New Work
This week's DVD column -- Steve McQueen's heart-attack portrayal of the IRA hunger strikes, Hunger, plus mumblecore prime Alexander the Last -- IFC.com.
The complete index to IFC.com columns, from 10/06 to last week
HEMINGWAY DEADLIGHTS
From St. Martin's Press
Inspect the new author site and Hemingwaiana blog!
Watch the HEMINGWAY DEADLIGHTS book trailer!
Read Mike now column-blogging on culture and politics, at True/Slant!
EXILE CINEMA: Filmmakers At Work Beyond Hollywood (featuring essays by Jonathan Rosenbaum, Guy Maddin, Chuck Stephens, Howard Hampton, and more!)
From SUNY Press
FLICKIPEDIA: Perfect Movies for Every Occasion, Holiday, Season, Mood, Ordeal and Whim (co-written with Laurel Shifrin)
From Chicago Review Press
Use and abuse the new FLICKIPEDIA Blog
Ranting on media vacuity vis a vis Tiger Woods's johnson, at True/Slant, 2/20/10
My Criterion Top Ten, The Criterion Collection, 2/17/10
The first Holocaust movie ever -- shot in Auschwitz in 1947! -- Wanda Jakubowska's The Last Stage, IFC.com, 2/16/10
Noh Young-seok’s Korean micro-indie Daytime Drinking, plus a cataract of femme noir, from 1951's Two of a Kind to Hugo Haas's One Girl's Confession (1953), IFC.com, 2/9/10
Vintage Czech cinema in L.A., including Marketa Lazarova!, LA Weekly, 2/8/10
On Solidarnosc-era Polish cinema, The Village Voice, 2/3/10
Looking at Wholphin 10, and W.S. Van Dyke's long-underseen White Shadows in the South Seas, IFC.com, 2/2/10
Summing up the death of Miramax at The Village Voice, 1/30/10
Reviewing Eastwood's Invictus, Sight & Sound, 1/29/10
On the sublime Canadian deconstructionist horror beaut Pontypool, plus Ulrich Seidl's Import/Export, IFC.com, 1/26/10
The Dardennes' Lorna's Silence, and Craig Baldwin's Mock Up on Mu, IFC.com, 1/19/10
Considering Roy Andersson's magnificent You, the Living, plus Duncan Jones's Moon, at IFC.com, 1/12/09
Why I won't see Avatar, True/Slant, 1/7/10
On (500) Days of Summer and the Soviet pulp marathon Miss Mend, IFC.com, 1/5/09
A one-man, one-room remake of First Blood, Flooding with Love for the Kid, The Village Voice, 1/5/10
Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman, plus a shout-out to Facets' new disc of Alexander Alexeieff animation, IFC.com, 12/29/09
On Chaplin's The Great Dictator, The Village Voice, 12/23/09
The annual Best-Films-to-Go-Straight-to-Video-and-Why-Is-That-Not-a-Legit-"Release" megalist, at IFC.com, 12/22/09
My song of love for Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, plus Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues, IFC.com, 12/15/09
Reviewing the Coens' A Serious Man in Sight & Sound, Dec. '09
A Dantean reading of The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, The L Magazine, 12/11/09
The end-of-decade case made: Adaptation is the American film of the '00s, IFC.com, 12/11/09
"Prophet Motives: Glenn Beck's The Christmas Sweater," which I actually went to see in a theatrer, The L Magazine, 12/10/09
"Did They Protect Bin Laden?", True/Slant, 12/9/09
The historic doc event The Battle of Chile finally coming to DVD, plus Kino's Avant-Garde 3, IFC.com, 12/8/09
Riffing on The Omega Man in The L Magazine, 12/2/09
Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys, and the philosophical mega-doc The Ister, IFC.com, 12/1/09
Luis Bunuel's never-remembered Death in the Garden, and Michael Ritchie's acidic '70s honey Downhill Racer, IFC.com, 11/24/09
Reviewing The Road -- oy -- and Me and Orson Welles, at IFC.com, 11/25/09
Park Chan-wook's Thirst, plus Kent MacKenzie's rediscovered The Exiles, at IFC.com, 11/17/09
Aghast at Herzog's The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, along with Sokurov's The Sun, at IFC.com, 11/18/09
On Lance Hammer's Ballast, and Don Siegel's The Lineup, at IFC.com, 11/10/09
Kvelling over Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, and not so much about McGehee & Siegel's Uncertainty, at IFC.com, 11/11/09
On Samuel Fuller, Shockproof, Scandal Sheet and It Happened in Hollywood, at IFC.com, 11/3/09
Staring at The Men Who Stare at Goats, and staring at the ceiling after Collapse, at IFC.com, 11/3/09
My supplemental essay to Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire, at The Criterion Collection, 11/3/09 and for the hereafter.
Check out and BID UPON my Significant Objects significant object, a near-worthless tchotchke reinvested with significance by my commissioned story, on eBay! 10/6/09
At True/Slant, I settle the Polanski affair, 10/5/09
The notorious New York ultra-indie Frownland, and the 1950 Mexican spitfire camp Aventurera, at IFC.com, 9/29/09
Peter Greenaway's return, with Nightwatching and Rembrandt's J'Accuse, IFC.com, 9/14/09
Premier silent Soviet agit-pulp: Lev Kuleshov's The Death Ray, The L Magazine, 9/8/09
On the bewitching film criticism of Graham Greene, Moving Image Source, 8/21/09
On Elem Klimov's Rasputin grand mal, Agony, The L Magazine, 8/21/09
Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The L Magazine, 8/7/09
Powell & Pressburger's The Small Back Room, The L Magazine, 8/7/09
More Godard!: on Vivre sa Vie, The L Magazine, 7/28/09
On Godard's autobio wasteland, Made in U.S.A., and the tweedy old Barrymore silent Sherlock Holmes, at IFC.com, 7/21/09
"Project X: Revisiting the Season of the Blair Witch," Moving Image Source, 7/17/09
"Thunder Roads: Gangster Movies in Search of America's Nomad Soul," Sight & Sound, 7/09
On Yoshihiro Nakamura's Fish Story, The L Magazine, 6/24/09
On Tarkovsky's Solaris as it's mediated by the fab new Japanese film The Clone Returns Home, at The Criterion Collection, 6/17/09
Summing up Lewis Klahr's Tales of the Forgotten Future, at The L Magazine, 6/3/09
On The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Tarkovsky's Voyage in Time, IFC.com, 5/19/09
Quick pitch for Alexei German Sr.'s My Friend Ivan Lapshin, L Magazine, 5/19/09
"Endless Summer: Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day," at Moving Image Source, 5/18/09
Azazel Jacobs's "Momma's Man, and Terence Davies's Of Time and the City, IFC.com, 5/12/09
On Wendy & Lucy, and Chris Marker's A Grin without a Cat, at IFC.com, 5/5/09
"Time Regained: Remembering Julien Duvivier," Moving Image Source, 5/4/09
"Ironweed," TCM.com, 4/12/09
William Wellman's pre-Code films (especially Other Men's Women and Wild Boys of the Road), plus The Believer's album of Godardabilia, JLG in USA, at IFC.com, 3/31/09
Revisiting Guy Maddin's Careful, TCM.com, 3/09
Hiroshi Shimizu and Ornamental Hairpin, and Visconti's L'Innocente, at IFC.com, 3/17/09
On Zizek and The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, and Charlie Kaufman and Synecdoche, New York, at IFC.com, 3/10/09
"The Bright Side of Genocide: the New Holocaust Movies," In These Times, 3/9/09
A glimpse of my piece on the aesthetic of Polish movie posters (w/ illustrated gatefold!), in The Believer, 3/09
"Ashes of Time: On the death of VHS," Moving Image Source, 2/26/09
Godfrey Cheshire's Moving Midway, and, inexplicably, The Midnight Meat Train, IFC.com, 2/24/09
On Luis Bunuel and Simon of the Desert, IFC.com, 2/10/09
"Waltz with Bashir," In These Times, 2/12/09
On William Friedkin, retro'd at the Harvard Film Archives, Boston Phoenix, 2/11/09
On Carol Reed's Our Man in Havana, IFC.com, 2/3/09
"Ferrari's Dillinger Is Dead," at BAM, 1/29/09
"Rossellini's The Taking of Power by Louis XIV," IFC.com, 1/20/09
"Che," The Boston Phoenix, 1/13/09
"Marco Bellochio's The Wedding Director, and Michael Powell's A Matter of Life and Death," IFC.com, 1/6/09
"Hong Sang-soo's Woman on the Beach, and Nina Davenport's Operation Filmmaker," IFC.com, 12/30/08
"The Best Straight-to-DVD Releases of 2008," and #1 is a forgotten Larry Jordan animation!, IFC.com, 12/17/08
On Sam Fuller's White Dog, and Werner Herzog's Ballad of the Little Soldier, IFC.com, 12/16/08
"Silent Light: Frank Borzage at Fox, in the Shadow of Sunrise, and on the Brink of Sound," Moving Image Source, 12/16/08
Assayas's Irma Vep, IFC.com, 12/9/08
My latest liner notes for The Criterion Collection: Wim Wenders's landmark Wings of Desire, Cornel Wilde's The Naked Prey, Jules Dassin's Brute Force, and Shohei Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine. Plus: an original video "essay," for Lodge Kerrigan's Clean, Shaven. And for Zeitgeist: Phantom Museums: The Short Films of the Brothers Quay
The IFC Blog, every week
Bio
Film and culture critic, recently in Sight & Sound, The Boston Phoenix, The Guardian, The Believer, Moving Image Source, Modern Painters, IFC.com, TCM.com, Film Comment, The Forward, True/Slant, Chicago Reader, The Progressive, In These Times, The Stranger, The American Prospect, poetryfoundation.org, GOOD, Hollywood Life, LOST Magazine, Greencine.com, The Criterion Collection, The Village Voice, and Philadelphia City Paper.
Author/editor/coauthor of seven books, including Flickipedia: Perfect Movies for Every Occasion, Holiday, Season, Mood, Ordeal and Whim (Chicago Review Press), Exile Cinema: Filmmakers At Work Beyond Hollywood (SUNY Press), Ghosts in the Machine: Speculating on the Dark Heart of Pop Cinema (Limelight Eds.) and Blue Velvet (BFI).
Novelist; with debut novel, Hemingway Deadlights, out now from St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books!
The series' second volume, Hemingway Cutthroat, is coming, June 2010!
Poet, with the debut collection One Hundred Children Waiting for a Train (Word Works), and poems recently Michigan Quarterly Review, Zone 3, Mudfish, Phoebe, Passages North, Cimarron Review, Rhino, Carolina Quarterly and New Letters.
Professor of film, at C.W. Post/Long Island University, and New York University.
Father of three.
Ambivalent co-screenwriter, of among other things a doomed-yet-somehow-deathless TV pilot, Babylon Fields (CBS), starring Amber Tamblyn, Ray Stevenson, Jamey Sheridan and Kathy Baker, but which you're not supposed to see. But can.
Dormant member of the New York Film Critics Circle.
Son of Sayville, New York.Recent Work
GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE: Speculating on the Dark Heart of Pop Cinema (Limelight Eds.)
ONE HUNDRED CHILDREN WAITING FOR A TRAIN (Word Works)
BLUE VELVET (British Film Institute, Modern Film Classics series; translated into Portugese for Rocco Pub., Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and into Hebrew for Resling Pub., Tel Aviv, Israel)
On Jia Zhangke's Still Life, and Roberto Rossellini's always-forgotten Era Notte a Roma, IFC.com, 12/2/08
"Children of Paradise: How to Watch Hal Roach's Our Gang Comedies and Why," Moving Image Source, 11/20/08
On the excruciating pulp satires of Minoru Kawasaki, and Keaton's The General, IFC.com, 11/18/08
On the occasion of W., a mad rummage through "Bush-era cinema," in Sight & Sound, Dec. '08
On Budd Boetticher, and Ousmane Sembene's Camp de Thiaroye, IFC.com, 11/11/08
"Ends of the Earth: The 20th Annual Boston Jewish Film Festival," The Boston Phoenix, 11/5/08
"Michael Moore's Slacker Uprising," In These Times, 11/5/08
On Hou's Flight of the Red Balloon, and Mystery Science Theater 3000, IFC.com, 10/28/08
"The Shadow Army: The Thin Red Line Ten Years After," Moving Image Source, 10/28/08
"Paris vu par... (Six in Paris), and Lewis Milestone's Arch of Triumph," IFC.com, 10/21/08
"First Person Plural: Mike Leigh's Search for Happiness," Moving Image Source, 10/17/08
"Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos and Le Deuxieme Souffle," IFC.com, 10/14/08
"Boy A", IFC.com, 10/7/08
Saluting Children's Poetry Laureate Mary Ann Hoberman, at The Poetry Foundation, 10/8/08
"Be My Knife: Sex as Transgression and Transaction in Oshima's Political Erotica," Moving Image Source, 9/30/08
"Mr. Vengeance: The Bill Douglas Trilogy," Moving Image Source, 9/22/08
"Aki Kaurismaki's Proletariat Trilogy," at IFC.com, 9/24/08
"Mon Oncle Antoine," TCM.com, 9/22/08
"Who Needs Critics?" -- an optimistic symposium of critics loving other critics, in Sight & Sound, 9/08
"The Title Above the Name," in which I consider the value of poetry book titles, at The Poetry Foundation, 9/10/08
"Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, IFC.com, 9/2/08
"Kino Pravda" -- Mosfilm and Russian cinema history, in Boston, Boston Phoenix, 8/26/08
"The Man in the Glass Booth," The Forward, 8/18/08
"Hellboy II: The Golden Army," Sight & Sound, 8/08
"On DVD: the films of Larisa Shepitko," IFC.com, 8/12/08
"Hotel Berlin," TCM.com, 9/08
"Dystopian Idol: The Ignored Prophecies of Peter Watkins's Privilege, Moving Image Source, 8/25/08
Dreamy contributions from me plus 49 others to "The Lost World of the Double Bill," Sight & Sound, 8/08
"St. Bill of Illinois: The Poignant Case for William Holden," Moving Image Source, 7/2/08
"My Blueberry Nights, IFC.com, 7/2/08
"Robert Wiene's The Hands of Orlac," TCM.com, 7/2/08
"Pabst's Secrets of a Soul," TCM.com, 7/1/08
"Chris Marker and The Last Bolshevik, IFC.com, 6/24/08
"Outskirts of the Kingdom: Werner Herzog," Moving Image Source, 6/4/08
"The Delirious Fictions of William Klein," IFC.com, 5/27/08
"A Human Being!: Philip Schultz and Failure," Poetryfoundation.org, 5/24/08
"Darkness Visible: HFA's 'Unseen Noir' retro," Boston Phoenix, 5/19/08
"Errol Morris's Myopia: Standard Operating Procedure," In These Times, 5/13/08
"Todd Haynes's I'm Not There and Abel Gance's La Roue, IFC.com, 5/13/08
"Ray Harryhausen's Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and It Came from Beneath the Sea," The Stranger, 5/08
"Anna Karina and the American Night," The Believer, March-April '08
"Harry Houdini, Movie Star," TCM.com, 4/08
"The New York Underground Film Festival's Last Hurrah," The IFC Blog, 4/4/08
"The Stepford Wives," TCM.com, 4/08
"Moving Targets: The Iraq War on Film," Modern Painters, 4/08
"Ousmane Sembene's Moolaade and Otto Preminger's Daisy Kenyon, IFC.com, 3/25/08
"Sergei Paradjanov on DVD," TCM.com, 3/08
"JewishFilm 2008," The Boston Phoenix, 3/25/08
"Hell Boy: Berlin Alexanderplatz," The Boston Phoenix, 3/18/08
My case for George Melies, at IFC.com, 3/17/08
"Portuguese Man of War: Manoel de Oliveira," The Boston Phoenix, 3/12/08
On Hiner Saleem's Kilometre Zero and the Lubitsch musicals, IFC.com, 3/3/08
"Mafioso," TCM.com, 2/08
"Alex Cox's Walker and Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract," IFC.com, 2/25/08
"I'm All Right, Jack," TCM.com, 2/08
"Viva la Godard: Pierrot le Fou and Helas pour Moi on DVD," IFC.com, 2/18/08
"Lisandro Alonso's Los Muertos and Aaron Katz's Quiet City," IFC.com, 1/28/08
"Get Carter," TCM.com, 12/21/07
"The Kite Runner," The Stranger, 12/12/07
"My Darling Clementine," TCM.com, 12/11/07
"The Anti-Ozu: Shohei Imamura," The Boston Phoenix, 11/27/07
"Stealers of Sleep: The New French Absurdist Thrillers," Sight & Sound, 11/07
"The Boston Jewish Film Festival 2007," The Boston Phoenix, 11/1/07
"Zazie dans le Metro," TCM.com, 10/22/07
"Dark New Wave: The New Romanian Cinema," The Boston Phoenix, 10/1/07
"Ivan's Childhood," TCM.com, 10/07
"1408," Sight & Sound, 9/07
"Scandal Sheet," TCM.com, 8/07
"On Norman McLaren," TCM.com, 8/07
"The Host & Swordsman II," The Stranger, 8/1/07
"Mismanagement or Mass Murder?: No End in Sight," In These Times, 7/24/07
"Hairy Potter: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," The Boston Phoenix, 7/10/07
"Comme Ci, Comme Ca: The Boston French Film Festival," The Boston Phoenix, 7/10/07
“Artifice and Old Lace: Greenscreen Movies,” Modern Painters, 7/07
"The Uncelebrated Genius of Peter Watkins," GOOD Magazine, 7-8/07
“Big Momma: Attack of the 50 Foot Woman,” The Stranger, 7/4/07
"Mouchette," TCM.com, 7/07
“Givers of the Viscera: Grindhouse Cinema Remembered,” Sight & Sound, 7/07
"The Fallen Idol," TCM.com, 7/07
"Glaciation and Bloodshed: The Early Works of Michael Haneke," The Stranger, 6/6/07
"Tragic Diagrams: Sansho the Bailiff," The Stranger, 5/30/07
“Glee and Venom: The Films of Harold Pinter,” Boston Phoenix, 5/8/07
“That’s Entertainment: American Indies,” Sight & Sound, 4/07
"Inland Empire," Sight & Sound, 4/07
"The Double Life of Veronique," TCM.com, 4/07
"The Fountain," Sight & Sound, 3/07
"Sokurov's Elegies," The Stranger, 3/14/07
"Film Among the Ruins: Helmut Kautner," The Boston Phoenix, 2/21/07
"Starship Troopers," TCM.com, 2/07
"Rain Man: The Lingering Gaze of Béla Tarr,” The Boston Phoenix, 1/10/07
“Cinema Belongs to Him: Jacques Rivette,” The Boston Phoenix, 1/3/07
“Moral Horrors: Guillermo del Toro and Pan’s Labyrinth,” Film Comment, 1-2/07
"Magic Can Get Lost: An Interview with David Lynch," The Stranger, 1/17/07
"Tales from the Other Side: Letters from Iwo Jima," Philadelphia City Paper, 1/10/07
"The Truth is Out There... Somewhere: Alex Jones's Terrorstorm," Greencine.com, 12/7/06
"Movies from Outer Space: From Tsars to the Stars, Russian Fantastik Cinema,” The Boston Phoenix, 11/30/06
"Story of a Cloistered Nun," TCM.com, 11/06
“Assassination Vacation: Bobby,” Philadelphia City Paper, 11/21/2006
“Fissionable Material: The 2006 Festival of Films from Iran,” The Boston Phoenix, 11/10/06
“Gossip and Booze: Marie Antoinette,” The Stranger, 10/19/06
“Other People’s Bookmarks: Fellow Wanderers of a Forgotten Republic,” The Believer, 11/05
Reprinted (but without the fabulous bookmark centerfold!) at BiblioBuffet, 11/07
“History Worth Repeating: Hearts and Minds,” The Guardian, 11/5/05
“When We Were Psychos: Winter Soldier,” In These Times, 10/24/05
“Look Out, It’s Real!: Haskell Wexler and Tell Them Who You Are,” In These Times, 6/3/05
“Swan Song of the Century: The Ramones and End of the Century,” In These Times, 9/21/04
“Spin’s the Thing: The Manchurian Candidate,” In These Times, 9/20/04
"Stranger than Fiction: Bush-era Docs," In These Times, 9/6/04
“Counter Cultural Programming: The 50 Best Election Year Movies,” In These Times, 5/31/04
“Hyperauthor! Hyperauthor!,” The Believer, 12/03
“To Saragossa and Part Way Back: A Polish Ghost Story,” The Believer, 7/03
“O Biblioklepts!,” The Believer, 5/03
Against George Lucas, at The Guardian, 8/00
"Mad about Marlene," swooning for a Dietrich retro, for The Guardian, 6/00
DVD liner notes for Phantom Museums: The Short Films of the Brothers Quay (Zeitgeist), Jules Dassin's Brute Force (Criterion), Shohei Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine (Criterion), Hong Sang-soo's Woman Is the Future of Man (New Yorker), Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring (Criterion), Lodge Kerrigan's Claire Dolan (New Yorker), Julien Duvivier's Pepe le Moko (Criterion), Rene Clair's A Nous la Liberte (Criterion), Luis Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid (Criterion), Lasse Hallstrom's My Life as a Dog (Criterion)
September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond (William Heyen, ed.; Etruscan Press, 2002)
The Best American Movie Writing 2001 (John Landis/Jason Shinder, eds.; Thunder's Mouth Press, 2001)
The Best American Poetry 1993 (Louise Gluck/David Lehman, eds.; Scribners, 1993)Syndicate
