Hail Hail Heather Graham

I just go back from Heather Graham's 41st birthday bash (1) and what better time to celebrate her unnerving sexuality? 41!? You'd never guess it. I remember well Graham's big crash into A-list films in the late 1990's: first as the sweet girl who saves future IRON MAN-director Jon Favreau from chickless despair in SWINGERS (1996)--her presence a reminder that even the most self-defeating hep cats were occasionally rewarded with a nice, no BS kind...

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TWILIGHT's Cinematic Ancestors: THE WIND, DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY, MOROCCO, TITANIC, PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, LITTLE WOMEN

I'll always stick up for TWILIGHT (the films at any rate) because I love the death drive, and what other series is the lead girl allowed to have an unrepentant disdain for life? That's so ninja! What other teen series is it not only sanctioned but wholly recommended to die for love? That's pre-code woman's picture Hollywood, as old and venerated as Lilian Gish and D.W. Griffith. In refusing to be embraced by the positive life energies of the social...

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A Moon, Cat Women, and Thou

One of the 'golden turkey' classics (Medved wrote of it in awe), CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON (1953) begs little but indulgence. It doesn't ask for respect, forgiveness or love, that's why you forgive, respect and love it, like a play put on by your children. Shot in 3-D in the middle of the night on cheap sets by the most depth-perception-challenged director in history (Arthur Hilton), CWOTM features cat dancing; spacesuit donning and doffing; a giant...

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The First Lebowski: CUTTER'S WAY (1981)

Every once in awhile a man has to pause. Every once in awhile a man has peer into the decades behind him, take a cursory flip through Leonard Maltin and wonder... is John Heard really a good actor? I mean, is he awesome? Or is he too much too late?The question is answered the same time as you ask: do all 1970s movies involve grizzled vet loners going after corrupt power father figures like they're lone wolves growling valiantly but for naught against...

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Best Erich Kuersten Film Writing of 2010

Whether in Bright Lights Film Journal or this very blog, Erich Kuersten's been busy trying to fracture reality through bizarro psychoanalysidelic film analysis. This year he found himself hung up on the ambiguous sexual crosscurrents of feminine desire (in #6 of the Acidemic Film Journal proper) was cited as one of the best film criticism sites by The Film Society of Lincoln Center, and had his mind blown by seeing ENTER THE VOID and BLACK SWAN...

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American Grievers, Part Two: THE FOUNTAIN

"Death is the road to awe."Was it an accident I watched THE FOUNTAIN (2006) the very next night after INCEPTION (see Grievers part one here)? There are no accidents in cinema when its imagery is way more high-def than your foggy day-to-day 'reality.' There's a handful of differences twixt the two: DiCaprio's brooding dreamweaver in INCEPTION becomes FOUNTAIN's Hugh Jackman, but they're really the same -- one bends time through dream-invasion, the...

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