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Keeping It Reel

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                                           New on Flickhead

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  • De Sica, Sophia and Marcello: Three Films
    “Sophia Loren and Vittorio De Sica were part of a vital moment in popular Italian cinema, when the hugely profitable American market was temporarily open and eager for European imports, when a lot of people were confused by Federico Fellini or wary of Roberto Rossellini.” Looking at the Blu-rays of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963), Marriage Italian Style (1964), and Sunflower (1970).

  • A Propos de deux
    “In a piece on French film education resources recently I included some comments on Jean Vigo’s delightful seaside documentary A Propos de Nice. So I watched the film again. It so happened that the evening before I had watched the Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife. Seeing both of these films in such proximity made me wonder if they had ever been paired in a double bill…” Ruminations by Richard Armstrong.

  • Screen Jens: When Salome Shook Her Groove Thang for The Lord
    “How many actresses are named Salome? The one who beguiles me is Salome Jens.” Looking back on her career and the 1961 film, Angel Baby.

  • At the Gallery
    “What is most powerful to me about…Au Café…is what might be described as its aural dimension. Once you have seen it and studied it, surrounded in this room by the pastoral and bucolic relics of Impressionism, Degas’s canvas, modestly situated in a far corner, could almost be about to speak.” After hours with Richard Armstrong.

  • Sisters of Mourning
    “I watched Cléo de 5 à 7 recently on DVD and it made me jump! I was astonished by its similarity to Carnival of Souls, the little horror film which I have written about in the past.” Cinema considerations by Irene Dobson.

  • I’d Walk a Mile for a Cammell
    “Less the Holy Grail of Donald Cammell’s sketchy oeuvre than one of its many missing links, Duffy (1968) is a psychedelic heist film making a long overdue debut on home video.” DVD review.

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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 . . .”

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • The Big Sleep
    “Between March and August 2010 I worked as a ‘Maître de langues,’ teaching English at the University of Paris. During this time I saw hardly any films at the cinema or on DVD or video. Perhaps, mired in the newness of Paris, taken in by her looks and scents, overwhelmed by her exoticism, I didn’t feel the need for escape into movie worlds… As my exile wore on, I had a series of bizarre dreams.” Richard Armstrong relates his theatre of the mind.

  • 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?”

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

  • 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.’

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Love and Death off Long Island
    “Leafing through some of Irene Dobson’s papers recently, I came across a 1998 review of The Daytrippers (1995), an American independent feature which, like so many of those little movies, seldom gets shown on British television these days and even more rarely written about. It was a lackluster review. It was not that Dobson didn’t like it; she did and wrote in glowing terms of the acting and the richly observed conceit which propels its day-long tapestry of familial dynamics and lovers’ betrayals. It was lackluster because, as she leant over and confessed to me that afternoon, she hadn’t actually seen the film before she reviewed it.” Richard Armstrong remembers the Greg Mattola 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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!

  • 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.

  • 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!

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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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                                               Film Reviews

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  • All Day Long (Andrew Semens, 2007)

  • 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)

  • Crawford (David Modigliani, 2008)

  • Dead Silence (James Wan, 2007)

  • Dear Zachary (Kurt Kuenne, 2008)

  • 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)

  • Hatchet (Adam Green, 2007)

  • 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)

  • Maurice Jarre: A Tribute to David Lean (1992)

  • The Mel Brooks Collection on Blu-ray

  • Midnight Movies (Stuart Samuels, 2005)

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

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

  • Monster Road (Brett Ingram, 2004)

  • Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow, 1987)

  • Necromania (Ed Wood, 1971)

  • The Olive Thomas Collection Compilation

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

  • The Outsiders of New Orleans (Wayne Ewing, 2007)

  • 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)

  • Spiral (Adam Green and Joel Moore, 2007)

  • 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

  • Who is Henry Jaglom? (Henry-Alex Rubin and Jeremy Workman, 1997)

  • 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)

  • Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press (Jeff Weddle)

  • Boy on a String: From Cast-off Kid to Filmmaker Through the Magic of Dreams (Joseph Jacoby)

  • Comfort and Joi (Joseph Dougherty)

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

  • The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula (Eric Nuzum)

  • 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)

  • Hammer Glamour: Classic Images From the Archive of Hammer Films (Marcus Hearn)

  • Hollywood’s Hellfire Club (Gregory Mank)

  • 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)

  • Screen World (Barry Monush)

  • 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 © 2011 by Ray Young. The title and name Flickhead are copyright © 2000 by Ray Young. Articles written and copyright © 1999—2011 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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    In loving memory of

    Steve Fiorilla

    Cheryl Edgerton

    and

    Janet Kelleher

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    Flickhead                                          
    Keeping It Reel