Film
-
“O Cinema Falado”
Brazilian songwriter/musician Caetano Veloso had a quick foray into the world of filmmaking from which O Cinema Falado (or in English, “Talking Cinema”) was born. UbuWeb’s got the experimental film in its entirety. The film’s got a ton of dialogue…
-
The Rumpus Interview with Blindsight Author Chris Colin
In Blindsight, Chris Colin has written the true story of b-movie-to-blockbuster producer Simon Lewis’s 16-year recovery from a car crash that left him with a pulse, but little else.
-
Return of the Movie Binge
I remember being pretty casual last year about the illegality of theater-hopping on one ticket for an entire day, but this time around I arrive at the Boston Common 19 feeling nervous about the whole undertaking.
-
Pollock on Film
Ever wonder what creating abstract expressionist art looks like? This documentary, made one summer way back in 1950 by Hans Namuth, follows Jackson Pollock in his studio. “Above, you can watch the result of Namuth’s second effort. The ten-minute film,…
-
Blade Runner Take Two
Blade Runner is making a comeback. It was twenty-nine years ago that Ridley Scott directed the awesome dystopian sci-fi film, based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Now he is making either a prequel…
-
Wendell Pierce on the Help
After we published Roxane Gay’s essay on the Help last week, it launched a major discussion not only about the shortcomings of the movie and the book, but on how pop culture negotiates and regenerates historical movements, tired slave narratives,…
-
Music Video Appreciation
There are many ways to appreciate the work of David Foster Wallace. Michael Schur, the man who co-created the tv show, “Parks and Rec,” is reproducing a scene from Infinite Jest in music-video form. Schur’s directorial debut is the coexistence…
-
Film Franchises and the Sequels You’ve Never Heard Of
Sometimes the movies we’ve never heard of already have sequels that we also haven’t heard of. And as it turns out, these film follow-ups are very much pre-meditated from the get-go. Before certain blockbusters even enter the radar of their…
-
A History of Plagiarism
What do Bob Dylan, Eli Wallach and Nabokov have in common? Artistic appropriation. And it’s not just those guys—but possibly all artists. Appropriation, recasting stories and lines into another form, is inherently a part of all art. Jonathan Lethem’s essay,…
-
The Rumpus Interview with David Jay, Star of the New Documentary, (A)Sexual
This is what I expected: Jay and I were meeting to talk about the one thing that is harder to talk about than sex: not wanting to have sex. Ever.
-
The Solace of Preparing Fried Foods and Other Quaint Remembrances from 1960s Mississippi: Thoughts on The Help
Writing across race (or gender, sexuality, and disability) is complicated. Sometimes, it is downright messy.
-
The Help
There has been much analysis of the recently released blockbuster adaptation of the bestselling novel, The Help. Last week Professor Melissa Harris-Perry began live-tweeting as she sat through the movie, concluding that it “reduces systematic, violent racism, sexism, and labor…