|Kevin Obsatz| How do you go from Network to Altered States? According to a biography about the screenwriter of both films, Paddy Chayefsky (Mad As Hell by Paddy Considine), it sounds like life in New York in the mid-1970s was about as good as it can possibly get for… Continue reading
|Patrick Clifford| In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected to be the 40th President of these United States. Among other things, Ronny and his wife Nancy were to become the figureheads of the War on Drugs with a PSA campaign that told America to “Just Say No.” Also in 1980, Ken… Continue reading
|Daniel McCabe| Imagine, if you will, that the art of animation disappeared. You had to choose one film to reconstruct the entire art form, from the silliest children’s YouTube video to the most profound Studio Ghibli opus. You get to choose one film to base this reconstruction upon. Continue reading
|Ryan Sanderson| If you grew up in the eighties or nineties, particularly in the American Midwest, there’s a strong chance you discovered your cinephilia via a VHS rerelease from the Disney vault. The Fantasia fiftieth anniversary edition, for instance, tore across American theaters in 1990… Continue reading
|Bob Aulert| The 1970s film industry was rife with paranoia, as films like The Parallax View (1974), The Conversation(1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), and All The President’s Men (1976) played to eager audiences shocked by the revelations of Watergate and quite ready… Continue reading
|Cole Seidl| Paranoia is mainstream again. Since September 11th, 2001, the American collective unconscious has been building towards a degree of paranoiac saturation unseen since the golden age of conspiratorial thinking in the 1970s. On September 16th, 2001, Susan Sontag published Continue reading
|Nick Kouhi| It’s easy to label Brian De Palma’s work as an extended exercise in voyeurism. But in a career spanning over half a century, the enfant terrible of the New Hollywood has transcended charges of Hitchockian pastiche with his perspicaciously (and…. Continue reading
|Courtney Kowalke| I cannot escape the reach of Ancient Greek theater. The last piece I wrote for Perisphere was about Mai Zetterling’s The Girls and a fictional production of Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata. It turns out a large part of director Brian DePalma’s inspiration for… Continue reading
| Finn Odum | Possession screens at the Trylon from Friday, December 31 to Sunday, January 2. Scroll to the bottom of this page for tickets and more information. Several weeks ago, I attempted to watch Possession so I could prepare for this piece. The vast majority of the film passed in… Continue reading
|Sabrina Crews| During my recent volunteer shift at the Trylon, I watched a dazed, nineish-year-old boy walk out of Police Story. The kid, a little breathless, looked up at his guardian and, referencing a trailer he’d seen earlier, said, “Dad, whoa. What was up with that, that Barbarella?” Dad shot… Continue reading
