Collectivization, Creation, and Composition: Scoring Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s Earth

|Chris Polley| The “ooh, a project!” to “omg this is a huuuuge project” pipeline is real. In less than a week, my ambient post-rock band PRGRPHS will be performing our first live score for a silent film at the Trylon—Ukrainian director Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s 1930 agitprop Rorschach test Earth… Continue reading

Yippee-Ki-Yay Father Christmas

|Josh Carson| There is a seasonal debate borne directly out of and aged exactly alongside the internet. They even share the same lifecycles: At first it was wildly amusing. Next came innocuously controversial. Then it started to get annoying as too many people… Continue reading

A Juggler, an Apple Farmer, and a Psychotic Slumlord walk into a bar in a Bankrupt City…

|Lucas Hardwick| In the hierarchy of entertainment juggling is somewhere between miming and magic outranking puppet shows but only slightly less compelling than street buskers (depending on what the busker is playing, of course). In case you’re wondering how low the bar… Continue reading

A Hit Before It Was Made, And A Fairy Tale Ahead Of Its Time: How Nobuhiko Obayashi Made “House”

|Lucile Hanson| “How to describe Nobuhiko Obayashi’s indescribable 1977 movie House (Hausu)? As a psychedelic ghost tale? A stream-of-consciousness bedtime story? An episode of Scooby-Doo as directed by Mario Bava?” That quote is what opens up the description on the… Continue reading

Making Romania on Film: The Case of The Keep

|Sophie Durbin| The Keep was a tough sell for me, a Michael Mann fan who fell in love with him through Heat and Thief—on my first watch, I was almost offended by the supernatural plot (I’m fine with the paranormal on film, but keep it out of my Michael Mann features). Of course… Continue reading

Cinema as Resistance: Black Revolution in Ivan Dixon’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door

|Chris Polley| The early 70s were, in many ways, rife with watershed moments in Black history: Charles Gordone became the first Black playwright to win a Pulitzer prize, Rep. Shirley Chisolm helped form the Congressional Black Caucus, and Thomas Bradley became the first Black mayor… Continue reading

They Shoot Hamsters, Don’t They

|MH Rowe| If you’re going to do something really stupid, it’s not a bad idea to be beautiful. Maybe that’s how Val Kilmer ended up in Top Secret! (1984), which is both his film debut and a spoof of spy stories, resistance thrillers, and, for some reason, Elvis Presley. Top Secret!… Continue reading

The Great Escape as Masculine Melodrama

|Dylan Hawthorn| The concept of melodrama has a bad reputation. If I described my sister’s behavior during a conflict as melodramatic, I am suggesting that her reaction is over-the-top and should be dismissed. Furthermore, there’s a reason my brain jumped to citing a… Continue reading

Putting the ‘Motion’ in ‘Motion Picture’: Key GIFs from Lawrence Dane’s Heavenly Bodies

|Chris Polley| When I found out that no one had claimed to write something for the Trylon’s upcoming screening of 1984 Canuxploitation dance-ercise flick Heavenly Bodies, I felt like Charlie getting the golden ticket to the chocolate factory. What did I do to deserve this? I’d thank… Continue reading

The Ecstatic Truth of Werner Herzog’s Short Documentaries

|Malcolm Cooke| Werner Herzog has one thing to say to the proponents of Cinéma Vérité: “‘Happy New Year, losers.’”1 Herzog has always had beef with the idea of documentary as from the perspective of a fly on the wall, a genre of detached and objective reporting of facts. “That… Continue reading