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Keeping It Reel

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                                           New on Flickhead

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  • I Vote Valerie Solanas
    “Seeing I Shot Andy Warhol again after umpteen years, I am struck by its pitiful story of outsider-hood. I don’t think the film makes a very successful case for reading the writings of Valerie Solanas, but it does reflect very wisely on the nature of being outside, whether that means that you are also one of the ‘in-crowd,’ or not.” Irene Dobson reflects back on Mary Harron’s film.

  • Love, Death and Birth
    “Descending from European modernism’s project of locating ‘objectivity’ in subjectivity, Birth re-affirms the primacy of perception, that something or someone is there because someone is seeing. In the era of digitization, this is an important shift, reinserting human consciousness amid vistas of inanimate pixels.” Richard Armstrong ponders the Jonathan Glazer film.

  • Where the Shadows Run From Themselves
    “There isn’t one false emotion in Dear Zachary, no moment of doubt. Equal parts horror and epiphany, it is a masterpiece that draws its power from the best and worst within us.” A review of Kurt Kuenne’s new film.

  • Vampire Weekend Read
    “Eric Nuzum’s timely marketing venture for October 2008 at bookstores should have appealed to readers with a special place in their hearts for that month’s holiday.” Steve Fiorilla reviews the new book, The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula.

  • Drawing the Madness From Within
    Directed by Adam Green and Joel Moore, “Spiral is a quiet observation of an outsider fumbling to fit in, a work indebted more to Roman Polanski than Freddy Kruger.” A DVD review.

  • Who is Henry Jaglom?
    “Whether it educates the viewer about Jaglom’s craft and philosophy, or merely exploits his sundry quirks depends on individual interpretation. To Jaglom, Who is Henry Jaglom? often seems less about the creative process than in painting him as an eccentric despot.” DVD review.

  • When it Rains: Celebrating Charles Burnett
    “Both My Brother’s Wedding and Killer of Sheep are not really narratives as much as they are documentaries about the films’ actors and actresses, who are themselves members of Burnett’s community and thus the very subject of the two works. The amateur acting, shoestring budgets, location shoots, and relaxed narratives tell a story of an ignored community coming together to create art.” A review by Eric Dienstfrey.

  • Comin’ Apart at Every Nail
    “Crawford is a smart and absorbing documentary about the changes within the small Texas town George W. Bush moved to while running for President in 2000...Director David Modigliani, here making his feature debut, captures roughly six years’ worth of the heat and heartbreak…in the President’s chaotic wake.”

  • Cirrhosis By the Sea
    “A major thoroughfare in Los Angeles, Bundy Drive has been home to the stars for years…The ‘Boys’ in question were an inebriated lot headlined by Errol Flynn, John Barrymore and W.C. Fields…[Gregory] Mank’s book recounts their ribald adventures which run the gamut from counterfeit art and keelhauling off a yacht, to sex with underage girls and the pilfering of Mr. Barrymore’s corpse.” A review of Mr. Mank’s new book, Hollywood’s Hellfire Club.

  • Webb pages—writing outside the lines
    “It’s a sober, compelling acknowledgement of creative systems that flourished, no matter how briefly, independent from corporate influence with love and enrichment as both a means and an end.” A review of Jeff Weddle’s new book, Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press.

  • Hearts and minds…and arms and legs and entrails…
    “Lost in the woods, a group of people, mostly soft, young and sarcastic, cross paths with a faceless, unstoppable nut job with a grudge and an axe to grind—preferably in their skulls, as far as he’s concerned.” Adam Green’s Hatchet arrives on DVD.

  • Let’s do the time warp again
    “Midnight Movies [is] armed with film clips and interviews with filmmakers, exhibitors and critics who attempt to convey the guerilla spirit of a bygone era.” A review of Stuart Samuels’s documentary, now on DVD.

  • The Outsiders of New Orleans: Loujon Press
    “Other than document a time, place and product, The Outsiders of New Orleans endeavors to capture the spirit guiding the artist’s hand.” A review of Wayne Ewing’s new documentary.

  • When the Going Got Weird
    “Nearly two years after his passing, two biographies—and we use that word in the most liberal sense—arrive to theoretically sort out the details and attempt to explain Hunter Thompson and his methods.” A review of two new books.

  • Maurice Jarre: A Tribute to David Lean
    “Although he’s composed for many famous pictures and has won numerous awards…Jarre has been a somewhat low key figure in his profession. Milan Records should be commended for releasing this set, a rare celebration of the man and his music that also whets the appetite for Lean’s films once again.” A review of the new DVD/CD set.

  • The Age of Innocence
    “…A film fecund with the passions that pulse beneath its fabulous surfaces…it arrays a precise hieroglyphics of appearances beneath which lies a sea of overwhelming desire and eviscerating pain.” Richard Armstrong, Wharton, Scorsese and love.

  • Boy on a String: From Cast-off Kid to Filmmaker Through the Magic of Dreams
    “Recalling a transient life and the hours spent alone in bedrooms he couldn’t consider his own, [Joseph] Jacoby would sculpt miniature clay actors with clay cameras directing imaginary scenarios, a make believe rehearsal for when it would happen for real.” Book review by Steve Fiorilla.

  • Buñuel x 2
    Reviews of Gran Casino and The Young One.

  • Reflections: The Pianist
    “I was bound to the screen as though I was a prisoner of war; a war against mankind in the flesh…” Christine Young recalls a mood inspired by the Roman Polanski film.

  • They Live by Night: Near Dark
    “Appearing in 1987, Near Dark was director Kathryn Bigelow’s breakthrough film, an atmospheric genre hybrid with a visceral punkish sensibility shot on the dirt plains outside Coolidge, Arizona and earning Bigelow a retrospective season at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.” Richard Armstrong reviews the new DVD edition.

  • All Day Long
    “It’s an afternoon of insecurity and juvenile role play peppered with naïve declarations of love.” A review of the new film by Andrew Semans.

  • Spanking Babs Stanwyck
    “Men behave badly towards women in older films and it makes me miserable!” Irene Dobson takes a brief glimpse at abused women in film.

  • The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
    “This is a wonderful film that reveals the beauty of San Francisco in a personal way. The stealers of the show are definitely the parrots, and Mark Bittner’s devotion to them is inspirational.” Review of the book and DVD by Christine Young.

  • When Bowie Met Keechie
    “What is beautiful about They Live by Night is that it takes as its characters little people who don’t do great things or apparently have great feelings but live meanly and die horribly between the cracks of conventional aspiration.” Irene Dobson reflects back on prime dialog.

  • Zelig (The Cat’s Pyjamas)
    “Why has everyone written about Leonard Zelig in Woody Allen’s film Zelig, but no-one has written about Eudora Fletcher? The film is a tribute to her.” A consideration by Irene Dobson.

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    Feature Articles, Essays and Special Sections

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  • After Hours with Richard Armstrong

  • Fatty Lohmann and the Smoke-Filled Room
    “As we picked our way through the plastic darkness of Lang’s American city—Man Hunt, Hangmen also Die, Ministry of Fear, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street—termites of sin gnawed at this young man’s soul.”

  • Women with Guns
    “How could I show such a horrific scene as the rape scene from Thelma and Louise!…No woman had the option of shooting her way out of a situation like that! I should be taken out and shot!”

  • “Patricia Clarkson”
    “We had come to the National Film Theatre…and as we followed the crowd up the stairs one of us swore that Patricia Clarkson joined the queue behind us.”

  • A Touch . . . Of Evil
    “The atmosphere in my flat went from tea-and-biscuits to pulp novels and the Production Code.”

  • A Woman’s Desire
    “I had never seen Nosferatu, a textbook example of German Expressionism . . . Could I settle for a Hollywood romantic comedy with Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford instead?”

  • Barefoot in the Afternoon
    “There was still mileage in the wet dreams of generational change in Hollywood . . .”

  • Anytime, Anyplace!
    From Les Demoiselles de Rochefort to The Gamma People, nine films Flickhead would watch anytime, anyplace!

  • Stéphane Audran
    From Bonnes femmes to Babette.

  • The Best Years of Our Lives
    “I may not have been in the West End to witness the queues for Bonnie and Clyde. But I was there in front of the box for its impact on that Monday evening in the long hot summer of 1976. In the year I left school, I began a rich education.” Richard Armstrong reflects on when movies were special on TV.

  • Bringing Up Baby
    “In the Cornish town of Penwicken in 1986 there was a spate of cases in which babies went missing and were subsequently discovered dead and dreadfully mauled. At the time there was an independent cinema in the town called the Bijou.” By Richard Armstrong.

  • Luis Buñuel Remembered by Jean-Claude Carrière
    “During an eighteen-year period, from 1932 to 1950, one heard nothing of Luis Buñuel. What became of the brilliant and aggressive author of Un chien andalou and L'age d'or?”

  • Cinema Obscura
    Ruminations on Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg and Performance

  • Cinema Retro
    “Distinctly Baby Boomer material all the way, the publication holds an unwavering reverence for ‘60s and ‘70s popcorn cinema, but, perhaps more significantly, revels in its unique brand of enthusiasm.” A review of a film magazine.

  • Cinema Retro: Issue No. 3
    “With its third edition now available, Cinema Retro continues to mine the films of the ‘60s and ‘70s.” A review of the new issue, heavy on Peckinpah.

  • The Claude Chabrol Project
    The world-wide-web of passion!

  • A Day in the Life of Bizarre Film
    “What is interesting about Living in Oblivion is [Tom] DeCillo’s ability to rove between dream and reality without drawing undue attention to himself.” Author Irene Dobson does something of the same in this alternative approach to film criticism.

  • L’ Univers de Jacques Demy
    “Demy’s range and virtuosity is indisputable. By watching Lola and Bay of Angels in tandem with The World of Jacques Demy, those who doubt his significance may transform into bona fide fans.”

  • Filmic space and real time in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope
    “The film contains elements of irrationality and causes a degree of viewer alienation that is quite rare for the American screen in 1948.” Peter J. Dellolio offers an analysis of the director’s bold experimental thriller.

  • The Fourth Wall
    “On the 180-degree screen before me a screaming head (in 3D) is guillotined and blood from the decapitation sprays along my chin and jaw . . . I’m front row center of the Fantawild 4D Theater in the Galleria Mall, and I’m searching for the future of entertainment.” Report by Steve Fiorilla.

  • Chronicling the Life of Grayson Hall
    “The redhead? The one with the flaring nostrils? The whiskey baritone? The one who yelled ‘you beast!’ at Richard Burton so emphatically she garnered an Oscar nomination in 1964?” Rebecca Jamison remembers ‘The Queen of Off-Broadway.’

  • Jungle Fever: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack and Grass and Chang
    “Experiments in the documentary form, both pictures effectively reveal the inner Carl Denhams that compelled their creators, and, despite the passing of eight decades, have lost little of their beguiling power.” Reviews of a new Cooper biography and the rerelease of Grass and Chang on DVD.

  • The Lina Wertmüller Collection
    “She underlines the political machination of sex, of domination both in the bedroom and on the battlefield, and displays how the two arenas are intrinsically linked. In her world, titillation comes at the price of war and terrorism, tragedy and deep personal loss.” A review of the DVD boxed set.

  • Lucifer Rising
    Bobby BeauSoleil’s original soundtrack recording, now on CD!

  • Remembering Joe Marzano
    “He was a character of varying moods, faces and ideas, the rogues gallery of Mr. Arkadin rolled into one.”

  • MediaMag’s Short Circuit Film Competition
    “The MediaMag Short Circuit short film competition is the initiative of the UK education resource Media Magazine…A shortlist of twenty-one shorts, trailers and pop videos has appeared on a DVD and there are some powerful little movies on it.” Review by Richard Armstrong.

  • Russ Meyer: 1922—2004
    The naked and the dead

  • Metropolis
    “In Fritz Lang’s Metropolis one can see what we might become — perhaps what we are already on the way to becoming.” Reflection by Christine Young.

  • Je rentre à la maison
    Manoel de Oliveira and Jacques Parsi discuss Je rentre à la maison (I’m Going Home), plus a review of the film.

  • Mary Pickford x 3
    “Mary is one of the few auteurs to comprehend balance, and recognized the riches to be mined in those gray areas distancing happiness from sorrow.” Reviews of three Pickford films: Heart o’ the Hills, Suds, and Through the Back Door.

  • Arthur C. Pierce
    “As economic and inelegant as his films often were, at their core was a kind, gentle, sincere, enthusiastic, imaginative, humble man who harbored ill will toward no one.” A dedication by Kevin Danzey.

  • Nathan Schiff: Three Shades of Red
    Weasels Rip My Flesh, The Long Island Cannibal Massacre, and They Don’t Cut the Grass Anymore — chock full o’ guts and finally available on dvd!

  • Screening Room
    “In one of those rare instances of television acknowledging a cinema existing beyond the mainstream, Screening Room was a series uniquely devoted to the avant-garde and (very) independent.” A review of a special new DVD series.

  • Sexploitation!
    Nathan Schiff reflects back on Joe Marzano, Lou Campa and the 1967 films, Cool It, Baby and Venus in Furs

  • Stardust Memories
    …Twenty-five years later. “You remember the film the way you remember a dream. By turns, it makes sense, makes no sense, its imagery overloaded, underfilled, utilitarian. It lingers not as story, plot, succession, but as fragments, contingency, mishmash.” Review by Richard Armstrong.

  • Shirley Stoler & The Honeymoon Killers
    “Somehow the picture managed to direct itself, not really needing a director. . .”

  • “This is a movie…isn’t it?” — Henry Jaglom x 3 on DVD
    “His work reflects the frightened child within, crying for love, affection and purity in a scary world drunk on rules, power and corruption.” A consideration of Tracks, Someone to Love, and New Year’s Day.

  • Thursday Afternoon Matinee with Jacques Corédor

  • An Unbearable Likeness of Being
    Flickhead’s secret memoirs!

  • Who is Andy Arthur? (And Why Did I Spend Seven Years Trying to Find Out?)
    “What impressed me about Rabbit’s Moon wasn’t the film itself—a seven-minute, black-and-white affair in which three clowns prance around in a moon-lit forest. No, what really caught my attention was the soundtrack—a demonic laugh kicked off a jaunty, organ-driven Beatlesque song that sounded like some half-forgotten top forty hit from the glam-rock era.” The search for the song and its elusive composer! By Michael I. Cohen.

  • La Vallée
    Barbet Schroeder journeys to places obscured by clouds.

  • Wantagh Daydream
    Photos of the town of Flickhead’s childhood…circa 1961!

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                                               Film Reviews

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  • Barfly (Barbet Schroeder, 1987)

  • Beyond the Rocks (Sam Wood, 1922)

  • The Big Animal (Jerzy Stuhr, 2000)

  • The Blot (Lois Weber, 1921)

  • Bob Dylan 1966-1978: After the Crash

  • Breakfast with Hunter (Wayne Ewing, 2004)

  • The Call of Cthulhu (Andrew Leman, 2005)

  • Caught in the Headlights (C. Wolf Drimal, Margot Higgins and Doug Hawes-Davis, 2006)

  • Christ in Concrete / Give Us This Day (Edward Dmytryk, 1949)

  • The Clay Bird (Tareque Masud, 2002)

  • Cocksucker Blues (Robert Frank, 1972)

  • The Committee (Peter Sykes, 1968)

  • Consume (Dominic Angerame, 2003)

  • Dead Silence (James Wan, 2007)

  • A Decade Under the Influence (Ted Demme & Richard LaGravenese, 2003)

  • Dementia / Daughter of Horror (John Parker, 1953)

  • La Demoiselle d'honneur / The Bridesmaid (Claude Chabrol, 2004)

  • Dmitri Shostakovich: Sonata for Viola (Alexander Sokurov, 1981)

  • Doing Time (Yoichi Sai, 2002)

  • Ecological Design: Inventing the Future (Chris Zelov and Brian Danitz, 1995)

  • The Edge of the World (Michael Powell, 1937)

  • Electric Edwardians: The Lost Films of Mitchell & Kenyon Compilation

  • The End of August at the Hotel Ozone (Jan Schmidt, 1966)

  • Fallen Angel (Otto Preminger, 1945)

  • Film Geek (James Westby, 2005)

  • Flip (Kirk Demarais, 2004)

  • Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (Robert Gaffney, 1965)

  • Fuck (Steve Anderson, 2006)

  • Ganja & Hess (Bill Gunn, 1973)

  • The Girls / Flickorna (Mai Zetterling, 1968)

  • Godzilla: Final Wars (Ryuhei Kitamura, 2004)

  • Go for Zucker (Dani Levy, 2004)

  • Hail, Mary (Jean-Luc Godard, 1985)

  • La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)

  • Highway Patrolman (Alex Cox, 1991)

  • Hindle Wakes (Maurice Elvey, 1927)

  • Home (Matt Zoller Seitz, 2006)

  • Hop (Dominique Standaert, 2002)

  • It (Clarence Badger, 1927)

  • Judex (Louis Feuillade, 1917)

  • Legong: Dance of the Virgins (Henri de la Falaise, 1935)

  • Libby, Montana (Drury Gunn Carr & Doug Hawes-Davis, 2004)

  • L’Inferno (Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan and Giuseppe de Liguoro, 1911)

  • Little Lord Fauntleroy (Alfred E. Green & Jack Pickford, 1921)

  • M (Fritz Lang, 1931)

  • Mini’s First Time (Nick Guthe, 2006)

  • Momma don’t Allow (Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson, 1956)

  • Monster Road (Brett Ingram, 2004)

  • Necromania (Ed Wood, 1971)

  • The Olive Thomas Collection Compilation

  • OT: Our Town (Scott Hamilton Kennedy, 2002)

  • The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004)

  • Peep “TV” Show (Yutaka Tsuchiya, 2004)

  • Piccadilly (E.A. Dupont, 1929)

  • Ringers: Lord of the Fans (Carlene Cordova, 2005)

  • September 12th (John Touhey, 2006)

  • Sunnyvale (James Ricardo, 2006)

  • Supersonic Saucer (S.G. Ferguson, 1956)

  • Swept Away (By an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August) (Lina Wertmüller, 1974)

  • The Swindle/Rien ne va plus (Claude Chabrol, 1997)

  • La Terre (André Antoine, 1921)

  • This Is Nowhere (Doug Hawes-Davis, 2003)

  • Three Businessmen (Alex Cox, 1999)

  • Valley of the Bees (Frantisek Vlácil, 1967)

  • Le Voyage en douce (Michel Deville, 1981)

  • Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1971)

  • Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, 2000)

  • White Thunder: The Story of Varick Frissell and The Viking Disaster Compilation

  • The Will of Dean Snider (Jaime Kibben, 1999)

  • Winter Soldier (1972)

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                                               Book Reviews

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  • American Movie Critics (Phillip Lopate)

  • Aussiewood (Michaela Boland and Michael Bodey)

  • Based on a True Story* (Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen)

  • Comfort and Joi (Joseph Dougherty)

  • The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film (Walter Murch and Michael Ondaatje)

  • Disaster Movies (Glenn Kay & Michael Rose)

  • Donald Cammell: A Life on the Wild Side (Rebecca & Sam Umland)

  • Fan Tan (Marlon Brando & Donald Cammell)

  • Film as a Subversive Art (Amos Vogel)

  • Flicker (Theodore Roszak)

  • Francis Ford Coppola: Interviews (Gene D. Phillips and Rodney Hill)

  • Grayson Hall: A Hard Act to Follow (R.J. Jamison)

  • Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Nick Mason)

  • James Bama: American Realist (Brian M. Kane)

  • Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause (Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel)

  • The Los Angeles Diaries (James Brown)

  • The Movie Posters of Drew Struzan

  • Never Coming to a Theater Near You (Kenneth Turan)

  • Nicole Kidman (David Thomson)

  • Roger Corman: Metaphysics on a Shoestring (Alain Silver and James Ursini)

  • The Stewardess is Flying the Plane! (Ron Hogan)

  • This Film is Dangerous (The International Federation of Film Archives)

  • Twentieth Century Fox: Inside the Photo Archive

  • Underground USA

  • Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (Neal Gabler)

  • The Whole Equation (David Thomson)

  • Who the Hell’s in It (Peter Bogdanovich)

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                      Site and Contact Information

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    • Flickhead is edited, designed and copyright © 2008 by Ray Young. The title and name Flickhead are copyright © 2000 by Ray Young. Articles written and copyright © 1999—2008 by Ray Young unless noted otherwise.

    The Claude Chabrol Project: Title and original content copyright © 2004 by Ray Young.

    Thanks to Tom Sutpen, Dennis Cozzalio, Nelhydrea Paupér, Nathan Schiff, Richard Armstrong, Steve Fiorilla, BeeBee, Kevin Danzey, & Puppooska.

    Flickhead is not affiliated with any electronic gizmo sporting its name.

    Contact us by e-mail ~ Flickhead @ Comcast dot net

    Mailing address: Raymond Young, P.O. Box 202, Mont Alto, PA 17237

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    Janet Kelleher

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    Flickhead                                          
    Keeping It Reel