by RUTH STARKMAN
This definitive statement comes from Machete, an ex-Federale played by veteran tough guy, Danny Trejo in the deliciously extreme action gore-fest Machete, which opens nationwide Friday, September 3.
But apparently Machete does text after all, just not to immigration agent Sartana, played by Jessica Alba. He texts his nemesis, Michael Benz, a slimy mullet-coifed ... read more »

by SCOTT THILL
Riding on the back of nine minutes of unseen footage, the special edition of James Cameron’s pioneering 3-D masterpiece Avatar returns to theaters today (Friday August 27). But billions of dollars and path-breaking cinematic innovations later, it’s hard to ignore the part of Avatar’s comeback that tastes like unadulterated robbery.
Those still defending The ... read more »

A MATRIX OF CONNECTIONS
For a long time, I avoided watching The Thirteenth Floor (above) due to the name Roland Emmerich in the credits. Emmerich was responsible in one way or another for such turkeys as the American Godzilla remake and 10,000 B.C.  However, prompted by Bright Lights After Dark commenter, Hal O’Brien, I finally screened the film and ... read more »

The first time I saw the memoir’s title, I couldn’t escape the association: the concept of “pray” following “eat” was made famous by the late quip-master, Rodney Dangerfield. The line surfaced in his act many times, but since we’re talking movies, I’ll cite his rendering in Stone’s Natural Born Killers, in which the comedian briefly ... read more »

August 2010 | Issue 69
From the Editor

“Read this“
Gary Morris

ARTICLES

Sex and the City: The Way We Were, the Way We Fucked: Carrie and Her Crew Party Like It’s 1999!
By Alan Vanneman
They can never really knock you off your feet as long as you’re wearing Blahniks

A Cinema of Satyagraha? A Client-Centered Approach to Film Spectatorship
By Andrew Grossman
“In ... read more »

the more I am fascinated by her.  Loved her in Mann’s Public Enemies and as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose.  I was even impressed by her Vanity Fair Psycho photoshoot (Marion Cotillard as Marion Crane, above).  She’s not just posing in these shots.  She’s giving a real performance — and a far more ... read more »

Has the octogenarian iconoclast finally gone commercial?
[Via MUBI.]

Director Robert Siodmak was born on August 8, 1900, in Dresden, Germany. If alive today, he would be 110.
In 1994, in an article entitled Beyond the Golden Age: Film Noir Since the ’50s, I wrote:
It is almost (but not quite) a rule of thumb that the more personal a director’s vision, the less comfortably his ... read more »

I recently got back from a few days at the Era New Horizons Film Festival in Wrocław.  When I was there, most of the excitement centered on Xavier Beauvois’ Of Gods and Men, and most of the bafflement concerned Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers.  I didn’t arrive in time to see either film, but I did ... read more »

STAGECOACH (1939) directed by John Ford from a screenplay by Dudley Nichols is generally considered to be the first adult Western - adult in the sense that it took a set of archetypes who were familiar to audiences from Westerns of the past (the dancehall girl/prostitute, the Southern gentleman gambler, the drunken doctor, the young outlaw, the girl ... read more »