First, we have to start with Alice Guy’s THE CONSEQUENCES OF FEMINISM. I know, we’ve probably all seen it. But it remains fascinating. Alice Guy, pioneering female director, makes a comedy about how reversing gender roles will make a nightmarish upside-down society. While the film reads on the surface as an attack on feminism, it […]

L-R: Samantha Begeman, Clare Stenning and Jad Sayegh in Brief Play About Rage, Omnibus Theatre Brief Play About Rage at the Omnibus Theatre is a funny one. You’ll either get it or you won’t. You’ll either find it hilarious and daring or OTT and irritating. It’s set in the flat of Val (Samantha Begeman) and Hugh (Jad Sayegh), and tensions are running high as they await the arrival of Val’s old ‘friend’ Nell (Clare Stenning). They only have two chairs, but neither seems concerned about where…

As far as I’m concerned, the story of Jessica Jones ended with Season 3 of the Netflix show. To hell with this whole Daredevil Born Again bit, and all the spinoffs that dribble from the corner of its nerveless mouth. I was willing to give the parent thing a chance - I knew they'd mindlessly echo that unfortunate mess from the comics eventually - but they couldn’t just stop there. They had to add this bullshit with her powers glitching and make her live in the burbs. Disney is really, really…

“Na’vi kids younger than me do this [taming moidaboids] with their bare hands.”“Jake Sully did it the hard way?”“What do you think?” Okay now this is interesting, the symbolic significance that Jake has taken on in Quariitch’s mind, both as the last link to his former self and as the standard to which he must hold himself, ritualistically recreating Jake’s journey into Na’vihood but for the opposite reasons, trying to make of himself a dark messiah. ⦁ ⦁ ⦁ ⦁ ⦁ It’s good to know that…

Go deep into the production weeds of Million Dollar Secret in my interview with its showrunner, Charles Wachter. We talked clues, scripting, b-roll, The Stag's staff, and so much more.

The other night, I was browsing Mike Flanagan's tumblr when I read this amazing article about how Doctor Sleep came to be and how it put him on the path of sobriety. I adored this post, not only because I'm a fan of Mike's, but also because of how real it was. The pictures he posted weren't flattering or edited. It didn't feel over produced or edited by a publicist. Instead, it was just a regular guy, telling an amazing story of how he was able to do something incredible, even though it didn't…

I guess this shows just how old I am because I loved every single one of the “Oscar-bait” movies in this list (I do agree on TCM though)... When I was a kid, I would watch Turner Classic Movies and try to appreciate films from the 1940s, only to find the exercise strangely difficult. I could admire them—in theory—but I struggled to experience these stories the way their original audiences did. I feel similarly about many Oscar-bait dramas of the 1990s, including but not limited to: Chocolat,…

Mariclare Costello, best known for playing teacher Rosemary Hunter on the hit TV series The Waltons, died on April 17, 2026 at the age of 90.Mariclare Costello was born on February 3, 1936, in Peoria, Illinois. Her father, Dallas, worked as a civil engineer for the Illinois Department of Transportation and her mother, Margaret, was a secretary to the Illinois Speaker of the House. Mariclare Costello went to St. Mark School and the Academy of Our Lady in Peoria. She then attended Clarke College…

ROOTING FOR HER: Dystany Spurlock set for NASCAR Truck Series debut at Watkins Glen. Spurlock would become the first Black female driver to appear in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.

I read yesterday about a new Kickstarter project: I’m Back Roll APS-C – Digital Film Inside Your Camera by Samuel Mello Medeiros The terrible name aside ("I'm Back"??), the project sounds interesting. In short, it's a roll of digital "film" that you insert into your 35mm film camera, transforming it into a digital camera. So now, instead of taking your photos on film and waiting to have them developed, you can get your photos from your digital "roll" right away. The feature for this is the…

Kind of scrounging because I haven't seen the predecessor to the big sequel that's squeezing everything I couldn't get to during IFFBoston into a few scattered showtimes, how 'bout you? That sequel is The Devil Wears Prada 2, reuniting Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci from the 2006 original, with Hathaway's character now a seasoned veteran outside of fashion brought in

I got a review copy of DANGER: DIABOLIK (or just plain DIABOLIK) from the lovely people at Masters of Cinema, so I’d better review it, hadn’t I? The film may not need reviewing — I had my DVD playing one time when a friend visited, and just from glimpsing random scenes with the sound turned […]

How many bees does it take to rear a queen?Using nano-colonies, scientists have shown that as few as 100 bees can rear a new queen (Lamas et al., 2025). That's right, 100 nurse bees in a perforated plastic cup in an incubator, provided with a 12-hour-old queen cell (i.e., one that's just been started), will rear the queen to emergence. There's no difference between the mating success of queens reared like this and those reared in a traditional cell builder {{1}}.However, if you read about…

FlicFilm Aurora 800 / Nikon Coolscan / SmartConvert / Zeiss 21mm EF Said man. Said Arriflex 16BL.

A classic string investigation board appears in Elsbeth s02e14 (CBS, 2025). ▲ Elsbeth s02e14 (CBS, 2025) ▲ Elsbeth s02e14 (CBS, 2025) ▲ Elsbeth s02e14 (CBS, 2025) ▲ Elsbeth s02e14 (CBS, 2025) ▲ Elsbeth s02e14 (CBS, 2025) From contributor Justin Wigard.

A prop master’s work isn’t always flashy. Often, they are tasked with making pragmatic choices to flesh out a scene with items that the audience won’t even notice. These are some of the stories I’ve most enjoyed as I’ve gotten to know Twin Peaks prop master Jeff Moore, whose work in the second season both... The post Twin Peaks Prop – Mr. Tojamura’s Great Northern Key Tag appeared first on TWIN PEAKS BLOG.

The Fritzes award honors the best interfaces in a full-length motion picture in the past year. Interfaces play a special role in our movie-going experience, and are a craft all their own that does not otherwise receive focused recognition. Best Assistant is a special award that I’m giving for the first time. Ok but why now? Well, in March of this year I published a new non-fiction book about the design of technology that assists people doing things (as opposed to doing stuff for them). It’s…

Image source: Wikipedia Long thought lost like so much of the silent era, a copy of the 1924 thriller-melodrama The Signal Tower was eventually discovered in 16mm. Directed by Clarence Brown before he became famous for his handling of several women’s melodramas in the 1930s, The Signal Tower is a simple, brisk, and effective piece of work. You can watch it in rather muddy quality on YouTube, but since it’s made the rounds at a few film festivals, I’m hoping it will be available in a nicer home…

How come so few people know about this film? That is the question I always end up asking myself after every viewing. Holiday is a delightful, witty, touching and inspiring Screwball gem, featuring a perfect balance of comedy and poignant drama. The comedy here lies not in the form of slapstick or constant Marx Brothers-esque verbal zingers, but instead in the verbal and physical reactions of certain people to certain situations and things said or done by others. The film’s focus is on the…

Glenn Ford in Human Desire (1954) Vitals Glenn Ford as Jeff Warren, railroad engineer and Army veteran El Reno, Oklahoma, Fall 1953 Film: Human Desire Release Date: August 6, 1954 Director: Fritz Lang Costume Designer: Jean Louis (gowns) WARNING! Spoilers ahead! Background Glenn Ford was born 110 years ago on May 1, 1916. The Quebec-born actor specialized as everymen with a tough side, making him the ideal star in classic film noir like Gilda (1946) and The Big Heat (1953) as well as westerns…

In a continuing look at black and white publicity photos created for Twin Peaks in 1990, this image features Peggy Lipton as Norma Jennings. These series of portraits were released by Capitol Cities / ABC Television to help viewers keep track of the many characters in Mark Frost and David Lynch’s groundbreaking series. PEGGY LIPTON... The post Twin Peaks Publicity – Peggy Lipton as Norma Jennings appeared first on TWIN PEAKS BLOG.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 2026, David Frankel My rating: I like it This movie is basically the first one but adapted to more modern concepts (social media, late stage capitalism). And honestly, that’s fine. It does better than probably most other unnecessary sequels do, and it was an enjoyable watch from start to finish. Bonus points for having Gaga in it. It was cool to watch the Milan scenes while literally being in Milan, too.

I turn 40 in about 6 weeks. Last night, on a whim, I decided that I'd like to watch 40 films I've never seen before in advance of that happening. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to ask Bluesky to recommend some of these films to me. I asked people to recommend their favourite "I've never met anybody else who's seen this" film. As always when you ask for recommendations online, some people are shit at understanding the task. But sometimes you strike gold. I discarded responses…

Kiss of the Spider Woman has long occupied a curious place in the musical theatre landscape, a show spoken of far more often than it is encountered. Since its Broadway premiere in 1992, it has lingered at the margins of the canon, half‑remembered, half‑mythologised. Which makes its appearance at Bristol Old Vic feel not so much like a revival as an emergence, something long submerged breaking the surface again. What immediately becomes apparent is just how singular this musical remains. Set…

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley noticed a new trend: “In all your life put together you probably have never seen so many circuses as you are seeing and are going to see in the movies these days.” She was right—the number of circus films had doubled to 20 in 1925 and stayed in that neighborhood until 1929, when they went back to around 10 per year, according to the AFI Film Catalog. Kingsley wasn’t particularly happy about that. She visited the set of one in production,…

What's Up, Doc? (1972)

I watched Oddity in preparation for Damian Mc Carthy’s new movie out this weekend, Hokum.1 I didn’t know anything about it apart from its extremely effective marketing, which suggests intense “elevated horror” in an old manor house, featuring a severe white-haired woman and an unnerving and grotesque, life-sized wooden figure. And it delivers on that! If that sounds like your thing and you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend seeing it without reading on. What surprised me the most about…

I like to think of films through the lens of poetry (importantly different than a film poem). Or maybe its perhaps simpler to say that I prefer films that feel like poetry. Not all films are best understood through this lens, like Marvel movies for example because of their primary focus on entertainment and narrative arcs over thematic messaging (which isn’t to say that there is no thematic content). How might we judge cinema as poetry? How do we judge poetry? “Much of the muddle one finds…

The zombie is a cocktail created by Donn Beach at his famous Don the Beachcomber restaurant in Hollywood in 1934. It’s made of fruit juices, liqueurs, and various Caribbean rums and drinks (including Angostura bitters). Its name origin is quite funny: Legend has it that Donn Beach originally concocted the zombie to help a hung-over customer get through a business meeting. The customer returned several days later to complain that he had been turned into a zombie for his entire trip. Its smooth,…

Welcome to 2010. There’s rather a lot of recordings today, but having checked the schedule this won’t keep up. It’s the last gasp of the holidays. The first recording starts with a trails for Doctor Who and Gavin and Stacey. Then, as a kind palate-cleanser for having to watch the two Pirates of the Caribbean movies, it’s Muppet Treasure Island. As we started watching this, my daughter commented that the score sounded a bit similar to POTC and wonders if that had been inspired, or if they were…