Author: Olga Tchepikova-Treon

Make It So: A Journey in Overthinking ‘A Matter of Life and Death’

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Peter Carter and Conductor 71 sit on a giant staircase ascending to Heaven.

|Lucas Hardwick| Star Trek: The Next Generation ended its seventh and final season in May of 1994. The Emmy Award-winning series ran for 178 episodes and was one of, if not the most successful first-run syndication television show of all time. Thanks to its nightly 9 p.m. time slot… Continue reading

This is What Happens When We Give Women Wuthering Heights

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Baines kisses Ada on the neck against a white wall.

|Veda Lawrence| “Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” For all my adoration for Austen, I must admit that she never wrote a single confession of love that comes close to rivaling even a throwaway sentence in Wuthering Heights in terms of romanticism and ferocity. That said, … Continue reading

The Attraction of the Pedaling Ankle: The Body as the Voice in The Piano

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Ada stands in a darkened room with one finger extended toward the camera.

|Sophie Durbin| While procrastinating on my research for this piece on The Piano, I decided to learn everything I could about Michael Nyman’s lush original score. The track titles are as romantic and sensual as you’d expect: “The Heart Asks Pleasure First,” “The Scent of Love,” … Continue reading

Remaking Breathless: A Bizarre Choice, Starring Richard Gere

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Still from the opening scene of the remake of Breathless. The blue flowing title is superimposed over Richard Gere.

|Jake Rudegeair| Ever seen First Knight (1995)? I didn’t think so. It was my first tangle with Gere as the famous Sir Lancelot of legend. I was ten and even then I wasn’t buying it. He’s an invincible swordsman and a treasonous Don Juan? I was put off by the cool-guy affect, anachronistic… Continue reading

I Want All the Bisexuals To Know: If I Can Edit a Film Blog, You Can Too

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Karen, Miss New York, a Black Latina woman in a red evening gown, is shouting in front of the crowd. To her right, five women in dazzling evening gowns are watching her in awe.

|Finn Odum| Several weeks ago, in the monotonous gray cubes of the Mall of America® office tower, I dared to make a joke about my gender identity. This is how it went:
Finn, 24, strikingly gorgeous and wickedly funny email specialist: Now, I’m not like most women—in that I’m not one… Continue reading

Lost in the Dream

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A woman in a green dress, played by actress Tang Wei, sits in a dark room and holds a lit cigarette, smoke billowing from its end, while a hand extends just out of frame with a lighter.

|Natalie Marlin| When we dream, unconscious shapes fill in the blanks. Vague visages that recall someone we know, or perhaps the half-formed images of blurry memories—those specters of past days, buried, submerged, just waiting for free association to emerge—fill what is otherwise vacant. In my dreams… Continue reading