The Friday 4/8/2022

Hyunri, Anne Ogawa, Nao Okabe: Heaven Is Still Far Away

My piece for the Scarecrow blog this week, and etc.

A Re-Introduction to Ryusuke Hamaguchi.

Join us for another free online session of Scarecrow Academy on Saturday, April 9, at 2 pm Pacific Time, as we talk about Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s part of “The Art in Sci-Fi: Science Fiction and the Director,” and I intro the movie and director below. Please note the fantastic screen grab.

For Crosscut, I recently wrote a profile of the pioneering (and now 95-year-old) documentary filmmaker Jean Walkinshaw. Read that here, and see some recommendations for specific Walkinshaw titles that are now part of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. This project was conceived by my friend Tom Keogh, who died in September, and I was honored to complete it.

I don’t have a new radio episode of “The Music and the Movies” this week, but you can catch a re-run of the one about Beach Party movies (and some related titles). It happens to be one of my favorite episodes. Please listen here, and – cowabunga?

The Friday 12/10/2021

Hidetoshi Nishijima and Toko Miura: Drive My Car (Sideshow/Janus Films)

My piece for the Scarecrow blog this week, and etc.

Drive My Car. “Moments bloom into radiant life.”

I have a new episode of “The Music and the Movies” this week, devoted to the pioneer of film composing, Max Steiner, the man who did King Kong and Gone With the Wind and scored a #1 hit on the Top 40 when he was 71 years old. Listen here.

Still a few more days to listen to an episode about the film music of 1971.

I’ll be introducing, briefly, the Paramount Theatre’s evening of “Silent Santa Shorts,” part of their ongoing Silent Movie Mondays program, at 7 pm Dec. 13. Then a few of us will talk after. Check the details here.

Three vintage 1980s reviews posted this week to my other blog, What a Feeling!: Mike Hodges’ A Prayer for the Dying, an IRA thriller disowned by Hodges and star Mickey Rourke; Christopher Cain’s The Principal, a school movie with Jim Belushi, Louis Gossett Jr., and Rae Dawn Chong; and David Burton Morris’s Patti Rocks, a pretty prominent indie at the time, with good roles for the married actors Chris Mulkey and Karen Landry.

The Friday 11/12/2021

Fusako Urabe, Aoba Kawai: Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Film Movement)

My piece for the Scarecrow blog this week, and etc.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. “This is a glorious movie, one of the year’s best.”

I’ve got a new episode of my radio show, “The Music and the Movies,” this one devoted to the way cinema has imagined Paris. Includes appearances by Edith Piaf, Josephine Baker, and my anecdote about being pickpocketed on the steps of Sacre-Coeur. Listen here.

Scarecrow Academy, a free online discussion series presented by Scarecrow Video in Seattle, continues “The Art in Noir” on Saturday Nov. 13 with a conversation about Roman Polanski’s Chinatown. Check the Scarecrow Academy page for info about how to sign up. I introduce the film below.

Newly posted to my other blog, What a Feeling!, this week: vintage 1980s reviews of Krzysztof Zanussi’s A Year of the Quiet Sun, a lovely work from the Polish director, with fine roles for Scott Wilson and Maja Komorowska; and Keenen Ivory Wayans’ I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, the blaxploitation spoof that really launched the Wayans world.