Film
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The Dead Sea Scrolls of John Dillinger
The tale of a long-lost account of one of America’s most notorious criminals, a struggling ad man, and the contributing editor at Playboy who brought the story to light.
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George Pelecanos’ Favorite Westerns
The Magnificent Seven (1960) A handful of professional gunmen led by black-clad Yul Brynner are hired to protect a south-of-the-border farming village from scores of bandits in John Sturges’ western adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai.
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Conan the Barbarian: an Appreciation. Seriously.
I adore Conan the Barbarian. For years I’ve been telling people that my favorite movie is 8½, say, or On the Waterfront, but it’s time for me to stop lying to myself and to my friends.
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Cut, Chop, Re-release: Director’s Cuts
Cinema may face a far less foreboding fate than, say, our country’s print journalism, but the medium still seems to be undergoing a transformation. In Slate Magazine’s “Death by a Thousand Director’s Cuts,” Jonathan Rosenbaum reflects on the state of…
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Salesman (1968)
This picture about traveling Bible salesmen had me thanking God I didn’t go into retail. At least not the kind in Salesman: you’re separated from your family, working out of shared hotel rooms, trying to convince poor Catholics they need…
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Zak Smith: The Shorty Q&A with Dennis McGrath (NSFW)
Shot on the sets of pornographic films, Dennis McGrath’s photographs are eerie, funny, down-to-earth, poignant, and gorgeous all at the same time.
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Better Late Than Never: The Rumpus Review of Happy-Go-Lucky
When you first meet Pauline “Poppy” Cross in Mike Leigh’s film Happy-Go-Lucky, you wish she would leave.
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Strangelove Custard Pie
Over on The Auteurs, Glenn Kenny has published an interview with Anthony Harvey, who was Stanley Kubrick’s editor on Lolita and Dr. Strangelove. As you probably already know, the latter film ends with Peter Sellers, as the title character, getting…
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Bruno: Activist or Stereotype?
Bruno, the flamboyantly gay Austrain fashion reporter played by Sacha Baron Cohen, has a feature length film. Due to many wild premiers – from bull-fighting in Madrid to dressing as a Buckingham Palace guard in London – and a unique…
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Kathryn Bigelow
“She is, simply, a great filmmaker. Because while it is marginally interesting that she calls “action” and “cut” while in the possession of two X chromosomes, gender is the least remarkable thing about her kinetic filmmaking, which gets in your…
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THE EYEBALL, The Rumpus DVD Column: Synecdoche, New York
These movies pass through our lives, take up two hours of our time, and go along their merry way. Recently I enjoyed Preston Sturges’s The Lady Eve, Orson Welles’s masterful Touch of Evil, and a collection of Pixar shorts. I…