Sarah Palin’s Alaska (The Cornfield #8)

The longest and best-produced political campaign infomercial in TV history, Sarah Palin’s Alaska is (contrary to the avowed purpose of it) unabashedly in the service of promoting its star, the former governor of Alaska. You may well ask: promoting her for what? Nowhere during the first episode of the program does Palin state she is [...]

Culture Notes: Loss

Peter Brunette. A word here to mark the passing of someone I never met. In person, that is; I knew Peter Brunette through cyber broadcasts we made in the mid-1990s for the original, pioneering version of Film.com (today I guess these would be called podcasts), and his avuncular  voice was always a pleasure to hear. [...]

Culture Notes: Oil Spill Monster

As the days went on and BP kept failing to contain the Gulf oil spill, the disaster’s cinematic predecessor became all too obvious: every monster movie in which a man-made accident spawned an (almost) unstoppable creature. (The “almost” part of the BP spill remains to be seen.) From giant ants in the Southwest desert to Godzilla to the [...]

Culture Notes: Whit Bissell Centenary

The centenary celebrations for Whit Bissell are winding down by now; you’re probably tired of hearing the endless tributes and thinkpieces paying tribute to the actor, born October 25, 1909. Of course I’m kidding: nobody pays elaborate, passionate tribute to Whit Bissell, and if people know his name it’s because of its humorous quality, an internal [...]

Culture Notes: Movietone News Revival

The Parallax View website has taken on a mighty, and mightily welcome, project: the online posting of the contents of Movietone News, one of the “little film magazines” that lived in the 1970s. Published by the Seattle Film Society under the editorship of Richard T. Jameson, future editor of Film Comment, the magazine appeared from 1971 [...]

Culture Notes: Oscar Specials

The special awards at the Oscars are a chance to reward worthy careers and correct huge oversights (Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock had to wait for Specials to get their hands on statuettes, inexcusable lapses that help explain Hitchcock’s snippy two-word acceptance speech: “Thank you”). The 2010 ceremony, continuing its spirit of abundance – 10 nominees [...]

Last Year at Graceland

Last Year at Graceland: The Story Behind Elvis Presley’s Lost Film by Robert Horton  Actual listing from the Turner Classic Movies website, August 16, 2002: “3:00 PM – TICKLE ME/1965 A wealthy man tries to convince a bored socialite that they had an affair years earlier. Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoeff. D: Alain Resnais. [...]

Culture Notes: 1969 Again; John Hughes

1969: The Encyclopedia Britannica blog is turning loose author/professor Raymond Benson on a gradually-unfolding ten best list for 1969. Maybe because I am doing my own ten-best project (including 1969), the Britannica people invited me to leave comments about Benson’s choices, which could lead to much debate if Mr. Benson’s 1968 list is any clue [...]

Culture Notes: Underworld, Cable Nausea

The Rose Theatre in Port Townsend, Washington, is one of the pleasantest, coziest places to see a movie, period. On June 28 the Rose hosts the much-huzzahed Alloy Orchestra for two live performances of their original score for Josef von Sternberg’s 1927 classic Underworld, which despite being a classic is all too rarely screened. More [...]

Culture Notes: SIFF start; Scarecrow

The Seattle International Film Festival is underway, kicking off Thursday night with the British political satire In the Loop, a regularly funny film with some extremely good actors’ moments for the likes of Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Mimi Kennedy, and David Rasche. I was taping bits with Art Zone host Nancy Guppy for a Seattle [...]