By Jodi Root Five years ago, almost to the day, my life changed. The impossible became not only possible, but actual history and the Pixies reunited. They said it could never happen, but the moment I heard that Frank Black and Kim Deal let bygones be bygones and embarked on a reunion tour in 2004, you [...]
We all have cinematic blind spots: notable directors, eras, or entire genres of film we’ve glossed over, either by accident or design. I admittedly probably have more than most of the cinephiles who populate the A.V. Club offices and comment boards. But whereas most people are pretty tolerant of my ignorance of Dogme 95 or the oeuvre of Luis Buñuel, the blind spot that’s always earned...
Catching up with a few things that fell between the cracks in recent weeks: A passable edition of Douglas Sirk’s “Summer Storm” from VCI Entertainment, a handsome transfer (with a questionable aspect ratio) of Luis Bunuel’s French-Mexican co-production “Death in the Garden” from Microcinema, and A&E’s stunning Blu-ray edition of Patrick McGoohan’s...
Looking back at these columns, it seems that the fastest way to become a forgotten author is to be compared to some of the century's greatest writers. In 1955, The Times Literary Supplement praised William Fryer Harvey as the equal of MR James and Walter De La Mare, at which point he started a decline into such obscurity that even the internet is of little help in locating his fiction.
Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) .. Jacques Rivette Gertrud (1964) .. Carl Theodor Dreyer The Green Ray (1986) .. Eric Rohmer Chimes at Midnight (1965) .. Orson Welles Early Summer (1951) .. Yasujiro Ozu Late Spring (1949) .. Yasujiro Ozu Sans Soleil (1983) .. Chris Marker L'Atalante (1934) .. Jean Vigo The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) .. Victor Erice Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) .. Robert Bresson...
The El Topo and Holy Mountain director thrilled the 1970s counter-culture. Now his crazed visions are turning on everyone from Santigold to Kasabian Eyebrows, hopes and ceremonially lit bongs were all raised earlier this year with the news that Alejandro Jodorowsky was finally making another movie. The high priest of head-trip cinema, Jodorowsky blew the collective mind of the counter-culture with...
I've been a Pixies fan for a while now, but I was too young to catch their first go-round, and I somehow stupidly missed their prior reunion tour, so their performance of great sophomore album Doolittle (plus b-sides!) at the sold-out Paramount last night was a real thrill. The band came out to huge applause, Deal chirped that they were going to play some b-sides, and with they launched into "Dancing...
With Surrealism the theme at this year's Apollo Circle Benefit, the mood inside the Met last night was a dreamy mix of glamour and whimsy. Bartenders serving Champagne against a backdrop of avant-garde films by Luis Buñuel and Maya Deren had painted-on Dalí moustaches, and maybe it wasn't too much of a stretch to see the light reflecting off moats and the Temple of Dendur's Egyptian...
“..The Coen brothers, it has been written, can be tricky. As the two fraternal film-making mavericks drift higher into the Hollywood firmament — loaded with Oscars from No Country for Old Men, glowing with kudos from Fargo, Barton Fink and half a dozen modern classics — – their creeping disdain for the interview process becomes [...]
HOLLYWOOD — After celebrating the 20th anniversary of its pop-punk classic Doolittle with thankful fandom across the pond, the legendary Pixies has returned to America to share its noisy love of surreal sonics and eye-candy visuals. That deafening blast you hear is thousands of Pixies monkeys gone to heaven. See also: Minotaur Maps Pixies’ Massive Pop-Punk [...]
The seminal band kicks off a U.S. tour commemorating the 20th anniversary of its 1989 college-rock classic 'Doolittle' at the Palladium. The seminal band kicks off a U.S. tour commemorating the 20th anniversary of its 1989 college-rock classic 'Doolittle' at the Palladium.
Well, here it is, the first of sure-to-be-many end of the year/decade lists on the blog. As most of the DVD releases for 2009 have already been announced, I figured it safe to cross the Region 1, US DVD premieres off the list early. All of the DVDs below are for films that were previously unavailable on DVD in the States (though it's possible one or two might have had an unofficial bootleg circulating)....
There are drawbacks to performing an entire album live in concert — even for the Pixies, who unfurled 1989’s groundbreaking Doolittle on Wednesday in the first of three sold-out nights at the Hollywood Palladium. “You can’t skip it if you don’t like any of the songs,” bassist-singer-chatterbox Kim Deal noted onstage with a blissful grin. [...]
Max Reinhardt, king of German theater had to flee Nazi oppression at the height of his creative success. He came to America, staged A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Hollywood Bowl and was signed to a contract by Warner Bros. to direct a film version. I guess it didn’t make money because Reinhardt didn’t get [...]