Month: September 2002

The weakness of most commercial photographers who try to do artistic work is that they simply don’t have the time to pull it off. Accustomed to working fast and clean, on assignment for big bucks, successful commercial photogs like Shawn Michienzi run the real risk of falling into auto-focus formulas. They have a hard time…

Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune’s artistic partnership was one of cinema’s most rewarding. The dozen-plus movies they made together from 1948 to 1965 were some of the most influential of the period, and this quartet— The Seven Samurai , The Hidden Fortress , Yojimbo and its sequel Sanjuro —comprise the bulk of the two men’s…

This is undoubtedly the film that put Jim Jarmusch into your consciousness in the late 80s, and it may have been your first introduction to the “art film” as a legitimate big-house screening. At the very least, it would have introduced you to Roberto Begnini, a formerly hilarious Italian comedian who imploded under the pressure…

Ah, the good old days (the 80s), when a throwaway, no-brainer sketch on SCTV or SNL could be stretched into a credible and hilarious full-length feature film. Of course, they’re still doing it—Adam Sandler, believe it or not, is one of the highest paid “actors” on the planet. But we have a special place in…

To answer the question “Is there anything more bizarre than a breezy sitcom set in a Nazi prison camp?” you need only look at the life and death of Bob Crane. When he wasn’t duping Klink and Schultz as Col. Hogan, he indulged in pornography—not just consuming it, but directing and starring in his own…

We’re not sure why Hollywood continues to be obsessed with Bret Easton Ellis, whose star rose and fell in the 80s, and we’re not convinced that his novels are the “scabrously hilarious” social commentaries we’re told they are. Seems to us that most of his books have an essentially voyeuristic appeal. American Psycho was less…