Mater Testiculorum: SCARFACE, SUSPIRIA, CARRIE

"Masculinity must fight off effeminacy day by day.Woman and nature stand ever ready to reduce the male to boy and infant."-Camille Paglia"Son? I wish I had one! He's a bum!"--Mama Mantana (Scarface) You can argue that gangster cinema began at Warners with Cagney and Robinson, but a few pre-code masterworks aside, the gangster never hit his grandiose peak until it became an Italian-American story was directed by an Italian-American. Robert Evans...

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CinemArchetype #25: The Fisher King

The cinema has done wrounght or rongt for the Fisher King. What are these two odd words? They wrong and right mixed inextricably together -- facing each other, but theah one!-- fusing until body, mind, and soul bleed into each other. The point where they intersect and overlap is the wound of the Fisher King. It is what sets the search for the Holy Grail--which can be anything from la sangre de Cristo to a mere mcguffin -- in motion, you silly English-a...

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Getting to Own You: CLOUD ATLAS (2012), RUGGLES OF RED GAP (1935)

In my eleven feet of apartment, in a couch gone saggy from my restless weight, armed with a cat and a vast battlefield of Coke Zeros and Camel Lights, I spent the 4th of July weekend watching a  six part Revolutionary War documentary, me marveling at the mule-headed courage of our American revolutionaries (many of my ancestors fought in it, from Ipswich, Mass --how Lovecraftian!): "All men are created equal," Jefferson wrote, believing it "self-evident,"...

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