Revelation is a unique intellectual thriller. It is violent, torturous, intriguing, and downright scary. The reader will be transported into this dark world of the Cavalieri. It is a nasty place indeed. How could such a good man end up there?…
Month: March 2013
Polymorphous Perversity, for a Laugh: Richard Linklater’s Bernie, a true-life comedy feature about friendship, death, and gossip
In Richard Linklater’s Bernie, the people who lived in Carthage, Texas, and knew Bernie Tiede and his friend and patron Marjorie Nugent, are presented, their testimony that of witnesses, full of fact, gossip, insight, and wit. Genuine observation is mixed with criticism and delusion.
Pride, Determination, Resilience: Self, Community, and Competition in the film Pride, starring Terrence Howard, Bernie Mac, Kimberly Elise, Kevin Phillips, Evan Ross, and Nate Parker
Obviously, a film such as Pride, intended as inspiring entertainment based on a true story set in the early 1970s, arrives against a context of expectation and common disappointment and remembered excellence: it can be dismissed with inattention, or evaluated with exacting rigor.
People Change: Gary Ross’s Pleasantville, a film fiction on history and nostalgia, creativity, independence, sexuality, and television
In Gary Ross’s beautiful, funny, imaginative and intelligent film Pleasantville, a shy bookish brother who loves old television programs, especially the one set in the mythical town of Pleasantville, and his more indulgently sensual, pretty, popular sister—she chews gum, smokes cigarettes, and makes out with boys—argue over the television remote control on the weekend their divorced mother has taken a trip to be with her young boyfriend.
An Early Modern Masterpiece: Chaplin’s great black-and-white film Modern Times, on friendship and survival, factory life, labor strife, unemployment, and war
In Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin, a master of gesture, merriment, and pathos, a brilliant performer who became a storyteller, is the little fellow; and the little fellow’s work in a factory is attendant to automation, and he tightens screws on items on a moving assembly line, the repetition of the work rattling his nerves.