designer working at the same advertising agency. Forced to collaborate on a big account… Continue reading
The Depths of Withnail and I: A Dark-Comedy Coping Mechanism for Poverty and Outgrowing a Friendship
|Dan Howard| When Bruce Robinson was living as a struggling artist in London, he drew inspiration directly from his own less-than-glamourous lifestyle for his first novel, and eventually first film. If an artist doesn’t come from money, it can be very difficult to climb their way out of poverty… Continue reading
Squalor Stands the Test of Time: Bruce Robinson’s Withnail & I
|Penny Folger| “Fork it!” screamed actor Richard E. Grant, in the audition for what was to become his first role in a feature film: 1987’s Withnail and I. For Bruce Robinson, who was directing his first feature film, it was the way Grant delivered this line that sealed the deal… Continue reading
Doing the Man Dance: Way of the Gun
|Matt Clark| For the last 15 years, writer/director Christopher McQuarrie has essentially been in the Tom Cruise business. Eight of the ten pictures that list McQuarrie as a writer and the entirety of his directorial output (most of which now consists of Mission: Impossible films… Continue reading
The Keyser Söze Memorial Lecture
|MH Rowe| Thank you for coming today. I want to say a few words about the strangeness of a film called The Usual Suspects, which was released in 1995 and over the course of the last 30 years has become a politely or even well-regarded classic of the “neo-noir” crime genre… Continue reading
Anti-Fascist, All Fun: Disobedient Whimsy in Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s School in the Crosshairs
|Chris Polley| Sometimes this place feels like a prison” is a sentiment I hear at least once every few years as a public school teacher—from students, yes, but also at least twice from fellow teachers. It’s also a haven for many kids who lack stability and routine at home. And yet it remains a source of so much stress and so… Continue reading
Chess Moves, Rice Bowls, and Full Throttle Vengeance
|Matt Clark| During the 1970s peak of kung fu film popularity, films from the Shaw Brothers’ legendary studio were known for lavish sets, period detail, and often outrageous kung fu styles. Rival studio, Golden Harvest, was primarily known for promoting international sensation… Continue reading
Interview: A Grandmother on Shaolin vs Lama
|Ben Jarman| Here is a new take from my mom on the film Shaolin vs Lama. The goal here again is to introduce her to genres she is not interested in and gather her thoughts. She is a movie “buff”, but she doesn’t venture much into genre films. Martial arts movies are definitely not her thing. She can handle a horror movie… Continue reading
Memories of Summer
|Harry Mackin| Spoilers for His Motorbike, Her Island—watch the movie before you read this! We meet several different versions of His Motorbike, Her Island’s protagonist, Koh. First, we meet Koh the narrator. This Koh begins his narration immediately following the opening images of the film, when an appropriately… Continue reading