When I started this series, there were two films I knew I couldn't avoid and which I was slightly anxious about covering because of their ubiquity and notoriety - the very things that made them unavoidable. They were Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity. Both foundational staples of film noir, both with powerful statements to make about women's societal roles, and both with so many years of accumulated baggage it's hard to say anything original about them anymore. But also both such genuinely great, continually rewarding films that it's worth a try to do so.
Double Indemnity began life as a James M. Cain novel, and, in the way I generally rank Cain novels and their movie versions (The Postman Always Rings Twice makes a better novel than movie, and Mildred Pierce is a pretty much a draw), Double Indemnity is a much better film than book. For my money, I have no reservations casting this in large part to the screenwriter Raymond Chandler. But Chandler is probably my favorite writer, so there you are.
It's the triumphant (hopefully) return of Noir Monday! I intend to keep it going this time, ideally biweekly, but no promises. Feel free to suggest a future film.
The source material of In a Lonely Place is one of the most well-known pieces of hardboiled mid-century fiction written by a woman (Dorothy B. Hughes). I've never read it. I'm wary of doing so. I saw the film well before I was aware of the book, and it made such a profound, indelible impression on me that I wasn't ever sure I wanted to risk complicating it with other versions of the story.
As I explained last year when I did a similar list, this is not a "best films of the year" list. For all my film fascination, I don't make it to the theater for first-run features all that often. Blame the kid. But, in no particular order, here are my favorites from the films I did manage to see this past year, regardless of their particular release dates.
After a couple of chance encounters with local independent filmmakers and a production company recently, I decided that I could do more to support and spotlight independent film in central Ohio. With first run of the Cowtown Film Series happening tonight, it seemed like a good opportunity to make good on that intent. So I got a hold of Peter John Ross, filmmaker and one of the main forces behind the series, to talk about not only this event but the independent film scene in Columbus.
There's a lot to recommend the ZOOM Family Film Festival this weekend, December 3-6, at the Wexner Center, and the fact that you're encouraged to show up Saturday morning in your pajamas for cartoons and cereal is the least of it. Well, you're encouraged if you're a kid. If you're not, you can still show up thus uniformed, but the results might not be as cute.
For years now I've been searching for a print of this rumored short film written and directed by Vincent D'Onofrio about the conception of Orson Welles's most famous line in the film The Third Man. It only screened on the festival circuit and wasn't available on DVD, so I had resigned myself to having missed this one for good. This morning, however, I finally stumbled across it online:
I've had this idea sitting around for a while, so I finally sat down and did it - a new shirt design for the geekiest of the film geeks, the letterbox evangelists:
Two of this blog's favorite topics - film and design - get to dance around merrily together with the news that director Gary Hustwit, of Helvetica fame, is coming to Columbus to introduce his documentary on industrial design this Friday, May 15, at 7 PM & 9 PM, plus again on Saturday, May 16 at 7 PM, at the Wexner Center. I will be there, naturally. Look for a report on the film and director's comments early next week.
So since I'm kind of already a Cleveland International Film Festival cheerleader, I decided to make it official and become a titled Film Ambassador. And in my new "official" capacity, I would like to invite you to the Columbus preview party on March 6 at the Wexner Center. Here's the details:
We invite you and your friends to get a sneak peek of the 33rd Cleveland International Film Festival at the Official Columbus Preview Party.
Join Amy Juravich, Linda Taylor, and Clay Lowe of WOSU's “Open Line Weekend” along with guests from the Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF) and the Wexner Center for a special reception and screening of The Secret of the Grain. Tickets for the screening are $7 ($5 for Wexner Center members, students & senior citizens).
Friday, March 6th
Free reception begins at 6pm. Stay for the screening at 7pm the Wexner Center, 1871 North High Street
Enjoy free food, cash bar, chances to win cool prizes including CIFF All-Access passes and an overnight hotel stay, previews of this year’s films, and take home your very own CIFF program guide hot off the presses!
And a very special thanks to our Columbus partners: Wexner Center for the Arts, WOSU, The Other Paper, The Capital Magazine, and Whole Foods Market.
To RSVP, please e-mail Michele Mooney at mmooney@wexarts.org.
This is not exactly the type of list you might think it is. Most people, when writing about their top films of a certain year, reasonably confine themselves to writing about films that actually premiered in that year. But I possess a noisy, squirmy toddler, which makes theater-going almost impossible on a regular basis, and limits my film watching to not-quite-new films. So, here's a random list of the best movies I managed to see in 2008.
John Cusack does comedy tinged with tragedy (or perhaps vice versa) really well. Generally, he seems to go for romantic tragedy rather than any other kind, but whenever he gets close to tongue-in-cheek noir, it seems, to me, to be a perfect fit.
Zombies and girls (and zombie girls, and girl zombies, presumably) are in the film news lately - as well they should be.
I haven't even seen this documentary, Zombie Girl, yet, but already its star, Emily Hagins, is my new heroine. How could she not be? She's twelve years old, and she's directed her own full-length feature zombie movie. Check it out:
Also, io9's Annalee Newitz just produced an excellent piece on zombie feminism:
Along with other recent indie horror fare like Zombie Strippers, Deadgirl turns zombies into figures for militant social outcasts — preyed-upon women who return to wreak vengeance. Call it zombie feminism. It's a subgenre that goes back to the 1980s, and every time it dies, it just comes back stronger than ever.
The new film she's referring to is Deadgirl, which looks like a great arty horror film. (The trailer is at the io9 link - it's not overly explicit, but still might not be everyone's cup of tea.)
Question for discussion: is it a coincidence that as torture porn and its misogynistic appeal fades from the horror movie scene, there's a revival of female-centered revenge film?
Every Thursday for the next few weeks, hte Cowtown Film Series is featuring Ohio-grown independent films. $3 a show, or $10 for all of them, at the Screens at the Continent. Here's the trailer for tomorrow nights, Micky Fisher's Summer Nuts:
In another critical update to a film I've been dreading, although this one not so favorable, the reviews of The Women are out. And Chris Wisniewski's is priceless:
For English, The Women is undoubtedly (and mysteriously) a labor of love, but for Warner Brothers, its 2000-screen rollout is a cynical calculation that the same female audiences who turned out for The Devil Wears Prada and Sex and the City—starved of decent movies actually made for them—will choose to waste their hard-earned money on this dull and pedestrian bit of moviemaking instead of, say, contributing it to Hillary Clinton’s debt relief. This is the same brand of cynicism that landed everyone’s favorite hockey mom on the national Republican ticket: women will be so happy to see themselves finally represented, on the stump or onscreen, that they won’t really care about the substance of what they’re seeing—the candidate doesn’t have to be worthy; the movie doesn’t have to be good; they simply have to be.
The winner of the Columbus 48-hr Film Project is Aidan 5, an intriguing mix of not only sci-fi and noir, but also hand-drawn sets and live-action characters. Really cool:
I don't really argue with the linked article's argument - in fact, it's exactly right. But there's a missing piece to this discussion, and it's that taking stock of newspaper writing, especially newspaper cinema writing, is hardly taking an accurate picture of the present and and future of film criticism. The landscape isn't quite so bleak if you take into account the women writing about film on the web. Let's face it: for good or bad, newspapers are in a steady and probably irreversible decline. The web is where it's at. It's also where writers like Anne Thompson, Karina Longworth, Alison Willmore, and Dana Stevens are. It's also where I happen to be, a woman writing about film. For once, I'm going to put aside the righteous indignation and focus on optimism instead. It's not great that so few women critics are featured in today's newspapers. But it's not the end of the world, either.
This one is just for us film snobs - but for us, it's incredibly exciting news - we've just recovered a significant, previously lost portion of Metropolis. GreenCine has the details.
DP RSS Feed
DP on Tumblr
DP on Twitter
DP on Facebook
Get DP via email
