I first encountered actress Patricia Arquette in the early 2000s when, as a young teenager, I saw David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997) for the first time. Growing up surrounded by photos of Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Mae West, and Bette Davis, I also discovered at that time a newer genre of female artists, musicians like Siouxsie Sioux, Kathleen Hanna, PJ Harvey, and Carrie … [Read more...]
Found and Restored: Search and Destroy Reevaluated
I've been watching Dennis Hopper's more obscure and straight-to-DVD movies now for a number of few years; all in the name of 'research' you understand. I've seen some real clunkers (Space Truckers, Tycus) but I've also discovered some incredible work that has been added to the long list of my favorite films of all time (The American Friend, The Blackout). When it came to … [Read more...]
The Unforgivable Sin of Joss Whedon
Avengers: Age of Ultron is upon us, and that means the odds have gone up considerably of me having to confront The Whedon Problem with my more sophisticated, artsy friends. First you have to understand that my friends and I spend way too much time analyzing the latest “golden age of television” gems—Breaking Bad, The Fall, True Detectives, The Americans. We marvel at how The … [Read more...]
The Great Consciousness of Life
Reaching in, pulling out. The great divide is conquered; and there lies an ever-evolving mission to extract meaning from chaos. This, then, is where it resides, the theater of the soul and the heart. In rewriting my biography of Jack Kerouac, I found that the only way to revisit that book once again was to take all of Jack Kerouac's epic letters to Neal Cassady, all of … [Read more...]
Dennis Hopper as Daniel Morgan in Mad Dog Morgan
The film Easy Rider (1969) made its director and star Dennis Hopper, and the film's producer and co-star Peter Fonda, counter-cultural icons of the late 1960s. The film's minuscule budget, roaring box office success, and critical acclaim paved the way for a movement within Hollywood that would change the direction of filmmaking for the next decade. Accordingly, Dennis Hopper … [Read more...]
Movie Review – Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom
As a kid in the 1960s, I remember asking my mom why we didn't ever have Granny Smith apples in the house. She replied that she refused to buy anything from South Africa because of what the government did to its people. As the years passed and I became more aware of the world around me, I began to understand why my parents refused to buy anything which came from South Africa. … [Read more...]
(Movie Review) Come Back Africa: The Films of Lionel Rogosin, Volume ll
Documentary movies always seem to get short shrift. For too many people there the things people tell them to watch at school so they will learn something. Growing up on a diet of talking heads sitting around talking about subjects you're not really interested in would turn anybody off watching them. Which is highly unfortunate, as there are documentary movies out with just as … [Read more...]
Movie Review – Kill Your Darlings
Long before Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs would be celebrated as the poetical and political figureheads of a 'beat generation,' there was a murder. In the new film, Kill Your Darlings, the crime scene sets itself at Columbia University, 1944, when a young Allen Ginsberg (Radcliffe) is introduced to the anarchic, pornographic mind of fellow student, … [Read more...]
The Beat Spirit Within Llewyn Davis: A Film Rumination
A film about a struggling artist could be many things: arty, pretentious, too ambitious and above all unfocused. For all its many cinematographic achievements and clever performances, the absurdity of I'm Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007) fell to the weight of its lofty hopes. That film gave a highly-stylized rumination of the six lives, or characters, Bob Dylan sought to live, … [Read more...]
Film Review – Broken, starring Tim Roth & Cillian Murphy
There are some books you always remember for the way in which they opened your eyes to the world around you. They might have stripped away your innocence in the process, but they also reassured you that no matter how bad things could get, there were always some people doing their best to bring some balance to the world. The first book I remember providing me with that … [Read more...]
Film Review – The Last Song Before The War
I can't remember when I heard about the Festival au Desert, which has been taking place in Northern Mali since 2001, for the first time. I do remember it was in 2009 I was offered press credentials to cover the Festival, and regretting having to turn the opportunity down. Without a sponsoring media organization to cover my costs of travelling there was no way I could finance … [Read more...]
Beat Generation film – Kill Your Darlings trailer released!
Kill Your Darlings dramatizes an actual event that took place in 1944, as the writers who would later be identified with the Beat Generation became embroiled in a murder that made headlines. While attending Columbia University, Allen Ginsberg became friends with Lucien Carr who introduced him to Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs - and to David Kammerer, an older man who was … [Read more...]
Book Review – Erik Verhaar’s Andalusian Dogging
Andalusian Dogging by Erik Verhaar, translated by Jonathan Ellis / The Reception Game / 2013 / 17 pages In Erik Verhaar's short story, inspired by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's 1929 film An Andalusian Dog (Un Chien Andalou), the film itself becomes a character. An Andalusian Dog bumps into this story's narrator on the street: "I felt his fingers tap my shoulder. I … [Read more...]
Love That Loves Us: The Two Loves of To the Wonder
note: Here there be spoilers By now it is cliche to label a Terrence Malick film a "visual poem," but in the case of To The Wonder, that is what it is. Malick's cinematic eye defers to poetry more strongly than that of cinema and though I'm certain that he doesn't regard himself as a poet, he has taken the raw matter of his sensorium and fashioned it into something that … [Read more...]
Film Review – Searching for Sugar Man
Searching For Sugarman (2012) 4 stars A documentary about the mysterious Rodriguez, the singer/songwriter who released the album Cold Fact in 1970. Directed by Swedish-British filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul, this is a well told underdog story that left me in happy tears, despite some factual omissions and mysteries left unsolved. Growing up in Australia in the 1980s, I was … [Read more...]
Paintings: Kristen Stewart as Marylou Moriarty in On the Road
T.E. Priemon - Encaustic Artist Artist's Statement I am an artist who paints using a 2000-year-old painting medium used in the way the Fayum Egyptian artist used their encaustic paints for portraits, which have survived in much the same way as they were painted. I hope my paintings will survive the same test of time, and they should outside of being physically destroyed. To … [Read more...]
Terrence Malick, Badlands and Caril Fugate: An Interview
Photos courtesy of Jeff McArthur (All Rights Reserved) Jeff McArthur is the author of Pro Bono: The 18-Year Defense of Caril Fugate. Mr. McArthur’s grandfather, John C. McArthur, defended Caril Fugate in her trial for her part in the Starkweather murders that occurred in 1959 and would do so for the next eighteen years in her attempts to apply for … [Read more...]
Jack Kerouac – “Big Sur” Movie Trailer
The film, Big Sur, based upon Jack Kerouac's novel of the same name, released nationwide on November 1, 2013. Directed by Michael Polish, who also wrote the screenplay, it stars Jean-Marc Barr as Jack Kerouac. Other cast are: Stana Katic as Lenore; Henry Thomas as Phillip Whalen; Josh Lucas as Neal Cassady; Kate Bosworth as Billie; Radha Mitchell as Carolyn Cassady; Anthony … [Read more...]
How Dennis Hopper conquered the American century
Dennis Hopper’s extensive filmography is filled with an array of painfully bad films. His early career saw him appear in any number of B-Movies and exploitation flicks; his late eighties/early nineties excursion into mainstream blockbusters such as Super Mario Bros (1993) and Waterworld (1995) were undeniably poor; and from the late nineties and beyond, his backlist of movies … [Read more...]
The Official Kerouac “On the Road” Movie Trailer is Here!
"On the Road," the movie based on Jack Kerouac's novel of the same name, will be released in the United States on December 21, 2012. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope, it's directed by Walter Salles (Motorcycle Diaries) and stars Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, and Kristen Stewart. Check out the official trailer below! Haven't read On the Road yet, or want … [Read more...]
The Biggest Mystery in Hollywood History
"An author should have no other biography than his books." “The biography of a creative man is completely unimportant.” - B. Traven Warner Brothers bought the novel THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE in 1941 with John Huston in mind as director. When the studio wrote the author, a Mr. B. Traven, in Mexico City suggesting that they pay him to come to Los Angeles to work … [Read more...]
Down by Law: The Loneliness of Jim Jarmusch
Not that it would make any difference. But if only for the sake of morale, you are willing to admit that it's a welcome shade of orange that breaks east at the horizon of what has been a roughandtumble one hell of fucked up night. A dull weariness works on your bones, your mind swirls in and out of a strange daze that threatens to rot you from within, and frankly, you'd rather … [Read more...]
(Revisiting) Mondo Hollywood: A Film and Event
At midnight on June 10, 2006, in a special event for the Moondance Film Festival, The Chaplin Theater (5300 Melrose Ave) in Los Angeles will be presenting the digitally-enhanced Director's cut of Mondo Hollywood. Written, produced, directed and edited by Robert Carl Cohen -- renowned for his pioneering documentary films INSIDE RED CHINA, INSIDE EAST GERMANY, THREE CUBANS, and … [Read more...]
