Category Archives: film

March 5, 2018

Contemporary Film Directors Series: Celebrating 15 Years of Scholarship on Filmmakers From Around the World

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“Our aim has been to publish conceptually ambitious, risk-taking work that challenges familiar models for understanding film authorship.”–Justus Nieland, CFD series editor Since the publication of an illuminating cross-cultural dialogue on the legendary Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami in 2003, the University … Continue reading →

January 15, 2018

Happy Birthday Steven Soderbergh

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Born on January 14, 1963, in Atlanta, Steven Soderbergh found filmmaking in his teens. His Hollywood apprenticeship included work as a cue card holder and a director of concert films. In 1986, his film Sex, Lies, and Videotape helped launch the surge … Continue reading →

January 4, 2018

Happy National Spaghetti Day

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“There’s a reason that this genre film never worked. It must be ethnic to the core—you must smell the spaghetti. That’s what brought the magic to the novel—it was written by an Italian.” With those words former studio head Robert … Continue reading →

December 11, 2017

Happy Birthday Frank Sinatra

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One hundred-and-one years ago, Francis Albert Sinatra entered the world in Hoboken, New Jersey. He proceeded to live one of the more completely lived lives this side of Casanova. Though foiled by television, Sinatra otherwise thrived across mass media, earning love … Continue reading →

May 19, 2017

Climbing Twin Peaks, plus David Lynch cooks quinoa

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An excerpt from Justin Nieland‘s once-again-timely book David Lynch. Laura Palmer—passive, suffering, already victimized—is one kind of a melodramatic myth, and Twin Peaks, both the series and the fictional town, is Lynch’s most enduring melodramatic network, a famously quirky environment of character. … Continue reading →

March 16, 2017

Backlist Bop: Women in film

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Widely regarded as one of the most innovative and passionate filmmakers working in France today, Claire Denis has continued to make beautiful and challenging films since the 1988 release of her first feature, Chocolat. Judith Mayne‘s comprehensive study of these … Continue reading →

February 28, 2017

Backlist Bop: Only Pam Grier can save us

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This lively study unpacks the intersecting racial, sexual, and gender politics underlying the representations of racialized bodies, masculinities, and femininities in early 1970s black action films, with particular focus on the representation of black femininity. Stephane Dunn explores the typical, … Continue reading →

January 13, 2017

On the classic opening scene of D.O.A.

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Excerpted from the new book The Red and the Black: American Film Noir in the 1950s, by Robert Miklitsch D.O.A. begins at night with a tilt-down shot from the top of Los Angeles City Hall to a man, his back … Continue reading →

January 4, 2017

Paul Thomas Anderson and the pits of ourselves

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Excerpted from the book Paul Thomas Anderson, by George Toles. The film discussed is There Will Be Blood. Anderson briefly confuses us about which man has been struck down and about whether the accident has proven lethal. We are given an … Continue reading →

January 4, 2017

There will be analysis. . . on George Toles and Paul Thomas Anderson

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During winter break, the Los Angeles Review of Books covered our new book on Paul Thomas Anderson by film scholar George Toles, himself a figure of distinction in the moviemaking dream factory. Martin Woessner guides you through a deep delve into Toles’s … Continue reading →