Summer allegedly belongs to the blockbusters, but this June's offering up some spotty pickings in the franchise world, beyond the rise of a long-deserving female superhero and the remounting of a Universal horror landmark. So feel free to ditch Cars 3, Despicable Me 3, and Transformers: Dear God How Many Has It Been Now and give something a little off the beaten path a look. Like, maybe, a boundary-busting romcom, or a musical thrill ride forged from vinyl, or an enigmatic slow-burn horror oddity. Here's what you need to check...
- 6/1/2017
- Rollingstone.com
★★★★☆ Along with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs was one of the most important and influential writers of the so-called Beat Generation, best known perhaps for his novel Naked Lunch. As with so many of his contemporaries, Burroughs life was defined by chaos, intense creativity, narcotic binges and personal tragedy. Filmed over five years, Howard Brookner's 1983 documentary Burroughs: The Movie is an oft-moving portrayal of one of literature's most prominent voices, an intimate and humanising account of a legend of twentieth-century American culture.
- 7/11/2016
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Review by Sam Moffitt
Being the first is not always a good thing. Many ground breaking artists who introduce something new into the cultural mix do not always fare well after they have changed the rules and the game. Take, just as one example, Orson Welles who changed forever how movies were made as well as radio drama and stage productions. Although Welles made out better than Maila Nurmi, also known as Vampira, the subject of the incredible and unforgettable documentary Vampira and Me.
H Greene first got to know Maila Nurmi when he interviewed her for a documentary called Schlock! The Secret History of Hollywood, (a good documentary in its own right.) Nurmi had grown distrustful of just about everyone, and with good reason. Yet for reasons Greene doesn’t even speculate on she trusted Greene and gave him almost two hours of interview time and discussed every last moment of her bizarre,...
Being the first is not always a good thing. Many ground breaking artists who introduce something new into the cultural mix do not always fare well after they have changed the rules and the game. Take, just as one example, Orson Welles who changed forever how movies were made as well as radio drama and stage productions. Although Welles made out better than Maila Nurmi, also known as Vampira, the subject of the incredible and unforgettable documentary Vampira and Me.
H Greene first got to know Maila Nurmi when he interviewed her for a documentary called Schlock! The Secret History of Hollywood, (a good documentary in its own right.) Nurmi had grown distrustful of just about everyone, and with good reason. Yet for reasons Greene doesn’t even speculate on she trusted Greene and gave him almost two hours of interview time and discussed every last moment of her bizarre,...
- 9/7/2015
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Burroughs: The Movie
Directed by Howard Brookner
USA, 1983
Howard Brookner’s extraordinary portrait of William S. Burroughs was all but lost following its original release in 1983. Now recovered and restored, it offers an intimate insight into the life and work of one of America’s most celebrated and controversial writers. Covering his time spent in New York, Tangier, London and Mexico, from “full out junkie” to literary giant, the documentary is notable for its experimental style and unprecedented access to Burroughs, as well as interviews with his Beat Generation contemporaries, including Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, Herbert Huncke and Bryon Gysin.
Burroughs: The Movie started life in 1978 as Brookner’s senior thesis at New York University and one of the film’s many quirks is that the technical credits include illustrious classmates Jim Jarmusch as sound recordist and Tom DeCillo as the principal cinematographer. After forming a close friendship with the director early on,...
Directed by Howard Brookner
USA, 1983
Howard Brookner’s extraordinary portrait of William S. Burroughs was all but lost following its original release in 1983. Now recovered and restored, it offers an intimate insight into the life and work of one of America’s most celebrated and controversial writers. Covering his time spent in New York, Tangier, London and Mexico, from “full out junkie” to literary giant, the documentary is notable for its experimental style and unprecedented access to Burroughs, as well as interviews with his Beat Generation contemporaries, including Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, Herbert Huncke and Bryon Gysin.
Burroughs: The Movie started life in 1978 as Brookner’s senior thesis at New York University and one of the film’s many quirks is that the technical credits include illustrious classmates Jim Jarmusch as sound recordist and Tom DeCillo as the principal cinematographer. After forming a close friendship with the director early on,...
- 2/25/2015
- by Rob Dickie
- SoundOnSight
In 1960 Bill Finger wrote a Batman story involving a South American rebel group releasing a mysterious “Rainbow Creature” composed of red, green, yellow, and blue on an unsuspecting rural village. Each color holds a power, when a power is used the associated color fades to white. Batman and Robin eventually devise a plan to make it use all its powers simultaneously. It works, and the creature fades entirely white. Then, before The Dynamic Duo can strike, it implodes into dust and blows away in the wind. This was Batman #134. And though the issue was released in 1960, it is the pinnacle of the 1950s Batman: bright, whimsical, otherworldly, and downright bizarre. Did this tone stem from post-War censorship and economic realities, or something else?
The eras of The Batman are many. Even now, as I’m writing this or you are reading it somewhere in time, the character is ever...
The eras of The Batman are many. Even now, as I’m writing this or you are reading it somewhere in time, the character is ever...
- 8/10/2014
- by Dan Black
- SoundOnSight
James Broughton refused to live an inauthentic life. And in fact he had many lives. He was a poet, a filmmaker, an artist, a gay man, a straight man and an all-around visionary. "Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton," which world-premiered at SXSW in 2013, traces the life and times of this man of many parts. In the mid-20th century, Broughton found himself at the intersection of many Bay Area art and social movements, from the San Francisco Renaissance to the Beat Generation that rose after Allen Ginsberg first performed "Howl," that barbaric yawp of unchained imagination, in 1955. (Stream the film now on Netflix.) Broughton was born in Modesto in 1913, and then raised in San Francisco where he pursued a career in poetry until eventually he borrowed a 16mm camera during one of many bouts of depression. Thus began a career in making poetic, lyrical, avant-garde short films that...
- 6/30/2014
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
As he prepared to bring the Harry Potter saga to a close, ingendude Daniel Radcliffe deftly selected challenging dramas that would force audiences to see him as something beyond The Boy Who Lived. This included a turn as a haunted widower in the horror-thriller The Woman In Black as well as tackling the portrayal of a young Alan Ginsberg in the Beat Generation biopic Kill Your Darlings, not to mention a trio of turns on Broadway in Equus, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and the recently opened The Cripple of Inishmaan. Having convinced us he's much more than a charming former child star, Radcliffe is gearing up to get us giggling with the upcoming comedy You Shall Know Our Velocity. THR reports out of the Cannes Film Festival that Daniel Radcliffe is in negotiations to front You Shall Know Our Velocity a jet-setting adventure about an odd...
- 5/23/2014
- cinemablend.com
If you, at the very least, have a passing interest in the Beat Generation, then you will definitely get a kick out of this oddball short film from 1959 called “Pull My Daisy.” The film stars Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky as themselves, more-or-less, and they’re invited into the home of a railway brakeman whose wife had invited a bishop over for dinner. After getting bombarded with a barrage of questions from the beat poets (“Is a cockroach holy?), the bishop leaves in a bit of a huff, much to the dismay of the wife. The short is set in the Lower East Side of New York and it’s shot in a very loose, casual, off-the-cuff style. The entire film is narrated by novelist/poet Jack Kerouac who also wrote the short. It was shot and directed by photographer Robert Frank and Abstract Expressionist painter Alfred Leslie, and according to Frank,...
- 5/20/2014
- by Ken Guidry
- The Playlist
★★★☆☆Kill Your Darlings (2013), director John Krokidas' ambitious debut feature, is about the early years of the hedonistic group of American writers who became known as the Beat Generation, as well as the violent murder that nearly derailed their literary movement in its infancy. It's autumn 1943 and the Second World War is raging, but the battlefields of Europe seem a million miles away from Columbia University where freshman Allen Ginsberg (Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe) meets sophomore Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan) for the first time. Ginsberg is immediately drawn to Carr's subversive energy and his love of such unorthodox writers as Henry Miller and Arthur Rimbaud.
- 4/22/2014
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
IFC Films
Writing can be an incredibly frustrating, madness-inducing process. From developing an idea to fleshing it out and avoiding writer’s block, the writer enters the world of the unconscious and battles with their demons as they strive to give form and structure to the words in their heads.
Not surprisingly, quite a few movies have been made about writing – perhaps this is a reflection of screenwriters channeling their own issues onto the screen. Naturally they depict the writer as a deep, complex character, with hopes and aspirations, neurosis and nightmares end up projected into the characters they create. On top of this there is the endless pressure – to meet the deadlines of the editors, to live up to audience expectations and, perhaps most of of, to transcend your previous work.
Allen Ginsberg stood at the forefront of the 1950s Beat Generation movement, a wild, euphoric rejection of American...
Writing can be an incredibly frustrating, madness-inducing process. From developing an idea to fleshing it out and avoiding writer’s block, the writer enters the world of the unconscious and battles with their demons as they strive to give form and structure to the words in their heads.
Not surprisingly, quite a few movies have been made about writing – perhaps this is a reflection of screenwriters channeling their own issues onto the screen. Naturally they depict the writer as a deep, complex character, with hopes and aspirations, neurosis and nightmares end up projected into the characters they create. On top of this there is the endless pressure – to meet the deadlines of the editors, to live up to audience expectations and, perhaps most of of, to transcend your previous work.
Allen Ginsberg stood at the forefront of the 1950s Beat Generation movement, a wild, euphoric rejection of American...
- 4/21/2014
- by Andrew Dilks
- Obsessed with Film
LILFs: Links I'd Like To... This Week: lots of penis stuff. by Liam Mathews Confession: (My) Bisexuality Is Really Not That Complicated According to Em & Lo, bisexuality is just as whatever as any other identity, because people are people. Infographic: The Cum Rag Hierarchy Necessary service journalism from The Frisky about the best way to wipe splooge off your partner. Why Is Everyone So Worked Up About Circumcision? Bisexuality is simple, but circumscion? Not so much, says Refinery 29. The Teenage Boyfriend of the Beat Generation Vocativ has a fascinating profile of a teenager who had May-December relationships with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. Introducing: Desus vs. Mero on Complex TV The greatest podcast on the internet is now the greatest TV show on the internet. Stay woke at Complex. Image via Mike [...]...
- 4/4/2014
- by Liam Mathews
- Nerve
New Indie: After the bloated, all-star adaptation of On the Road, you’d be forgiven for wanting to steer clear of another movie about the adventures of the Beat Generation. But don’t let that skittishness keep you from enjoying Kill Your Darlings (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment), a sexy, crackling look at a real-life murder that involved a close friend of not-yet-famous writers Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Daniel Radcliffe boldly moves beyond Hogwarts with his portrayal of college freshman Ginsberg, whose world gets rocked when he meets Columbia University classmate Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), who broadened his literary and sexual horizons. It’s a fascinating portrait of youthful enthusiasm and literary rebellion from first-time...
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- 4/1/2014
- by Alonso Duralde
- Movies.com
An Oscar winner, a major Oscar nominee, two more pieces of Oscar bait, and a few movies that never got anywhere near Oscar. Welcome to What to Watch. We don’t play favorites. Oh, wait, yes we do. You should definitely rent or buy the titles on this first page. The second page is more optional.
Frozen
Photo credit: Disney
“Frozen”
The best Disney movie since “The Lion King” (Disney, not Pixar), “Frozen” gets the lavish Mouse House treatment. There’s no better studio for family releases and they’re not about to slack on one of the biggest moneymakers of their existence. We are Just getting started with “Frozen”. You know how “Beauty & The Beast” and “The Lion King” became industries unto themselves? Spawning Broadway musicals, theme park rides, new shows, straight-to-dvd sequels, etc.? “Frozen” will end up the same way. If you have a kid, you won’t...
Frozen
Photo credit: Disney
“Frozen”
The best Disney movie since “The Lion King” (Disney, not Pixar), “Frozen” gets the lavish Mouse House treatment. There’s no better studio for family releases and they’re not about to slack on one of the biggest moneymakers of their existence. We are Just getting started with “Frozen”. You know how “Beauty & The Beast” and “The Lion King” became industries unto themselves? Spawning Broadway musicals, theme park rides, new shows, straight-to-dvd sequels, etc.? “Frozen” will end up the same way. If you have a kid, you won’t...
- 3/18/2014
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Daniel Radcliffe has recently had a real eye for interesting projects, and he largely set that tone with "Kill Your Darlings," a look at the early days of Beat Generation icons, like Allen Ginsberg. The film addressed Ginsberg's relationship with another man, Lucien Carr, played by Dane DeHaan. In an exclusive deleted scene from the upcoming Blu-ray release on March 18, we see Ginsberg's classmates harassing him about his sexuality. He stands up for himself, ...
By Kevin P. Sullivan...
By Kevin P. Sullivan...
- 3/14/2014
- MTV Movie News
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