Film
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Agnès Varda Interviewed
The Believer just published an interview by Sheila Heti with Agnès Varda, whose first film, La Pointe Courte (1954), is sometimes thought of as the first breaker in the nouvelle vague. Criterion just released a box set collecting 4 of…
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The Rumpus Review of Jennifer’s Body
It’s funny, the word choice in the title of Jennifer’s Body, the gory horror-comedy from, improbably enough, the writer and producers of Juno, 2007’s teen pregnancy comedy.
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Notable New York, This Week 9/28-10/4
This week in New York, Charles Simic reads, Spin Mag hosts Salman Rushdie, The New York Film Festival opens, Philip Seymour Hoffman stars in Peter Sellars’ production of Othello and Robert Lepage’s “Mindblowing” Lipsynch begins at BAM. Monday, September 28,…
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Sam J. Miller’s 25-Word Movie Reviews #1
Let the Right One In (the movie) (Tomas Alfredson, 2008) Somehow makes vampires feel fresh. Fascinating aesthetic: colorless cinematography, minimal dialogue, affectless acting. Touching, scary, tender. An astonishing little girl. Also? Swedes are freaky-looking.
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Books, Movies, Magic: The Rediscovered Genius of the Automaton
I recently read “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” a sort of hybrid graphic-young adult novel by Brian Selznik that tells a fictionalized story revolving around Georges Méliès, the frenchman who was the first filmmaker to employ cinematic tricks in narrative.
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Notable New York, This Week 9/21-9/27
As the New York Bureau Chief, I thought it might be a good idea to round up some notable literary and cultural events going on around New York that I think readers of The Rumpus would be interested in. So,…
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The Rumpus Review of The Informant!
For his role in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! as corporate executive turned whistleblower Mark Whitacre, Matt Damon gained something like thirty pounds. He didn’t need do it to look like the real Whitacre because none of us know what the…
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“I’m a Big Roger Miller Fan Myself.”
There’s an interview with Rudy Wurlitzer over at Chuck Palahniuk’s site; we recently reviewed his first novel, Nog. Although the introduction features some questionable vocab (Wurlitzer is said to be “imminently” readable, which I guess means he’s always about to be…
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The Rumpus Review of 9
It must take guts to embark upon a film like 9, Shane Acker’s dark and thrilling feature-length version of his 2005 short film of the same name. Thick with paranoid dread and post-Apocalyptic atmosphere, 9 is a film with so…
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The Eyeball #28: Movie Binge
My family was recently out of town for a five days, leaving me home alone with over 800 pages (no exaggeration) of student work to read and comment upon. My reward for getting through a day of writing about free…
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The Rumpus Review of We Live in Public
Sizing up history is a tricky business: You can generally recognize that something is significant long before you can really say why or how. So it is with the Internet and its many pioneers. So it is with Josh Harris.
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“Girls Gone Gory”
Rumpus contributor Michelle Orange just posted a scream of an article in The New York Times about women in horror films. Specifically focusing on the upcoming Jennifer’s Body, the article “Taking Back the Knife—Girls Gone Gory” details the complex role…